Alto Music's Bobby Montemurro
As stay-at-home orders went into effect across the U.S. last spring, MI retailers saw a sharp increase of shoppers ordering gear online. And like many retailers, Alto Music, based in Middletown, New York, saw a staggering rise in home recording equipment sales.
“At the onset of the pandemic, we anticipated these types of products would be strong for us, but we never thought in our wildest dreams how well it would go,” said Bobby Montemurro, vice president of sales and marketing for the three-location, full-line dealership. “Anything on our shelves that could be used to record, play, stream, edit or compose music at home was moving at the speed of sound.”
As the volume of online orders increased, Alto Music had the infrastructure in place to handle the increased web traffic and sales. In 2018, the company built an additional 20,000 square feet of space onto its existing 50,000-square-foot warehouse, and, to accommodate the growing facility, implemented custom inventory tracking systems, increased its network capacity and upgraded other various infrastructure and processes. A massive rebuild to the dealer’s website also made it ready to handle the increased amount of orders.
“Plus, our veteran staff were able to quickly pivot to a new focus,” Montemurro said. “With walk-in retail closed at all of our locations, our retail workers seamlessly moved from our sales floor to working from home as online customer service, phone sales or warehouse support.”
Additionally, many staffers moved into the dealer’s warehouse operations.
“There were certain points where any and every abled-body human was working on shipping in some facet,” he said. “With safety and social distancing in mind, we had about 15 to 25 people working in the warehouse seven days a week. Our peak outgoing day was 1,900 packing lists. Over the course of this time, there were several days where we filled two 52-foot ground trailers.”
As industry-wide product shortages abounded, Alto Music’s strong relationship with its suppliers became crucial.
“Our longstanding track record with vendors was key,” Montemurro said. “Our owner, Jon Haber, worked seven days a week without a day off for four months straight. In addition to normal workload, he split time working in our shipping warehouse, as well as accounts payable, prepaying anxious vendor credit departments. We are proud to say that all of our vendors were 100 percent paid on time throughout. Many vendors’ credit departments were understandably nervous during this period, and Jon built on existing and strong relationships [by] prepaying invoices. Financial Xanax.”
Despite these uncertain times, Montemurro said he was “encouraged to see people turn to creativity as an outlet” during the pandemic.
“It bodes well not only for the future of music but also for the future of our industry,” he said. “The last six months were the baby boom for musicians. I would say that the quarantine was the biggest increase in newly minted musicians since the Beatles. With all these new people picking up instruments and making music for the first time, how could the future of MI not be bright?” MI
