This article was published in Growing Business Magazine June 2010 issue.
Shoreditch-based Reprise Music Group’s founder Howard Gray was seeking direction around managing growth. His business offers a full-service model – artist booking agency, PR and events, music publishing, and its own record label. But most of its ideas weren’t being turned into revenue streams. Gray refers to the old incarnation of Reprise as ‘Before Courvoisier – BC’. It was making just £45 per booking on its roster of 40 artists. Administrative errors were commonplace. And time was stretched unnecessarily.
By the culmination of Mentor My Business, the company had relocated to new offices, merged successfully with a PR agency, increased its roster to 75 acts across a broader range of genres, had increased average bookings to £65, and five months in had eclipsed 2009’s full-year turnover. It had also put in place systems to take care of admin.
Gray puts the transition down to a number of key pieces of advice: cross-sell, up-sell, do any kind of selling; focus on customers and who they actually are; put contracts in place and protect yourselves; understand that revenue shares are nice, equity is nicer; and keep asking questions.
One line in particular struck Gray: “Dispatch competition with weapons of tomorrow I learnt to use yesterday.” Today the business has acts playing all the major summer festivals, is doing PR for Fatboy Slim, and has surveyed its artists and asked them to recommend Reprise’s services (85% have; 15% said they would).
Monthly accounting has been reduced to four hours, not four days; Gray himself has got his Sundays back, and the company has a gender balance following a recruitment drive. Illustrating the new cohesion, Gray says the progress is analogous to a disjointed football team pre-season being given structure and then furnished with a tactical plan for the following season.
Getting commercial
Finally, you may recall a ‘mad’ inventor on Dragons’ Den three years ago attempting to ‘boil’ an egg with a direct contact heating device. It all went horribly wrong, but James Seddon was able to charm the Dragons and Peter Jones in particular. The pledged investment didn’t materialise. And despite approaches from John Lewis and Lakeland, the product is still yet to hit the shelves. It’s close though.
At the beginning of the programme, Seddon readily admits to a lack of in-depth understanding of the IT requirement and little idea of how to manage partners. Mentoring tackled these issues, including helping Seddon realise the need to replace his manufacturing partner. In addition he fleshed out the marketing plan and prepared a plan to seek funding. “I’m much further forward. Had I not been involved with the mentoring group I’d still be in the same place as six months ago.”
+ Ravi Peal-Shankar
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