Canadian Music Trade - August/September 2020 | Page 26

Finding Your
NICHE
videos and pictures of accordions that fit
their size and music, because there are different
types of tunings on accordions, sizes,
price ranges, etc.,” Hergt explains. “We’ve
learned over the years how to zoom in and
help the person get the right accordion for
them.”
In terms of developing a wide-reaching
reputation in the niche accordion market,
Hergt says he’s learned the value of
instructional videos online. For example, he
points to a video he did with a well-known
accordion teacher named Moshe Zuchter
for the latter’s YouTube channel. It’s a simple
video in which Hergt just explains what to
look (and smell) for when buying a used
accordion. “He put that on his blog and we
were getting one or two emails a week from
people all over the world asking about used
accordions because they liked the information
they got from that video. This is not
us advertising them on our website; it’s just
people coming to us and saying, ‘Hey, thank
you for the video. I’d like to buy something
from you. What have you got?’”
MSP MUSIQUE’S RAPHAËL BUJOLD
For roughly the last two decades, first in
Guelph, ON, and now in Waterloo since
2016, Folkway Music has built a reputation
as one of Southwestern Ontario’s premier
shops for high-end acoustic stringed
instruments. It’s also developed a national
and even international reputation as a go-to
place for the finest vintage instruments –
first guitars, and then increasingly, mandolins
and banjos, too. But all those specialties
sprung out of Mark Stutman’s first expertise:
guitar repair.
Just 24 years old when he opened his
first repair shop, Stutman had no initial
intentions of getting into resale. “But
basically, over time, you fix guitars and then
sometimes people don’t want their guitars
anymore. At the same time, I was constantly
studying new techniques and learning from
a few amazing luthiers I had met, so I would
be looking for old guitars that I could fix
and learn on,” Stutman recalls. “Well, now
what do you do with it? This was before Kijiji
and Reverb and all that other stuff, so I’d
just hang it on the wall in my shop. Then,
somebody else would come in and drop a
guitar off for repair and they might see it.
They’d play it and like it and they might buy
it. So, within two years of opening my shop,
there was maybe a dozen guitars on the wall
at any given time.”
From there, Stutman jumped head-first
into the world of vintage guitars. In the early
days of eBay, he recalls being up into the
wee hours of the night bidding on underpriced
vintage guitars. In particular, it was
the vintage Gibsons – the L-00s, J-35s, and
LG-2s – that made him the most money.
“So, I’d fix those guitars and then my
sister was a big dot-com person from early
on and she got me our Folkway Music URL
in ’99 or 2000. Plus, I was also really into
photography, so I’d photograph these guitars
and we’d put them on our websites. So,
we were kind of an early bird at the online
vintage guitar sales thing, which put us on
the map. We had a website and, as archaic
as it was, Google liked it a lot because it was
full of content. So, people found out about
us and the more people who did, the more
I sold vintage guitars, and the more vintage
guitars I sold, the more I bought. Within a
couple years, around 2004, we were bursting
at the seams.”
Long story short, around 2004, Stutman
tripled the size of the shop to accommodate a
showroom for selling vintage guitars, and also
hired his first employee, Jesse Merrill, who
Stutman calls “a savant craftsman.” With him
onboard, repairs were done quicker, which
then allowed Stutman to seek out and buy
more vintage guitars. Merrill also spearheaded
Folkway’s move into another related specialty:
vintage mandolins and banjos.
“He was big into mandolins and banjos
and sort of took me along for the ride. Then
I got big into mandolins and banjos, too, in
an old-time kind of way. Plus, it just aligns
with the Folkway brand. We’ve always been
an acoustic shop, and so mandolins and
banjos are a big part of that,” Stutman says.
Now, much like Hergt has experienced
with accordions, Stutman says they’ve been
the beneficiary of a banjo resurgence since
the pandemic started.
“We had the same thing with guitars,
but there are many more stores who
specialize in guitars, whereas our banjo
selection is pretty unique. We sell high-end,
open-backed banjos and you really only find
those at our store and The Twelfth Fret [in
Toronto] and not too many other places.
Also, the lines that we sell they don’t have at
The Twelfth Fret, so if you’re looking for an
26 CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE