The following article is reprinted from the October 2001 issue of MMR (Musical Merchandise Review).

BY DAVID MASSEY

       Looking for that oddball guitar you've always lusted after?  Perhaps you are on a quest for a Konablaster Electric Ukulele?  A Maccaferri-style jazz guitar?  A resophonic mandolin?  A zydeco rub-board?  Or a super-rare 1941 Martin D-45, currently selling for $140,000?  Or some hard-to-find, unique instruments like musical saws, African thumb pianos, or a sitar?

From button-box accordions to bouzoukis, and from Fender Strats to Gibson Les Pauls, Lansing, Mich.- based Elderly Instruments (www.elderly.com) provides a mind-boggling array of both new and vintage instruments at competitive prices, including most of the mainstream and boutique guitar lines. This year the company celebrates their 30th anniversary.

  Started in 1972 by acoustic instrument aficionado Stan Werbin, Elderly Instruments focuses on customer service excellence and top-notch repair facilities while offering a massive selection of primarily fretted instruments and accessories, as well as a diverse selection of instructional books and tapes, software, DVDs and CDs.

  Werbin prides himself on the fact that you can certainly find at Elderly Instruments whatever new Strat or Martin or Marshall product you might want to add to your collection.  But what makes the dealership stand out is the opportunity to discover the more unusual: mandolins, banjos, folk harps, Irish bodhrans, dulcimers, djembes, wooden spoons, ocarinas, concertinas,
and much more.

  Werbin, president of Elderly Instruments, manages the 35,000 square foot store and also appraises the unique vintage guitars and instruments that circulate through his office on a daily basis.

  The company also runs a mail-order operation via two smartly designed, full-color annual catalogs, a hefty main products catalog (their latest is over 150 pages) as well as a smaller vintage guitar catalog.  The company's easy-to-navigate Web site www.elderly.com offers detailed descriptions of both new and used gear and accessories, and provides a secure shopping cart for online transactions.

MMR talked with Werbin in August to get some history on the humble beginnings of Elderly Instruments, and learn how and why the company has managed such an impressive growth track over three decades.

MMR: Stan, how does it feel to be celebrating your 30th year in business?

   Stan Werbin: As far as the store goes, we feel really good!  People like what we are doing, and we've managed to stay in business for three decades.

MMR: How did the company get started?

  SW: I was finishing up graduate school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but wasn't sure where I wanted to go from there.  There was a flourishing acoustic music scene there that I got involved in the early '70s.  It seemed like it would be a good idea to find old instruments (which were at the time quite undervalued as compared to what they are today) and sell them, and perhaps make a living for a while.  I was working on this with a friend who was also just getting out of school. We did this for six to eight months and acquired a bunch of instruments but didn't have away of really selling them.

MMR: What happened next?

   SW: We sat down and realized we were out of money, and had a bunch of instruments we couldn't sell.  We did sell a few, but in general, people don't come to your college-town apartment to buy instruments.  So we started thinking about having our own store.  At the time, there were probably 10 music stores in Ann Arbor and at least two that specialized in exactly what we wanted to do.  We did look at other locations around the country, but the long and short of it is, we ended up opening in Lansing in July of 1972.

MMR: What kind of location did you find?

   SW: By happenstance, we found a location near the college campus.  It was literally a ten-by-twelve store-front in the basement of a commercial building.  It was kind of a mini-mall of alternative businesses, this being the early 70s and all.  Our rent was $60 a month.  Things went pretty well!  We started making a few dollars here and there. Within six months or so, we had expanded out and got bigger and bigger until we were using all of the 5,000 square feet of that basement.  We stayed there for approximately four years, but knew we needed more space.  In 1982, we bought a building three miles down the road in Lansing, which we renovated. It was 13,500 square feet and we moved into it in 1983.  It was an old converted lodge hall - the IOOF Hall.  The Independent Order of Odd Fellows. We found that amusing and felt it appropriate enough!  We stayed in that space for 12 years.  Then the building next door became available for sale, so we bought that and connected the buildings.  That's where we are at today.

MMR: What's the size of your store in Lansing?

   SW: We have about 35,000 square feet.  And we have it filled up and we are busy.

MMR: At this point, are you thinking of further expansion?

   SW: The answer is unclear at this point.  I think we have a great size for our business right now, but if the right location became available, we might consider it.  Right now, we are happy where we are.

MMR: How many employees do you have?

   SW: We have about 95 employees.

MMR: By the way, where did the name "Elderly Instruments' come from?

   SW: It's derived from the fact that we started off only selling old instruments.  Though shortly after, we got into selling new ones as well.  Someone had put an ad in the Ann Arbor News to sell an old Les Paul guitar in 1971 and they called it a "nice, elderly instrument." We had been looking for a name and said, "Aha, we like that!"

MMR: Looking back to 1972 when you first opened for business, could you ever foresee having nearly one hundred employees, 35,000 square feet, and a large catalog operation?

   SW: No, I couldn't imagine it.  It was completely inconceivable to me that we would grow to this size.

MMR: How would you describe the mission of Elderly Instruments?

   SW: I think our mission is to keep on going.  We are always trying to improve the organization from the standpoint of how good it is for both the customers and our employees.  In addition, we are putting more energy into vintage instruments over the last ten years.  We've always had vintage instruments, but didn't always emphasize them as much as we do today. It's 25 to 30 percent of our business, approximately. The most fun part of my job for me is that I work with the vintage gear - it's kind of my first love.  I appraise instruments and we have three other appraisers and we all keep very busy.

MMR: So you must have some fascinating instruments crossing your desk everyday?

   SW: Well, we do.  We just bought a ukulele that was owned and played by a woman named May Singhi Breen, who was a radio star on NBC in the '20s and '30s.  She really brought the ukulele to the masses on some level in that time period.  This ukulele is a Martin 5-K which is the top-of the-line, and it has her name inlaid on the headstock and on the fingerboard it says "Ukulele Lady," as that was her nickname.

MMR: And how much is this particular uke going for?

   SW: Well, it's actually gone already!  I kept it. It is such a cool instrument.  But it probably would have sold in the $7,000 to $10,000 range.  Also, we have on consignment for a customer a Martin OM45 Deluxe from 1930, which was really the fanciest guitar Martin ever made, not counting today's Martin custom shop guitars. There were only 14 of these made. We are asking $85,000.

MMR: Is there a resurgence or renaissance in vintage instruments right now?

   SW: Yes.  Vintage instruments valuations are at an all-time high.  But I think we are also in a golden age of new guitars as well.  It's really amazing the quality of guitars coming out of both the large manufacturers and the smaller ones too.  The really interesting thing in the 30 years that I've watched the industry is that quality has gone from the bottom of the barrel to today's very high quality instruments.

MMR: What do you mean?

   SW: In 1972, Martin Guitars were as bad as they had ever been. Now Martin guitars never got really bad, but they cheapened them at the time and the workmanship went down and quality went down.  They were trying to rush them out as fast as possible.  That period was a real low point for Gibson guitars and Fender too.

MMR: How do you feel these companies are doing today?

   SW: I've seen these three companies go from a low point in the early '70s to what they are doing now, which is just amazing.  The quality of the product they are producing today, given the materials they have to work with, is just astounding.  It's very heartening to see and it feels really good to sell these instruments.

MMR: Overall, guitars are your main focus?

   SW: Our main focus is fretted instruments: guitars primarily, both acoustic and electric, and basses.  In addition, other fretted instruments that we are very strong in are mandolins, banjos and ukuleles, as well as all the mandolin-related instruments such as octave mandolins, bouzoukis, etc.  That's the real focus of the store, and from there we branch out into the support products: accessories, books, videos, CDs and more.  We do carry a lot of amps as well.

MMR: What kind of repair facilities do you offer?

   SW: We have 10 people in our repair shop, who do everything from high-end, complete restorations to basic setups. Every guitar we sell is looked at very closely by the repair shop.  We make sure the neck is straight, the frets are level and properly dressed, and so on.  So we have a very busy repair shop - we have a lot of items going through our repair shop, both new and vintage.

MMR: From scanning your catalog, you have many interesting boutique brands that I rarely see in other stores or catalogs.

   SW: That's true.  There ar certainly other stores that carry these items and brands.  The prominent mail-order catalogs tend to stick with the meat and potatoes-style lines: the Strats and Les Pauls and Martin dreadnoughts.  But we have developed a clientele for unique instruments.  For example, we don't sell a lot of musical saws every year, but we do sell enough to justify having them.  We have a very different emphasis than any of the other mail-order companies.

MMR: You mean, in addition to the Fenders and Martins, offering instruments like bouzoukis and zydeco rub-boards and the like?

   SW: Right.  We emphasize the oddball acoustic instruments.  We certainly have new Strats, Les Pauls and Martins but we also have bones, musical saws, button accordions, resonator ukuleles and a lot more  instruments that you might think that their heyday was over, but there is still enough of a subculture out there who want these instruments to make it worthwhile.

MMR: Do you see a revival in bluegrass instruments going on as well?

   SW: I certainly do.  We sell a lot of traditional bluegrass instruments like dobros, mandolins, flattop guitars, banjos and so on - bluegrass is a big industry these days.  We are currently enjoying very much of a bluegrass revival.

MMR: Overall, what kind of sales figures have you been seeing?

   SW: Well, this year they are steady.  One month we might be up a little bit and the next month down a little bit. There has not been anything dramatic in one direction or the other.  Sales are a little erratic and I think we are being affected somewhat by the economy.  The business has been ebbing and flowing for the last six to eight months.  Our business is overall about as good as last year, and we were not complaining last year, so I figure we have nothing to complain about now. I think the industry is not as bad as people make it out to be.  I have strong hopes that the general economy will turn around and everyone will be just fine.

MMR: How do you design your store to appeal to the customer?

   SW: We keep the walk-in customer in mind by changing products and displays around regularly. We have one person who redesigns things pretty much constantly.  We try to keep things always in motion.

MMR: What's Lansing like as a musical community?

   SW: We have Michigan State University three miles down the road.  It's a very active town with a lot of diversity in terms of the socioeconomic groups that live here and we draw on most of them, I would say.  It's a very good music scene, but never as good as I'd like it to be.  There's an active club scene, several small folk venues, and some great national music festivals.

MMR: Do you feel any impact from the big box stores and from the other mail-order catalogs?

   SW: It's hard to say.  We don't have any superstores in our town.  There are two or three Guitar Centers in Detroit, and there may be a Mars there.  But we perceive ourselves as doing something very different from what they do, even though we share some similar merchandise of course.  Our feeling is that if you have been our customer, than it's not likely you are going to become a loyal Guitar Center customer.  They just do a very different thing than what we do. We try to be  more diverse, perhaps sometimes more so than is good for us.  But as a result, we very much differentiate ourselves from the other players in the marketplace.

MMR: How so?

   SW: Certainly through our customer service and the unique array of merchandise that we have. You can't get a selection like we have of banjos and mandolins at Guitar Center as far as I know. In addition, we have always been very price competitive so they are not a threat to us in that regard. Also, I do actually believe it when Guitar Center says that they expand the  marketplace.  I think they do tend to reach people who otherwise wouldn't walk into their local music store. Anyway, if you are service-oriented and price-competitive, I don't think it's that hard to compete with them. Basically, the strong survive. Again, I've never had to go head-to-head with them, so I'm not certain.

MMR: How are you using your Web site at www.elderly.com?

   SW: We have an in-house Web master who does a great job for us.  The main purpose of our site is to generate business and to keep us in the view of our customers.  We have many out-of-town customers, and our site allows them to visit our site anytime.  The most popular section of our site is our vintage instrument listings, because they are updated daily.  People monitor it for new vintage items every day.  It's not at all uncommon for us to sell something the next morning after we uploaded the new listings the night before.  Sales can happen very quickly.

MMR: Can you discuss your catalog business?

   SW: We have a main catalog and a vintage instrument catalog.  The first catalog came out in 1975 and we've been publishing them pretty much continuously ever since.  We like to be creative with our covers, have fun with them, and offer whimsical items as well.

MMR: What percentage of your sales derive from your mail order operation?

   SW: At this point it breaks down like this: 35 or 40 percent in-store sales and 60 to 65 percent mail-order.  That's been a slowly changing percentage.  When people first started asking me that question, it was exactly the reverse that was about 15 years ago.  But our sales in general are way up from 15 years ago.  What's necessarily true is that the mail-order business always has a greater potential to grow than a local business.

MMR: What's your take on the music retail industry overall?

   SW: I think it's holding up okay. Our experience parallels that of the industry: we are holding our own and I believe the industry is too.

MMR: Looking into the future, what's your prognosis for Elderly Instruments?

   SW: I think we are going to continue doing what we do best.  People used to ask me why don't you open up another store, but I've never wanted to.  I've always said when we can make this one as good as we can make it, then I'll open up another one - but we are still working on that!  I think we can always be a whole lot better.  The fun part about running the business for me,
besides the fact that I'm working with merchandise that I really love, is that you can see change every year that is positive.