Taylor Harnois and Jamie Major, seller engagement manager at Reverb, talk about using the platform at reverb.com to help improve online sales.
They talk about how the Reverb platform can help sellers of any size bring more visibility to their music shop and make more sales.
Jamie Major is a seller engagement manager at Reverb. He helps sellers get set up selling and improve the success of their listings on the reverb platform.
Website: https://reverb.com/
[00:00:00] Taylor Harnois: Hello, welcome to another edition of the Music Shop podcast. My name is Taylor Harnois. I’m the general manager for Music Shop 360. We are very excited today. We’ve got a very special guest with us. We’ve been talking a lot about Reverb and what Reverb can do for stores and so we are very excited today to have Jamie Major on with us today from Reverb and he’s a Seller Engagement Manager there, and has a lot of history with Reverb and has a lot to share with us today.
And so I’m really excited to get into it. Welcome Jamie. I appreciate your time and for hopping aboard.
[00:00:55] Jamie Major: Thanks so much, man. I’m happy to be here.
[00:00:57] Taylor: Yeah, we’re super excited. You know, we, at Music Shop 360, we work with a lot of music instrument retailers throughout the country, as you know, and boy the Reverb integration and using Reverb is a huge difference maker for a lot of stores. We always tell stores that if you’re not using Reverb, you’re leaving a lot of opportunity on the table, and you need to get going with it right away. So, yeah, we’re very excited to have you here today. Again, thank you for taking a few minutes.
All right. So Jamie, why don’t you take us a little bit through kind of the history, the background of Reverb, you know, what problems were you trying to solve and really kind of what’s the overarching mission of Reverb? What is it you’re trying to accomplish?
[00:01:38] Jamie: For sure. So, as you know, there are a ton of places to buy music gear online, but Reverb was created by musicians for musicians. So we don’t just sell the gear, but we also have a ton of product knowledge. We play the gear, we know how it’s made, and we know how it works.
Reverb set out to create that marketplace. Designed for musicians, but we’ve grown into an e-commerce platform of over 2 million pieces of gear utilized by over 2 million music makers. We have a variety of gear from new, used, vintage. We also work with some artists for artists shops, and we also have some brand exclusives with Reverb.
We also just released a print version of our price guide, which is really great. It shows all the past purchase history, and it helps you confidently purchase gear at a trustworthy and affordable price.
[00:02:32] Taylor: Wow. Yeah, that’s a big deal for a lot of folks, especially, you know, maybe beginner players too who, maybe don’t have a real kind of working knowledge of what they should be paying for gear. I remember just a personal experience here, going into a guitar store. When I was like 16, my dad took me there and I was trying to buy a bass guitar and I had no idea how much anything was and in hindsight, looking back, boy, I paid a lot for that first base that I bought, probably a lot more than I should have. So, yeah. What a fantastic tool for buyers and sellers to be able to have that guide.
One of the other things I wanted to kind of rewind on is you mentioned, you know, ” built by musicians, for musicians” and that, boy that really rings true As we kind of, have gotten to known Reverb, you know, working with you guys for a number of years, it’s always been kind of startling to me the amount of video content that you guys are putting out.
And it’s not just fluff content, it’s product demos. It’s actual content that’s gonna help buyers. And so, you know, you mentioned, you know, “made by Musicians for Musicians,” boy, that couldn’t be more true than what we see with Reverb.
Can you talk a little bit about maybe kind of your commitment to that, educating buyers and that sort of thing?
[00:03:39] Jamie: Yeah, so we always want to make sure that our buyers are informed. It also helps with some exploration as well. But the main thing is our customer base is so diverse. We try to create content that helps musicians of every skill level: anyone who is just starting out, as well as professional musicians and it’s their full-time job, right?
We try not to create anything too pretentious or too snobby. We really just are focused on making the world more musical. But by creating that educational content, we feel it encourages buyers to, like I said, explore a little bit, maybe try something that they wouldn’t try before, and again, just instill a lot of confidence when they’re making a purchase.
[00:04:19] Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, that’s critical. Again as somebody who’s used Reverb as well as you know, somebody who got started at a young age, I can tell you that having that education component is a big deal for a lot of folks. Now you kind of got into this a little bit, but just curious if you can maybe give us a little bit more detail.
You know, what is the kind of the different personas of your sellers? Is it like, mostly hobbyists or advanced players like, independent stores, you know, just big retail chains? Who is it that’s selling on Reverb? And then to the same kind of question for who are your buyers, you know, what does the buying persona look like?
[00:04:53] Jamie: Yeah, so like I mentioned, we have a really big mix of buyers and sellers. Currently there are over 200,000 shops on the site. Now, again, this can be anyone, this can be someone like you or I trying to just sell a pedal or an old guitar that we have laying around. This also includes mom and pop shops, other large retail brands as well.
I’d have to check on exactly what the mix is, but personally, I help manage shops and I work with shop sizes that have anywhere from a hundred live listings to 200,000 live listings. So yeah. Wow. Pretty massive spread. Same thing goes for the buyers, though. Huge mix. Again, like I said, we have a lot of introductory players as well as professional musicians.
Our gear is really diverse and our customer base matches that. Yeah, we won’t necessarily name any names, but for the, but we do have, you know, Grammy award-winning artists looking for their next instrument on the platform right now.
[00:05:55] Taylor: Wow. Wow. That’s powerful. That’s awesome. One of the things I liked, what you had mentioned is, you know, the size of the stores totally varies, right?
So one of the things I know we’ve run into on our end is, you know, we’ll talk to a store who’s just getting started. We’ll ask ’em about what their plan is to utilize Reverb and you know, some of ’em said, “well, aren’t we too small for that?” And we’re always like, “no, just the opposite. This is where you need to get started because this is gonna be a really fantastic opportunity for you.” So just to kind of clear the air on that no stores, too small to be utilized in the Reverb platform.
[00:06:30] Jamie: No, absolutely not. We really encourage people to sell any old gear that they have laying around, right? I mean, there’s no point in limiting yourself to a single sales channel, so you might as well go on Reverb as well.
[00:06:44] Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. And then one other question about the buyers and sellers. So one of the things I was just interested in is do you see much by way of business to business? For example, let’s say that there’s a mom and pop shop down the road who has a customer walk in and says, Hey, we’re looking to buy XYZ product. We can’t find it anywhere. How often do you see or maybe, you know, maybe this is hard data to glean, but do you ever see one store going and essentially order product from another store on Reverb? Does that happen?
[00:07:15] Jamie: I would have to check on that. I don’t know if I have exact confirmation on that. What I can say is we have just a massive mix of people who are buying and selling gear online. So that could be some businesses purchasing gear on Reverb and yeah, maybe selling it. But yeah, I’d have to double check on that for sure.
[00:07:34] Taylor: Yeah. So one of the other things I wanted to ask about is, just wanna see if you had any, like, success stories that you could share of users who, you know, start utilizing Reverb and that sort of thing and maybe some opportunities that they’ve had to be successful on the platform.
[00:07:50] Jamie: Sure. So the first thing that I always recommend that a lot of my sellers take a look at is making sure that their used gear is priced in line with everybody else on the marketplace. After all, there is going to be some internal competition that’s built in when you are on an online marketplace.
One of my shops grew their sales by about 50% just by utilizing some of our price guide. Again, it’s really important to make sure that you’re looking at what things have been sold for versus what things are being listed at. Our price guide is great to help out with that, but that’s one thing that can really make a really big difference, especially if you’re selling used gear.
[00:08:29] Taylor: Yeah. From like a used gear standpoint, or just gear in general, what types of products generally tend to fare well on the platform? Is it new stuff? Is it vintage stuff?
You know, that sort of thing. Rare stuff, you know, what does best typically on Reverb.
[00:08:46] Jamie: So we’ve seen some shifts as of late, but each year we do release a list that shows our best selling gear on Reverb. We strive Oh, really? To be transparent. Yeah. We strive to be transparent with our seller and our buyer base, so we wanna make sure you guys know what’s selling well and what prices they’re being sold at.
We also even break this down on a basis of new gear versus used gear.
[00:09:11] Taylor: Oh wow.
[00:09:11] Jamie: Yeah. So if we take a look back at like 2022, we sold a lot of Teenage Engineering OP-1s. We also sold a lot of PRS Silver Skies, the John Mayer signature guitar and moving into pro audio, which is one of those categories that has grown a lot. We’ve sold a lot of Walrus Audio DI boxes, that new line of DI boxes that came out with.
[00:09:34] Taylor: Oh, wow. Yeah.
[00:09:35] Jamie: Yeah. So we’ve seen a large growth in synth sales, as well as pro audio.
[00:09:43] Taylor: Yeah. And that, I mean, that sounds pretty reflective of, like general MI trends, right? So I mean, it sounds like you know, the same thing that our stores are seeing in store, that’s probably replicated fairly well on, on the Reverb platform as well as, you know, what’s moving and, where stores are having success and that sort of thing.
One of my favorite features on Reverb, as a buyer, is that I have the ability to go in there and set up alerts on my account for search terms, right? So there is a really great guitar that I’ve been trying to find, but what I’ve done is I’ve set up an alert on my Reverb account so that if that product ever does come up for sale, I’m gonna get alerted right away. So that’s a fantastic resource to really, you know, try to line up buyers with the products that you know, that stores may be selling, or sellers may be selling, which is awesome.
I was curious, you know, as, you have worked with stores and sellers and buyers and that sort of thing, what’s kind of like the typical best practices? Can you give us some kind of general tips or best practices as far as what people want to do? I know you mentioned the pricing is really critical. Things like imaging and customer service. How do those kind of impact how well a store will do or a seller will do on the Reverb platform?
[00:10:55] Jamie: There are a few things that I certainly recommend to a lot of my sellers. As I mentioned, that is my role at this company. That is my day-to-day. So the first thing I always recommend is making sure that people are listing all of their inventory. Kind of talked about this a little bit before, but yeah, again, there’s no point in limiting the sales channels that you’re on. You can’t sell something on Reverb if it’s not listed on Reverb. Yeah, right? Yeah. So making sure that your shops are up to date with the necessary inventory is always the first thing that I recommend.
Second thing I recommend, a little more advanced, is making sure that you take a look at some of our features. I’m not saying you have to adopt features on each bit of inventory that you do have, but what I would say is maybe take a look at some of your aging inventory. Yeah. Maybe take a look at some of your inventory that isn’t moving as well as you want it to move. It’s always worth it to make your listings look a little bit more attractive to the buyer, especially in reference to aging or low demand inventory.
[00:11:57] Taylor: Yeah, maybe going that extra mile and really kind of spruce up the listing you know, setting it apart. Well, you know, one of the, one of the great things about Reverb is there’s so many sellers on there that, you know, there’s a wide variety of opportunities for buyers to go find that gear.
So if there’s a way that you can kind of differentiate your listing from, you know, somebody else who may be offering a similar or the exact same product, I would assume that’s gonna help you as you’re trying to move product on Reverb, which is fantastic.
And you know, the same goes for like, a store’s website. That’s always feedback that we give as well as like, look, if you’re trying to sell this, you need to market it in a way that’s gonna be attractive to people and gonna make them wanna you know, buy from you.
A little bit kind of off topic here, but just wanted to ask this as well. What kind of resources do you have in place for uh, customer service? Both for the seller and the buyer? So, just kind of a hypothetical here, if a transaction goes through the platform, are there assurances or customer service tools in place to help both buyers and sellers ensure that the transaction goes smoothly?
[00:13:01] Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. So we have a chat function on our homepage. That is the first thing I always recommend to both buyers and sellers. If you’re having any issues with anything at all, you can just go to that chat function and someone can help you out right away. So that would of course be step number one.
As far as proactive assurances, we do have a seven day return policy put in place. Oh, cool. If for some, yeah, so for some reason you’re not comfortable with your purchase, you can certainly utilize that seven day return policy.
And then another thing I’d say is, you know, we try to uphold conditions as much as possible. We really work with our sellers to make sure that they’re listing inventory as accurately as possible, and that’s something we’ll always coach to our sellers. Sometimes it’s tough to accept that something is in good condition versus excellent condition, but it makes a big difference in the buyer experience and it’s really important.
[00:13:58] Taylor: Yeah, I’m trying to sell a car right now, and I can tell you it hurt. It hurts me every time when I have to say maybe the exterior isn’t in excellent condition. I really want it to be excellent, but it’s not excellent, so. Mm-hmm. yeah, I can relate to that. That’s funny.
But yeah, really critical you know, especially if. the buyer has this expectation that they’re getting, you know, a certain product and maybe what they’re actually getting is something a little bit different. Yeah. Really important to have that clarity and that integrity right up front.
I just wanna give a little bit of context here as well for people who are utilizing Music Shop 360. One of the really cool things that we’ve seen from Reverb is you know, if an issue comes up from a transaction, we’ve had Reverb contact us as the point of sale, provided kind of the inventory management side, they’ve contacted us directly and said, “Hey, you know, there’s a shop that uses your platform that’s having XYZ issue. Can you help them?” And that’s been phenomenal. And, And to be honest with you, you know, we partner with a lot of different tools. We don’t have anybody who is nearly as responsive as Reverb has been on the customer service piece when they see an issue that’s come up contacting us and, you know, having us get after that issue and take care of it. So I can certainly vouch for the fact that Reverbs got fantastic customer service and really goes to bat for both the sellers and the buyers. So that’s awesome.
[00:16:30] Jamie: That’s great. Yeah, like I said, we’re a bunch of musicians ourselves. We understand how important music gear is to both the seller and the buyer, so we’re totally aligned. We have an amazing customer engagement team here that does a great job. So it’s good to hear that you can confirm they’re doing a good job.
[00:16:48] Taylor: Yeah. It’s been excellent. Yeah, and that again, that’s just us being kind of this third party inventory management. It’s been awesome to kind of see that engagement for both, you know, your customers, but Reverb itself. So that’s cool.
Again, kind of a out of left field question here. Just curious what’s the weirdest, craziest thing you’ve seen sold on Reverb? Maybe a one off thing that you’ve never seen again. Anything crazy you can share with us there?
[00:17:15] Jamie: I will say there’s a couple really weird pedals out there. I mean, there are more than a couple weird pedals out there, but there are certainly two that come to mind. One of which is a fart pedal. That it’s, it makes the sounds that you think it would make.
[00:17:32] Taylor: Awesome.
[00:17:32] Jamie: And uh, have you ever heard of the Korg Miku pedal?
[00:17:36] Taylor: Not the Miku, no, I’ve not.
[00:17:38] Jamie: Okay. So the Korg Miku pedal is… it’s, I think it functions as a synth pedal, but it makes a random, kind of like anime noises with each note that you play. Oh, wow. Those are two releases that we’ve helped out with that, if you haven’t heard of either of those, I would take a look cuz they’re pretty funny.
[00:17:59] Taylor: I may have to pull up the fart pedal with my children around so they can kinda see how that works.
[00:18:04] Jamie: So they would get a kick out of it for sure.
[00:18:06] Taylor: Yeah. But it sounds like I’d probably love it too, so that’s awesome. Yeah I’d imagine you guys maybe have seen some pretty unique stuff, so, you know, some of the vintage and the rare stuff, I think, boy you talk about a time, I don’t know how your employees get any work done. Well, I think I would spend all day just on the site perusing and stuff and say that I was working. So kudos to you guys for actually getting work done, so That’s awesome.
[00:18:26] Jamie: That was an adjustment for me when I first started, because before I started working here I bought off of Reverb all of the time and yeah, when I started working here, I was like, well, this is great. If I’m just scrolling through, if someone walks by, I’m doing my job.
[00:18:39] Taylor: You’re working. That’s absolutely correct. That’s awesome.
Just wanna shift gears a little bit. and it seems like this has been kind of a recurring question on a lot of the podcasts that we’ve done with various guests.
You know, we’re just kind of emerging or we’ve been emerging from Covid for. You know, it seems like a couple years now, things seem like they’re starting to get back to normal, you know, NAMM is going back to a January show, which is cool. You know, we’re seeing a lot of in-store traffic kind of that spike with online, we’re seeing a lot of people going back to stores. So, you know, it kind of feels like things are getting back to normal, but it seems like there are still some kind of residual effects from Covid. How did Reverb navigate Covid? I mean, I would assume that it probably experienced a spike like a lot of online transactions did. But I guess I’ll ask how, how did Covid impact what you guys did over at Reverb?
[00:19:34] Jamie: Sure. I mean, COVID was devastating for a lot of businesses. It completely changed the way that almost everybody functions. Yeah. But I would say the biggest change that we saw was something we alluded to a little bit before, but a bit of a change in demand for different categories. So again, this means a lot more people buying synths because they… Synths are a bit of an intimidating product. So yeah, I think because people had a bit more time at home, they were able to test those out a little bit more and same with pro audio.
[00:20:06] Taylor: That’s interesting, huh?
[00:20:07] Jamie: Yeah, and same with pro audio. People wanted to start either out of necessity. Or out of interest, people started recording a lot more at home. Yeah. So like I mentioned, the Walrus Audio DI box, microphones, that type of thing, we saw a big boost in pro audio.
So that being said, it was still big guitar years over the past, you know, three years or so. We saw, according to the music trades, there was about 30% higher than the 10 year average in guitars. And one guitar manufacturer we work with actually said that it’s pretty much the biggest sales bump they’ve seen since the Beatles came on the scene. So, yeah. Yeah. So it mostly came down to shifting into different categories, but people were picking up guitars too.
[00:20:57] Taylor: Yeah. You know, that’s been one of the cool things that, one of the good byproducts I think of Covid was I think you saw a lot of people who had always thought, Hey, I should pick up the guitar, or maybe I should start drumming, or, you know, whatever the instrument may be. You know, I’ve always thought about doing it. Well, I’m home from work. I’m working from home. Now I’ve got, You know, the resources in place to be able to try out some of this stuff. A lot of new players were introduced to the industry, which I think is fantastic.
And then the other really cool byproduct is that you know, for better or worse, COVID really forced people to adapt to selling and buying online, right. You know, the trend line was already there. It was already kind of pushing in that direction. But you know, you had no other choice. And so I think it has really for a lot of store owners, a lot of sellers of gear, and a lot of buyers of gear, really, kind of forced their hand and made ’em get comfortable with going online.
So that’s one of the, you know, things that always surprises me is, again, we talk to a lot of stores, very few and far between, but it does happen. We’ll have you know, stores will say to us, well, what’s, what is Reverb? We haven’t heard of that. I’m always blown away that somebody hasn’t heard of Reverb.
But you know, being able to introduce this tool to a new seller and being able to watch them adapt it and incorporate it into their business practices and then be really successful with it has been really rewarding for us, as you know, again, you know, a software provider, but being able to see actual stores become really successful because of what they’ve been able to do on Reverb and online has been phenomenal. So I think COVID kind of pushed people in that direction, which I think was a good thing.
One of the other challenges is, you know, there’s been a lot of supply chain issues that have kind of enveloped the industry that, again, I think we’re kind of starting to pull out of those. But, Do you feel like you guys saw any challenges there, supply chain issues, ramifications, that sort of thing from those types of issues on Reverb?
[00:22:50] Jamie: So as a third party, obviously the supply chain issues come from the dealers that we work with, right? And supply chain heavily impacted those businesses. Yeah. Luckily we do sell new and used gear, so even though new gear couldn’t necessarily get out, we had a lot of used inventory on hand. Yeah. So we were very fortunate in that instance. Like you mentioned, things are normalizing and starting to regulate a little bit. So new product releases are becoming a bit more regular and so that’s really exciting. But yeah, definitely the main issue with supply chain was getting a lot more new products out.
[00:23:29] Taylor: Yeah. That’s great. Thanks for speaking to that on the used gear piece. And you’ve mentioned actually a multiple times in our podcast here, but you know, how cool is it that you can go, you can grab, you know, something that hasn’t moved you know, your inventory turn on, it’s not great, it’s been sitting on your shelves for a long time, or you’re an individual seller and you know, maybe you inherit something from grandma or grandpa you’ve got a really phenomenal sales channel now that you can just go get that stuff posted and get it moved, which is great.
I did also wanna ask, there’s, you know, we’ve got a lot of economic headwinds that we’re dealing with right now. How about any impact from inflation? You know, buying capacity, that sort of thing. Any impacts there?
[00:24:11] Jamie: Again, you know, times are tough. They were tough with covid and we’re still, you know, inflation is an issue. I guess one of the benefits of having so much used gear is that buyers are able to take advantage of those great deals and, get really great gear for their money. We’re still seeing strong demand signals from buyers across Reverb.
[00:24:37] Taylor: how does that manifest itself, like those strong buying signals? Is it just the continued movement in the marketplace or what’s the byproduct there? What do you see in there?
[00:24:46] Jamie: Yeah, so I think it’s the continued performance of the marketplace. Also, things are starting to regulate and there was a bit of a gap in new product releases coming out. So again, now that those are starting to regulate, those are still performing. Okay. So… if that makes sense.
[00:25:03] Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s really been kind of a crazy handful of years here and again, it’s just one more opportunity for people to move product and people to find product. So, that’s great.
We’re about running out of time, so just wanna wrap it up by asking you know, what are you most excited about for the MI space or industry in general and then marketplace sells more specifically, like what, how’s he most excited about Reverb and kind of what’s going on in the industry?
[00:25:30] Jamie: Yeah, so Reverb actually just celebrated our 10 year anniversary, which is really exciting.
[00:25:35] Taylor: Congrats.
[00:25:36] Jamie: So in the present, we kind of are reflecting on the past a little bit. It’s been really fun to see Reverb grow. We know that there’s more places we can take the marketplace, but as far as the music industry, I think it’s cool that some musical and sonic lines are being blurred, right? You know, guitar players used to really stick and be guitar players and keys used to just play keys, right? With the advances in technology. There really are just kind of endless sonic possibilities and that’s really exciting. Yeah. I also think it’s really cool that in this growth that we’ve seen in the pro audio space, due to, you know, covid kind of forcing people’s hand, in some instances, people can just put out so much more music now. Yeah. The bedroom recording, so to speak, has really grown and people are getting good at making music out of their homes. So yeah, I think now that we can get more voices in the space and new songs in the space it’s really exciting.
[00:26:40] Taylor: Yeah. A lot of untapped potential out there for, you know, a lot of creativity.
[00:26:44] Jamie: Totally.
[00:26:44] Taylor: To kind of be released. Yeah. That is, yeah, you’re right. I think that is an exciting thing and you know, there’s some real world application to that too. I mean, the more players we have in the space, the more creative minds we have in the space, everything gets better, right? Everybody’s selling more, everybody’s buying more products, get cooler, more innovative. It’s just a really awesome kind of cycle that you see when you know more people are able to get involved in it. And, you know, Reverb’s obviously doing a great job of facilitating a lot of that growth.
Last thing and then we’ll wrap up here. How does somebody get started either on the buying side or the selling side? Like, do they need to reach out to someone? Do they need to contact somebody like you as a seller engagement manager? They just go online. How does somebody get started with Reverb?
[00:27:26] Jamie: From the buying side, you can simply go to the Reverb homepage. It’s pretty easy to set up an account. You pretty much just have to provide your email address and then at that point you can search around or as I would pretend to work while you’re searching around and looking on the website.
From the seller standpoint, if you do wanna get started and try to start selling some gear, there is a sell your gear button. That’s at the top banner of the homepage. It’s really easy to find. It walks you through step by step. It even helps you fill out certain categories and certain aspects of the instrument you’re trying to sell that maybe you wouldn’t know. So it’s a very helpful tool as well. Again, If you have any questions whatsoever, there is that chat function on the bottom right corner of the website that you can use if you have any questions. And there’s a pretty robust help center too, for any additional questions you have.
[00:28:18] Taylor: Fantastic. And then, yeah, the other, the only other thing I’d add to that is, boy, make sure you go check out the product demos and you know, search for your gear on. On Reverb and take a look at the work that they’ve already put in to help you be successful in selling and obviously buying that gear as well, so.
Well, that’s awesome. Uh, Jamie, we really appreciate you hopping in today. Your preparation and spending a few minutes with us. And look forward to working with you guys in the future. And, um, Again, thanks for your time.
[00:28:43] Jamie: Happy to be here. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.
[00:28:45] Taylor: Yeah, for sure. Thanks.