Folk of the Wood Acoustic Music Original Interviews: October 29, 2000 with Director Cerro Coso Online

Music Inc. Awards Folk of the Wood the Retail Excellence Award for 2004 (issued in November/December of 2004)

Please Note: All parenthetical items were not in the original published article. This material is only added to clarify further, or reinforce, what was originally intended to be communicated.

Mickey Cochran, owner of Folk of the Wood in Alto, N.M., credits his marketing and promotional savvy to a job at a metal detector company.

(Bounty Hunter Metal Detectors...Mickey and his wife, Shelley, owners of FOTW, worked for Bounty Hunter for approximately 10 years. Shelley was the Marketing Manager for Bounty Hunter; she has brought to the table most all of the marketing skills that have contributed to FOTW's success. Mickey, mostly on the promotional side, worked as the Graphic Designer and Webmaster for the company and produced and assisted with all of its manuals, packaging design, technical content, research & development, instrument control panels, etc.)

"I learned about the manufacturing industry and how it ties into the Web industry," said Cochran. "And when I left the company, I took the cyberspace [route]."

Folk of the Wood's walk-in customers represent only 1-2 percent of the store's business, according to Cochran. The rest comes from the Internet.

(Even the 1-2 percent represents a large influx of business for FOTW. FOTW is located in a ski resort/horce racing area...Ruidoso and Alto, New Mexico has a large tourist base industry that attracts people from a very large concentric circle of outlaying cities.)

"The [Internet] industry is untapped," Cochran said. "You have to take in the new view of the cyber economy."

(Mickey feels that the cyber economy requires a completely different approach than the traditional brick and mortar stores of yesteryear. This approach is more of a reflection of FOTW's philosophies which encompass the 500% Policy.)

The company's Web site, folkofthewood.com, features approximately 5,500 pages and receives an average of 2,000 hits per day. Customers visit the Web site to buy product but also to view slide shows on how to install bridges, prime violin bows or adjust an instrument's intonation.

The DVD is another promotional tool Cochran has taken full advantage of within his business. About six years ago, he began creating video samplers to help musicians with their instruments. The company's Web site alone features more than 1,000 of these samplers on a variety of instrument types and brands.

(The video samplers offered assist those looking to purchase over the internet by offering a window onto the tonal range of the instrument being considered.)

More recently, Cochran introduced the DVD samplers to the public. Folk of the Wood's homepage currently advertises four of these new instructional DVDs. Wisdom of the Wood, an affiliate of Folk of the Wood that produces a series of acoustic instrument lessons in various media formats, is also in the process of converting its catalog to DVD.

(The catalog is pretty well converted as of December 2004...all acoustic instructional videos published by Wisdom of the Wood are now available in both VHS and DVD formats. These videos were all originally recorded by digital camera with 48kHz audio.)

But Cochran's achievements in marketing, promoting and advertising don't just include DVDs and the Internet. The bottom line of his success comes from his customers.

(Along with the dedicated employees of FOTW...there has to be a synergy where one retail operation brings together, in the interest of all, a fellowship from: supplier, working hard to deliver a good value and quality in an acoustic instrument; to employee, representing the supplier with a knowledge base and in the best light possible; to customer, of whom receives the well-deserved service in an instrument that is properly set-up for ease of playability and solid years of performance.)

Cochran says his goal is not to sell (and forget the) instrument (being sold) to a customer but to guarantee that the customer will hold onto a good quality (well set-up) instrument and eventually grow into others. And by promoting good quality to his customers (from the start), both the customer and Folk of the Wood reap the benefits. Rachel Yeomans

Music Inc. December 2004 Vol. 15, No. 11
Subscription Info: 16.50 one year (11 issues)

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