West Music finds ‘the play’ in the music business

CORALVILLE — A music store that started 80 years ago in a small shop in Iowa City has become an international supplier of musical instruments and music supplies.

For Ryan West, president and CEO of West Music, the Coralville-based business’ slogan extends from Iowa into the world.

“When we say we're in the music business, we always say we're in the relationship business,” Ryan West said. “That's a mantra that we continue to have all over our stores because when we talk about that tagline, ‘Play now. Play for life,’ it's a lifelong relationship.”

The family-owned business now has 238 employees in seven states. In the past 10 years, its annual product sales have more than doubled, growing from $30 million to $61 million, West said.

The company sells and repairs musical instruments, offers musical supplies, has a robust import/export business, provides music lessons and music therapy and publishes a huge catalog for music educators.

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The goal of all those operations, West said, is to make music accessible to all musicians, including those out of practice.

Which leads to one of West’s favorite conversational lines: “A lot of people play golf, and they play tennis and I say, ‘Well, are you going to be in the PGA Tour or are you going to be playing professionally?’ And they say, ‘No,’ and I say, ‘Well, that's the same thing for music. You do it because it's fun.’ ”

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Business structure

West Music has regional and national operations. Regional operations account for 20 percent of the company’s revenues, with national representing the remainder.

The regional business includes the West Music retail stores in Iowa — in Coralville, Cedar Rapids/Marion, Cedar Falls and Davenport. The company also has a service center in Dubuque, offers piano services in Des Moines and has kiosk locations in Decorah, Oelwein and Ottumwa.

The company also works with more than 350 school district music departments.

“We have our school services representatives — or our ‘road reps,’ as we call them — and they are on the road, four days a week, dropping off repairs, dropping off books, rentals, accessories and picking up repairs and bringing the music store to the town, whether it's Tipton, or Burlington, or Muscatine, or Bettendorf, or Tama, you name it,” West said.

The national division, which represents 80 percent of the company’s revenues, includes Percussion Source, Flute Authority, Westco and a music education catalog for music educators.

“If we talk about what West Music is to someone that's in our retail store area, it's the place where maybe we got our first band instrument, or where I got my first guitar,” West said. “If I talk to a customer in California, that'll be the place where I got my recorders or my general classroom supplies.”

In 1977, West Music became the exclusive distributor of Miyazawa flutes from Japan in the United States. That import business has since grown to include instruments made in India, Taiwan, China, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Chile, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Flute Authority distributes flutes to retailers and flute specialty shops throughout North and South America. The flutes range from the intermediate to artist level, with flutes for high school and college musicians and even 24-karat gold flutes for aficionados.

The company also sells instruments and materials to international schools and individuals around the world, West said.

West Music’s most popular instrument, though, is the recorder, the simple instrument on which beginners learn scales and fingering. They sell more than 1 million of them each year.

Westco, West Music’s wholesale distributor, grew out of the realization that “while we were doing a really admirable job and a good job of serving specialty music educators, there's a whole host of students and schools that didn't have that available to them,” West said.

So schools without specialty music programs can find music supplies in a catalog that’s “an inch-and-a-half thick that has everything from soap dispensers to lockers to a couple of pages for music,” he said.

“They oftentimes will say to the language arts teacher or somebody else, say, ‘Hey, you're teaching music, pick up the kit, you're going to teach them.’ ”

In addition, West Music has offered music therapy for more than 30 years and has 11 music therapists working in developmental homes and with Iowa’s Area Education Agencies.

Family business

West, 44, grew up working summers around the business his grandfather, Pearl West, founded in 1941 and his father, Stephen West, took over in 1980.

After Ryan West graduated from Iowa City West High School in 1998, he attended New York University, graduating with a degree fin theater, acting and directing. He remained on the East Coast performing, studying, teaching and working on independent graphic design and digital media while also working remotely, as a company executive, on West Music’s e-commerce and websites.

In 2007, West attended Music China, a trade fair in Shanghai, China, with his father, Stephen, then president of West Music, and began thinking “someday, like a decade from now, maybe I'll come back and do this thing.”

“While I was in China, and getting a chance to really spend some time with my dad, I had the opportunity to see how the company had grown and evolved to be much more than what I had kind of understood it to be or observed in my youth,” West said.

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Later that year, he became the company’s senior vice president.

“I think that living in New York was a phenomenal experience … but I also recognize what I wanted for my life and what I wanted for family and other things,” West said. “I recognized that this was a beautiful opportunity to not only continue this tradition but also be part of a wonderful community that really valued and appreciated it along the way.”

West worked under Robin Walenta, who is not a family member but someone West considers to be another West generation. Walenta was the company’s president from 2008 to 2020 — between Stephen and Ryan West’s tenure — and remains the company’s CEO emeritus.

“I recognize that it was a big gift and responsibility to step into this role, to be part of this organization and to be given that responsibility,” West said. “But I also recognize I wouldn't be able to do it without the training and the teaching of Robin and all the other associates who were patient with me.”

Music memories

One part of the company’s business holds a special place in West’s heart: the day company reps go to schools and give students the opportunity to try out different instruments before settling on one they’d like to learn.

“I talk with friends, I talk with parents, and everyone remembers the day they got to go play all the instruments, and I think that's pretty amazing,” West said.

“I mean, we have so many days in our educational experience. But the fact that we all remember that day — or many of us remember that day — says something in terms of the role that we can play.”

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