Reprise
A Familiar Name Returns To The Retail Music Scene
by KATHY CASTEEL
photos by L.G. PATTERSON
Frank Hennessy just can't retire.
"I'm not old enough," says the 78-year-old master piano technician.
That's music to the ears of mid-Missouri pianists who have felt a void ever since Hennessy closed his Columbia music shop, Hennessy & Sons, in 2010. A year and a half later, the entrepreneur is back in business; Hennessy Piano Shop celebrated its grand opening in November in its new location next to Hazel Kinder's Lighthouse Theater. The shop sells Hailun pianos exclusively, in addition to Hennessy's renowned tuning and restoration services.
Hennessy is ready to welcome past and future customers.
"When customers walk in the store," he says, "they're going to feel and see and hear pianos."
Chances are, those customers walking through the door have traveled a long way for such a sensory opportunity. Hennessy's expertise and long record in retail sales have built a reputation throughout the Midwest; his previous Columbia store enjoyed a market reach from Chicago to Dallas.
"No one could touch us," he says. "We offered exceptional quality in our products without the high-pressure sales tactics. I always say, 'If the customers found the front door once, they'll find it again.' "
And find it they have. The 750-square-foot showroom of the new Hennessy Piano Shop was practically bursting at the seams the weekend before Thanksgiving as more than 100 guests milled around the pianos at the grand opening. Kinder, whose husband Steve custom-built the piano shop, scheduled special events at her music theater next door to coordinate with the opening. Hennessy chatted up the curious as he extolled the virtues of Hailun pianos.
"All selling is," he says, "is a conversation."
It's been a long conversation for Hennessy. He grew up in Springfield, Ohio, nurturing twin passions of golf and music. After graduation from high school, he hired on as the instrumental music teacher at his alma mater, and at age 18 became the band director the next year. A brief stint in the U.S. Air Force in 1953 — long enough to attend the Air Force School of Music — ended after 10 months when he was discharged because he stutters.
He smiles at the memory of his Air Force aptitude test. "The tester told me, 'Son, you'll never have to do anything mechanical in your life.' " The laughter comes quickly from this master technician who has tuned or restored nearly every piano model on the market. "Back then, I didn't know the difference between a screwdriver and a chisel," he says.
Hennessy turned his attention to higher education, enrolling at the University of Dayton and majoring in music education. Three semesters into his college career, his old nemesis raised its ugly head again.
"They called me in and told me the state of Ohio would never give me a teaching certificate because of my stutter," he recalls. He switched his major to music composition and joined the school's golf team, graduating fifth in a class of 500. He found work at Fitzsimmons Piano & Organ Co. in Dayton and later became a piano technician for the university. A surprising job offer from Dayton's Hauer Music Co., one of the largest music stores in the country, came in 1967. Ten years earlier, Hennessy had applied for a job teaching the saxophone at Hauer, once again losing out with his stutter.
"When Jerry Hauer asked me to head up his store's piano sales department, I told him, 'I can spell salesman — that's all I know about sales. And I still stutter.' " Undeterred, Hauer had a ready comeback: "I can hire all the smooth talkers I want — the problem is when they open their mouths, they don't know what they're talking about."
Hennessy did know his subject. "When I went into retail, I knew zero about sales, but I knew the music end," he says. He learned the sales business by listening to tapes. By 1971, Hauer had become one of the largest Yamaha piano dealers in the country. The next year, Hennessy moved to St. Louis, hired to teach the sales staff how to talk to customers about Yamaha pianos at Hamilton Music's five stores. Sales improved 610 percent in six months, he says. After three years, the entrepreneur bug bit. He moved to Columbia and opened his own business, Crossroads West Music Center, in the strip mall at West Broadway and Stadium Boulevard.
Why CoMo?
"I did my homework," he says with a satisfied smile. "In 1973, Columbia was one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States."
The store's location then moved several times between Biscayne Mall and the Broadway Shopping Center. A family business that included wife Diane and sons Kevin and Sean, it eventually was renamed Hennessy & Sons Music; in 1989, the business settled in at Broadway Shopping Center. For the next 21 years there, Hennessy and his 14 employees sold new and used musical instruments — everything but drums — from the 2,250-square-foot facility as the area dealer for Yamaha, Pearl River, Charles Walter, Baldwin, Beckstein and Hailun. He tuned instruments, and reconditioned and restored pianos; his most complex restoration was an 1865 Steinway grand. Six instructors offered lessons in piano, keyboard, guitar and bass in the five teaching rooms. All but one of the pianos at the University of Missouri came from his store; he also served as concert technician for Jesse Auditorium for five years.
Hennessy's sales philosophy focused on the customer experience.
"He was always telling us to be nice — make the customer happy," says former employee Andrew Weir, director of operations at Columbia Academy of Music. "If you make the customer happy, they will come back."
Hennessy saw no need for high-pressure sales tactics. "We never squeezed," he says. "It's stupid to squeeze."
He was confident in his products and the demand they generated. "There's no such thing as a customer 'just looking,' " he says. "There's a hair of interest somewhere."
Hennessy arranged a seating area at the entry to the store with comfortable tables and chairs where customers could sit and take a load off.
"My concept was to give people time to sit down, relax and talk because when someone opened the door, they could carry on a good conversation," he says. The casual, low-key approach was not always popular with manufacturers, but, Hennessy notes, "They could not argue with sales."
His management style was similarly low-key.
"He was one of the nicest people to work with," Weir says. "He was the boss because he was the owner, but it was never like that with him."
As a businessman, "Frank was, above all, fair," says former office manager Sharyn Kropp, who is helping Hennessy set up his new enterprise. "He told us all, many times, to treat every customer with respect, to never judge a customer by appearances. He didn't want a customer to find out from a friend or neighbor that they had paid less for the same instrument, so he put a 'fair price' card on every instrument in the first place, and didn't bargain. He knew that many of his customers came from bargaining cultures, so he would bring up his concept of a fair price, and the customers would understand that at Hennessy & Sons Music, 'fair' was the way to operate; they didn't need to bargain."
Wes Wingate calls him "the perfect manager."
"Frank was the boss, but he very rarely interfered with our lessons," says the former Hennessy instructor who now owns Columbia Academy of Music and The Bridge. "I have never met — much less worked with — anyone who is more knowledgeable about pianos than Frank Hennessy. And I don't suspect I ever will."
Weir resorts to pop culture superlatives to describe his former boss's technical skills. "Frank is the Indiana Jones of piano restoration. He made it seem like they should be in a museum because he cared so much about them."
Were it not for the 2008 recession and contraction in the financial industry, Hennessy & Sons Music might still be in business at 1729 W. Broadway. But by 2009, inventory financing had all but dried up and Hennessy made the unhappy decision to close the store that June. An auction did not go as well as expected, and he ended up at Hazel Kinder's Lighthouse Theater, seeking a place to store tools and equipment.
"Hazel told me her husband wanted to talk to me. 'Not this week,' I said. What I didn't know was Steve Kinder is a civil engineer. When we finally got together a few weeks later, he made his pitch to build a new shop for me on the Lighthouse property. And that's why I'm here," he adds with a sweep of his arm to the front window. "The interstate … location, location, location!"
Kinder was only too happy to work with the man she calls "Mr. Piano." Hennessy sold her a piano when she opened her theater in 2005. "I visited his store often, playing his pianos because they have a certain sound that other pianos don't have," she says. "He's such a kind and generous man. He has donated a great deal to Columbia — not only pianos but his talents as well. I saw him one day and he looked so sad I could hardly stand it. He'd been searching for a new business place in Columbia, but just couldn't find what he was looking for and it sounded like he was giving up on his dream."
Hennessy agreed to let Steve Kinder custom-build a shop that he would rent from the Kinders. Construction began in October 2010 and finished the next April.
"Working with Frank was easy," says Steve Kinder. "He had special needs for lots of open space, climate controls for the pianos, and some special lighting to show off the pianos, plus a work and storage area. He'd come out every once in a while and say 'I like it … I really like it!' "
Hennessy delights in demonstrating the intricacies of the products he sells. "Look at this," he says as the self-closing keyboard cover silently glides shut on a Hailun upright. "That's craftsmanship!" he whispers, eyes a-twinkle.
Hailun was the one piano franchise Hennessy retained when he liquidated his previous inventory. Produced by the only privately owned piano manufacturer in China, it is an instrument of unparalleled quality at an incredibly low price, he says.
Hailun pianos became available in the United States in 2007. That's when Hennessy first spotted one at a trade show and played some chords on it.
"Have you ever tried to keep a straight face when you want to say 'Wow!'?" he asks. "Then I saw the price list and my eyeballs had to get larger."
Labor is inexpensive in China, but Hailun pays its craftsmen a higher wage for their skills and treats them well, Hennessy says. "Every part in the piano is overkill," he says. "All umpteen thousand."
He ordered one piano at that 2007 trade show. When the first one arrived, he took his customary week preparing it and then put it in the showroom one morning. It sold by 5 p.m. "So then I ordered two, and kept on selling them," he says. By 2009, sales had pushed Hennessy & Sons to the top as the largest institutional dealer of Hailun pianos in the country. It is the only piano he sells at Hennessy Piano Shop.
And like his singular franchise list, Hennessy is the sole principal of this one-man family business. His sons have gone on to successful music careers of their own and his former wife is now a church music director in Florida. The solo nature of this enterprise does not faze him.
"I've done this before," he says. "I don't think I've forgotten how."
[info box]
Hennessy Piano Shop
3077 Lighthouse Lane
(Interstate 70 East, Exit 137)
573-356-7556
Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays & Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays
Tuning, repair and restoration service available Monday through Wednesday