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~ Intershop ~

THE

SOUND

OF MUSIC

Text: Jeroen Leenders, Nico Hoeijmans // Photos: iStock

Michael Sauer is the owner of Music Store, one of the world’s largest businesses for musical
instruments and equipment. Based in Cologne, Germany, it has a large brick-and-mortar
store of 5500m² where you can look at, test and buy all kinds of instruments, including
guitars, drums, pianos or triangles. Their storage warehouse of 15000m² covers over 14,000
storage locations. For almost fifty years now, Sauer has worked on building the business,
both domestic and cross-border. We talk to him about what it is like to be one of the largest

specialised music instrument sellers in the world

usic Store was founded in 1972. What did really set ourselves apart from our competitors with the
you want to achieve with the company at creation of a 500-page catalogue, containing almost every
Mthat time? item we had. We heavily invested and expanded our mail-
order business, which achieved beneficial results.’
‘We aimed to build up a chain of music stores around
Germany. In the very beginning, we had to work very hard What were the biggest challenges you faced?
to make money, but we managed to be successful. It was ‘Beside the fire, a very big challenge for us was setting up
actually after a fire that destroyed half of our company that our automatic warehouse. Without this challenge, we would
we really created a success story of our own. As a result likely be 50% bigger today. It has been a serious obstacle for
of the fire, we had to sell large quantities of fire-damaged us as a business for three years. Right now, it is running but
items. Of course, these couldn’t be charged at full price. I do not think I would do it again if I could to make that
However, the discounted price really attracted a lot of choice again now.’
people. It went so well that we continued to buy special
items and sell them as cheaply as possible. Later on, we

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