Gary Cooper Interviews

I've always had a lot of time and admiration for Rotosound. I knew the late James How, the company's founder, and have been very impressed with the way his sons, Jason and Martin, have carried the business on so well. Despite having interviewed both Jason and Martin several times in the past, this was the first time I had been to the company's factory since it moved to Sevenoaks, Kent. It was also the first time I had seen a computerised string-winding machine in operation. It's pretty impressive as it completes a heavyweight bass guitar string in the blink of an eye! The following interview appeared in the September issue of Music Trade News.

On the face of it, leafy Sevenoaks seems an unlikely place for an Area 51; the top-secret US location where - or so the X-Files brigade would have us believe - alien spacecraft are reverse-engineered. All the same, Sevenoaks definitely has its secrets - among which is a small workshop where Rotosound Chairman, Jason How, indulges one of his great passions (the other one being tending to his beloved vintage Saabs). It's here that he sheds any of the traditional trappings of a company chairman, rolls-up his sleeves and does what he enjoys most - working as a design engineer, cutting metal and actually making things: in his case, the latest generation of computer-controlled string making machines, which are a key part of Rotosound's future.

How is a little diffident about his new babies. He invited MTN down to Kent specifically to see them and was clearly as proud as any new father as he showed-off his new creations. Superficially, they might look much like any other string-making machines, but when you watch while a brand new employee, who has had the sum total of 48 hours production experience, effortlessly produces one of the most difficult bass guitar strings to craft, you begin to get some idea of what Jason How has achieved.

But he doesn't wants to claim too much, he protests - though you get the sense that he is somewhat torn. On the one hand he's loath to alert his competitors to what he is doing and he certainly isn't the type to claim he reinvented the wheel. On the other, he is, clearly, as pleased as Punch.

But for all Jason How is at his most comfortable pursuing his love of engineering (a discipline in which he formally trained, long before he joined the family business, in 1990), he is also a smart businessman and, aided by elder brother, Martin, has steered the Rotosound brand out of the trouble it was in during the early 1990s, to a position today, when it is stronger than it has been at any time since the 1960s, when Jason and Martin's father, James, built the company into Britain's premier string maker. And the company remains very much a down to earth family affair, with Jason's wife, Kathy, managing production on the shop floor.

An example of How's old fashioned business canniness is the 'two for one' offer, at the British Music Fair. It's not slick marketing - indeed it's more market trader - but it goes down a treat and retailers love it. Had it worked as well at this year's show?

'We had a great show! We're very strict and we only do the deal for the two days of the show, which means, yes, we suffer a bit before the show when dealers hold back, but it turned out very successfully this year. You can always do with more people at the BMF, but from our point of view it was a success - we saw a lot of our key dealers - though, it was only about ten per cent of our total. Then again - that's nice - that's almost perfect for us. After all, when the reps leave the show that means they have about 90 per cent of our dealers still to go and see.'

Success at the BMF has been part of a rising curve for Rotosound. Jason How estimates that business in total as been growing at around 10 per cent every year for the past seven or eight years. Not that conditions have been easy. Competition in the string market is notoriously fierce and How had to do a lot of pruning when he took over as Chairman, in 1996.

' We're very much focused on providing a small, concentrated range of strings,' he says. 'People get used to buying a certain product and if you start complicating the issue by producing different types of products in the same category, well it's a small step from saying "I'll try a new Rotosound set of these", to trying another brand altogether.'

Doesn't that leave Rotosound open to attack from the "Bight! Shiney! New!" school of marketing? 'Well, I suppose so. But I still think we need to keep the brand focused and we do discuss this with the reps to get feedback. The consensus is that if you bring out too much that's new, you simply end-up taking sales away from something you've already got.'

So what does a Rotosound dealer have to look forward to, if not a plethora of new strings?

'Well, our new machinery gives us both expanded production and string after string after string - all perfectly consistent, which means even better product quality. So, having said we want to keep the range focused, we might diversify our range into different areas. I don't want to say too much at this stage, but there are instruments out there that we don't cater for and we might start looking at that, because it does seem to be a growing market'.

The time was when a customer in search of Rotosound's electric or acoustic guitar strings might have been in for a bit of frustration. For a variety of reasons, it wasn't uncommon for UK retailers to sell only the bass products. In recent years that has certainly changed, as How confirms. 'It is a lot more balanced now, between guitar, bass and acoustic strings - though you still have the die-hards. But I tend to think that retailers who look at it that way perhaps haven't tried our guitar strings in the past few years There have been a lot of changes.'

Not least of these has been a fantastic run of endorsement successes with artists including Kasabian, The Zutons, The Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand - about as hot as it gets.

'I have to say we've been lucky there, admits Jason How. 'A lot of those bands have approached us, rather than vice versa.'

'It's a lot to do with age. A guy that's in his 40s and has been using a certain type of string, isn't going to change. So our interest is to influence the young guys, because if their first set is a set of Rotosounds, I think we will keep them - and a lot of our buyers are those younger people.'

The decision to reduce the company's 'heritage' marketing - the pictures of James How alongside earlier Rotosound endorsees like the Who, Jimi Hendrix et al might have seemed controversial at the time, but it has paid off, not only in the UK, where Rotosound is seen as a cool brand for younger players, but also overseas, with exports up a whopping 23 per cent this year.

With the rest of MI manufacturing reeling from the onslaught of Chinese competition, Rotosound stands almost alone in the UK. Not only, says Jason How, doesn't it import Chinese products - it simply doesn't need to. 'I can make a set of strings in the UK for the same price, or maybe even a bit cheaper, than I could buy one from China.'

This is an area that bothers Jason How greatly. 'I think it's very sad that no one leaves school in this country wanting to be an engineer. If I hadn't been encouraged by my dad to become an engineer, by now Rotosound would simply be buying-in strings to re-sell, or it would be American owned.'

Fortunately for the UK economy and, more pointedly, for the employees at the Sevenoaks factory (who are, even now, getting used to the idea of multiple shifts, as production is expanded) - Rotosound remains that rarest of things: a British manufacturing company at the top of its game. Something, you can't help hoping, that the MI industry will cherish and feel proud of.