Beat merchants studio is a dedicated team that helps to customize audio and visuals needs. Letting ideas synergize with their strong technical expertise to make it happen. Beat merchants provide customers an excellent rehearsal experience coupled with very competitive rates for budding and accomplished musicians alike. Apart from that, repairing and renting of equipments and event support.

Company: BEAT MERCHANTS Address: 11b Jalan Pinang Website: http://www.beatmerchantstudio.com Interview with Mr Muhammad Yassir Bin Hussain by Natasha Azura on 05-May-2008. Student can be reached at cuddlycats@live.com.sg   Business Profile: Do not be afraid to encounter risks. It is by taking chances. A failure is just a feedback and never giving up. That's how he learns how to recognize the values that his company upholds. Beat Merchants is a jamming studio as well as a place for the bands to relax as in before and after they jam, 'A New Experience'. Having diversified in other areas, Beat Merchants not only provide a good quality sound, they also believe that customer service is very important.   Interviewer's Comments: From the interview that I have conducted, I realised that Mr Yassir Bin Hussain is such a hardworking individual. I could see from his facial expression that every single word he said meant thousands of meanings for him. All the hard work is finally paid off. Beat Merchants is not just your local neighbourhood jamming studio, it is a good place that caters to the youth of today.   1. What is the nature of your business? Our nature of business at the moment is still Provision of Audio Rehearsal Studio, but on top of that we also do audio recording, and also event support. In event support, that is where we provide audio and visual systems and also some decorations to support any kind of event. Basically these are the main services that we are having.   2. When and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur / take over your family business? NOTE: If it is not a family business, ask: Do your parents have their own businesses too? Have they inspired you in one way or another? (Select appropriate question according to the entrepreneur being interviewed.) During the mid of 2003, where there is a dot.com boom, but it is going down by the end of that time. The situation is not so stable. At that particular point of time, I am doing IT Telecommunications, I still like doing that but I wanted to have my own business. So I find something that I am really familiar with and something that I can create some values or help to solve problems. At that current time, jamming sessions of 10 years before that current time and 10 years after that time is about the same. I cannot see any difference in the studio conditions. That is where I think my studio came in and wanted to give a new experience of jamming- to make the room bigger, with different lightings and a different concept with the colours and also convenience. Yet also have a place for the bands to relax as in before and after they jam. That is where the idea came in, A New Experience. That is why at that point of time we only have one room. We are not very sure if it is going to work, but from the feedbacks that we got, these are the things that they wanted. That is where we came in to do this business. No they do not. But they always have inspired me to keep doing my best in everything. But my mum does a bit of business but not a big business, just a home-to-home selling not really a big scale businesswoman. Probably my determination part came from her.   3. What are your reasons for choosing to do business in this particular industry? As I have said earlier, this is something that I am familiar with. But I also love food, but I am not familiar with that particular industry like cooking. I picked this industry is also for the love of music, and I do not think that I would ever be tired of doing it. My passion is here and as everyday you do this thing, you wont feel bored or feel like its work. Because the passion is there and you just keep on doing it, every single day.   4. How did you put together all the resources needed to start your business? For example: getting the start-up capital, hiring staff, doing sales and marketing, advertising, etc. All I can say is the power of Internet is pretty good, it is the best. There is everything in the Internet. It gives me the updated information of the latest equipments here and there. Of course we do have budget constraints, so from there is where we plan out what are the equipments that we want to have. Basically which shop is not really a big issue as Singapore has a lot of shop selling the instruments but its more to which one, and whether it limits your budget at that particular time- which is only one room, so it is not really a big budget. It is also not that difficult doing the setting up and everything. The problems lie more in the renovation itself instead of the equipments. To have a full sound proof room and quality sound is very expensive. So we have to find ways in such a way that we tried our best to sound proof the rooms, finding the right contractors who could work within our budget constraints. So that is how we basically come out with everything, with the great help of Internet. Basically during that time the only marketing by distributing flyers. And we just pass it around in schools, to students .We also did a promotion by giving our first hour free, that is the attraction part, at that point of time which is September to the end of the year and then we are back to our normal rates. So if you jam for two hours, you will only need to pay for one hour. After that we see that the crowd is still coming in so the other problems are maintaining the equipments only. We try our best to maintain our equipments, plan our monthly budget so we can sustain to buy the necessary items if all the equipments could be well kept and maintain.   5. What are some interesting stories you have about your first few customers/first few years in business? All I can say that from the beginning until now, everything is interesting because, it is not just about the equipments itself, its also about the rapport with your customers, it is very important, everyday you will meet new people and you are not confined to just talk about music, but also about other things as well. When the bond is there, you will then realise that there are other problems that the customers faced.   6. What are some of the challenges you faced when you first went into business? Challenges, definitely. There are a lot of challenges. One of the things is competition. Whatever you do, whatever ideas you have, you can hold for a while only. Because after a while, competitors will come in and do the same thing. At the same time I am also learning and planning to upgrade myself even further on business for my own study so the competitive competition is always there and you will have to get as fast and as much feedback from the customers so that we know we are doing it okay or not. From there we could try to improve and provide extra services to them. These are the things that are a continuous challenge for us. If there is no challenge, its not business, you will lose out. You will slow down, relax, but other people will have the other competitive advantage   7. Can you remember your worst day in business or a time when you felt like giving up? What happened that made you feel that way and how did you triumph over it? Actually at that point, there is no giving up but when we just opened, as I have said that we do not do much marketing so there are days where there are nobody. Then you just sit down there at night wondering should I go home or shouldn't I, the phone doesn't ring. Just day-by-day, it was slow. So when there are any customers coming in, we just give them the flyers and ask them to pass around and also by using words of mouth and slowly they know about it. So since we don't have a website then, we just try to put on any available website or maybe a directory of any available jamming studios. We placed our address, and they start calling us, slowly it goes up.   8. Can you share some of the lessons you learnt from overcoming your own business challenges that you think will help other businesses? Challenges, definitely. There are a lot of challenges. One of the things is competition. Whatever you do, whatever ideas you have, you can hold for a while only. Because after a while, competitors will come in and do the same thing. At the same time I am also learning and planning to upgrade myself even further on business for my own study so the competitive competition is always there and you will have to get as fast and as much feedback from the customers so that we know we are doing it okay or not. From there we could try to improve and provide extra services to them. These are the things that are a continuous challenge for us. If there is no challenge, its not business, you will lose out. You will slow down, relax, but other people will have the other competitive advantage   9. When was the moment you realised the business would work and support you? I can say by the number of customers that is coming in. From there, of course we will have to do a lot of finance calculation and we will have to see that everything is in order and the amount of cash that is coming in is actually a mark to show that if we are doing ok or not at that particular time. Of course we have set financial goals, here and there to see if at a certain time I could leave my main job, or we could do other things or we could open another room. That are some of the measures that we kept on doing. Until now we are still monitoring it as to know if we are doing ok. This is very important.   10. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? And why are they so important and meaningful to you? Up to date until now, I can say that there is growth in every single year. Every year there is a growth in the number of rooms; definitely there will be an increase in revenue and in profits. The ratio is linear in such a way, it may not grow that fast. Especially after room number 3. The growth is not really that fast. But every year there's growth and we do monitor what causes it. The revenue coming in is ok but the profit is still low. Maybe there are a lot of causes involved because we are now taking in more space as well. Comparing to only one unit, we are already taking 3 units, so definitely, monthly we incur more cost.   11. How do you differentiate your business from your competitors? Please provide specific examples. Basically what we provide right now, other studios could also provide. At that point of time, we tried to use a different type of instrument and guitar amplifiers, from other jamming studios, but right now, it seems that other jamming studios are using the same like what we are using which we believe is a good quality. So the only thing is the system that we have is more stable at the moment, the operation system, and the other one that I can say is the people. But this does take time. I am still working on it as we keep on changing staffs. The staffs that we take are not all permanent so we need to keep on training them to understand and be more efficient about customer service.   12. What are some business ideas you have implemented that created great results in your business? If you think about what I have said just now about the growth, basically business has to do with a lot of planning, if you do a lot of planning, it is not a gamble. So I can say the first room is a lot of gamble. It's a try out. But room two onwards, is a lot of planning, calculation; you really know if you open up a room, there are a lot of people on the waiting list. If we open the second room, all the people on the waiting list could occupy the second room, and so we opened it. Same thing, we work towards opening the third room, It's worth it, and so we open the third room. The rest is already the waiting customers that we have, so it's already pre-planned.   13. What do you think are the problems that your customers usually faced? Like when they jam, they like to record using a mini recorder. The sound quality is not that good so you cannot hear every single instrument. So that's where the idea came in to do a live recording with a reasonable price so they don't have to pay so much. They jam, we record. When they go back and they could keep a copy for themselves. From there they hear themselves play, hopefully the music improve and from there they get better and after a while they could do a multi track or a proper recording, CD quality recording which we also do provide here. So basically that's the whole idea. Into music, love for it, then as we go along we realise that there are more problems that were faced by the customers and from there we see how we could play a part and then it goes on.   14. What do you think of customer service? Customer service is very important. It is not just like open the room and close the room. You need to know that are the customer's wants, if they needed any extra things, and show them that you care and needed them too.   15. What does entrepreneurship mean to you? From the beginning, it really tests your full potential, in all of us there are actually full potential, its just that whether we want to achieve it or not. The success is actually built in all of us, once you think about something, it can be achieved already, just the consistent action that you want to take. So until now, since I have not give up, I still have the drive, I think that it's something I really like about entrepreneurship. Just keep going and every single day is a new challenge. Entrepreneurship is about gathering resources and getting them togethr in a good system such that great ideas for product or service development can be implemented.   16. What are some entrepreneurship qualities that you have which has helped you come this far? One thing is integrity, which means whatever they say, they do. So we can't just say something but it just ended as a dream. But actually everything that we see now is all from people's dream. But only few will take action. And the few are the people who become the inventors or the businessman. This goes to show that integrity is very important. And also believing in yourself that you can succeed.   17. In your opinion, what other qualities does a person need in order to be successful in business? And why? (e.g. Educational qualification, work experience, family influence, attitude, etc) Definitely you will need some kind of education but it is not necessary be from a proper school. If you go to the computer right now, education you can just be right from the Internet. You have audio books, e books, tele- seminar which you can just dial it. Any country that has a seminar, you can just type a question and they can just reply, it's live or you can use the phones. Education there are many ways, Its just that we still need to know what we want. Then the knowledge that we get from all these resources will help us to put it together to be more organised. And you can see what you can achieve from all these knowledge. If you have too much knowledge, you do not know how to put it together it will also be difficult.   18. In your opinion, what does it mean to have the spirit of enterprise? The spirit of enterprise is believed in achieving the goal that you want. Only few will go all the way. So I believe that spirit comes where whatever obstacles comes, whether big or small, you really want to achieve that goal that you want, it's just that you have to encounter all this.   19. What are some of the business values you would like to pass down to others, particularly the younger generations? Firstly they must choose something that they really love. If they don't really like that thing, they will go there everyday, do some things, and they will really feel like working. Then when the money or the financial target that aimed doesn't achieve then they will just give up. But if you do something for passion, even if you are not paid, you will do it well, because you really like it. You just do it. Then when people start to realise your values that you created, and then people will start paying you. People will start calling you to do services for them. So from there your value increase, and you also will know that the things you do have values. So as your value increases, people are willing to pay more to you. So that's the main thing, we must know that we really like.   20. What do you see for your business in the next 5 years, and does it include any plans for expansion? May not, because as you can see the rent in Singapore is getting quite high, so that's why I am now focusing more on outside activities also like having events and all this. Because if you do events, the only thing you really need is just storage room, renting a warehouse in an area which is cheaper. But here, places of somewhere near city all, the rent we are not sure, it is going to go up so, expansion would be quite tight. Even to hold we are not sure as well. Even for next year, we are not sure how the price is going to be, but we will plan by how much it will go up, then we will see if we wanted to go on. Maybe there is another trend of jamming studio at that point of time, at the moment I have not really been thinking about it. But as I say in order to overcome the problem of high rent, we diverse our business. That's the idea.   21. What advice would you give young people who want to start their own business? 1. Believe that you can achieve your business goals. 2. Create the strategy to achieve those goals. 3. Take consistent actions in working towards those goals. 4. Change the strategy if does not work. 5. Invest in educating yourself in the areas of your business. 6. Keep up-to-date on the technological advancement because it really enhances oneâ��s business.   22. Who or what motivates and inspires you? The idea of creating more jobs motivates me every single day. My beloved staffs inspire me so much. I do not want any of them to lose their job. This drives me to keep expanding the business.   23. Can you share some of the more significant events / incidents that affected or shaped your business philosophy and the way you conduct your business? i.e. SARS, new competition or shifts in market behaviour and trends, etc. This depends on the situation at rise, as I can say music comes in many ways. You can have gigs, shows or recording played online and simple videos all this so there are still things that you can do to promote the jamming scene. It can still be done and I believe there are still people who loves to play music themselves, rather then to just listen to music or just come in and listen to people play, I always believe that there are always a group of people who loves to do this.   24. With the changes in the market today, do you think it has become harder or easier to succeed in business? Why do you say so? I believe that the situation of the market keeps on changing, definitely. But of course the business that you choose is not something temporary. It's not like a trendy market. Certain businesses there are only a limited number of people who are going to use your product, so it is very difficult to scale your business. For music, from last time until now, people still like music. Technology changed in such a way, but still people still relate themselves to music. So I believe that the music industry can still goes on for quite long time.