Q. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and work history?
I have been with PreSonus since 1995. In October 2020 it will be my 25th year of working for the company. I knew Jim Odom (Founder and CSO) for many years prior and had always been a huge fan of him both musically and professionally. In 1995 I was a 25-year-old musician who was running a recording studio and working for a Music Retail shop as well as finishing up a Marketing degree at LSU. Working for an audio manufacturer was a dream job for me as I've been a musician since I was in grade school so my dream was always to have a career related to music. Thankfully, I've spent most of my adult life at one company and I'm also still active in playing and recording music just like I was when I started in my twenties.
Q. I see that you’ve been with PreSonus for over 2 decades, what has made you stay with them for so long?
There are many reasons but the main thing has been the passion for people and empowering customers to be creative. This is a company that loves our customers! Everything we do is to help them be creative and productive. Our goal is to delight them with great products and technology.
Q. What possessed PreSonus to enter the DAW market? Weren’t you afraid of failure?
Yes, we were definitely nervous entering the DAW market. But the thing that drove us was wanting to make our customers' recording experience better. Although our hardware and software is fully compatible with any other 3rd party, there is a distinct advantage for PreSonus customers that are using both our hardware and software. As a manufacturer, we can really streamline workflow and make it a lot faster and easier for customers to be creative.
Q. What has Studio One Pro’s success meant to PreSonus as primarily a hardware company?
Well originally our software team only worked on software and our hardware team only did hardware. But through the years, we have made huge advances in development of hardware utilizing our software designers. This makes the interoperability so much nicer between the hardware and software. As StudioOne's customer base has grown, we have really had a goal of providing a great ecosystem of hardware products that surrounds every facet of music making - from interfaces to studio monitors, controllers, headphones and now microphones.
Q. How did you first hear about XCHANGE?
From my old friend Dinshah Sanjana (currently the VP of Sales at EastWest Sounds) when he was the software buyer at Guitar Center. He was a great evangelist for XCHANGE and got everyone excited about the idea of creating a platform that would solve a lot of the problems associated with selling boxed software.
Q. How has XCHANGE impacted your business?
It's definitely allowed our dealers to have instant access to a product that has great profit margin and you'll never be sold out of. Dealers that have gotten on the platform have experienced growth every year just like PreSonus has.
Q. What is one feature that you use the most on XCHANGE?
The new reporting is fantastic. Allowing us to dig down and analyze sales and trends with our business gives us the ability to fine-tune our strategies.
Q. What have been some of the challenges with XCHANGE?
A few years ago there were some issues on high volume days like Black Friday where servers were jammed up, etc. That hasn't been the case recently though.
Q. What features would you like to see in XCHANGE that currently do not exist?
Tighter and more real-time sales data would be great. Also as our internal software accounting system is about to move to the Cloud, I hope that we can have better integration with the new system.
Q. How has digital sales of software grown over the years for PreSonus?
Digital software sales have increases year over year since we started 10 years ago in the software business. Online sales have grown every year for both software and hardware products. Customers love the instant gratification of downloading and using software right away.
Q. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the company and your customers?
Although the pandemic has definitely caused a lot of stress for people globally, we are thankful for the fact that our customers have been spending more time at home and many of them are using our products to stay creative during this time. Music is a natural outlet for so many of us and I'm thankful that we had products that people needed and wanted during this pandemic.
Q. What was it like to be recognized as the XCHANGE Vendor of the Decade?
It felt really great to be recognized. There are so many great brands that are sold on the XCHANGE platform. It was humbling to be recognized in such great company.
Q. What is your outlook on the future for software business?
No doubt, it will only go up. It still amazes me that there are so few dealers that are actually taking advantage of software sales. It's a huge growth opportunity for any music retailer that is willing to be educated and will help them create a loyal community of customers.
Q. What would be your top 3 reasons for PreSonus’s prominent success?
I think the main one is we absolutely want to create products that customer's want/need and we try to create a community where customer feedback drives our product development. We have created answers.presonus.com where any customer can submit a feature request and the rest of the community votes on it. Secondly, we have created a customer culture where most of the exec's and top developers are constantly active on social media and accessible to customers. This helps us to relate with what they need and want. Lastly, we have been blessed with really great people internally that are not only talented but have high integrity. These are some of the basic building blocks of our company.
Q. Any last shout outs would you like to mention to our readers?
Shout out to Ray! What a visionary and he is so accessible to us whenever we need him. Thanks so much Ray for creating a business that allows both dealers and customers to thrive!