MT: What attracted you to Dawsons Music in the first place?
AMO: My first concern was for the 90 or so people who were about to lose their jobs in the music industry. I own Alan Gregory Music & Musical Instruments – I bought out the previous owner just after I graduated from the Royal Northern as a tuba player back in 1999 – and it's almost like the last 21 years has been an apprenticeship for this moment. As a shop owner, you monitor your competitors, and I had been watching Dawsons.
I think what attracted me as I started the process was talking to the management team. There were people who really stood out, and it seemed like it was the team that I have been missing for all these years. I have always been a one-man band, and then all of a sudden you are surrounded by people who have expertise beyond your own. But you still have the experience of having worked on every aspect of the business. It was really warming to work with them to open up the first store and relaunch the website. Normally my wife wouldn't have seen me for weeks, but it was just a case of sorting the problems out.
MT: Have you visited all the stores yet?
AMO: I am just about to get on a plane to Belfast, and then, yes, we will have been round them all.
MT: What are your plans, in the short term and the long term?
AMO: In the short term, we just need to get the ship moving again. We're still battling a lot with being one of the first businesses out of administration under lockdown. All the stores are open now, the website is trading, and we're building slowly.
Long term, the plan is to get back to where Dawsons was. Yamaha in particular has said that they never felt that they reached their full potential with Dawsons, and that Dawsons never reached its full potential with them. Being a musician first and foremost, and then falling into this world of running a business, I really hope that we can do something quite special. I have noticed that the company is quite sectioned: there is an education department, a sales department, and so on, and what we're trying to do is bring one team together so that, for example, the education department stretches across the website and the stores, so that there's a synergy across the whole company.
MT: If you could learn any instrument, other than your own, what would it be?
AMO: My degree, as a qualified tuba player, is officially blowing hot air down a 24-foot tube. If I could learn another instrument, it would be bass guitar. I have an ear for bass, and the tuba isn't the most useful of instruments for pop. It would be a lot more versatile with the music I like to listen to. I have a lot of time for the bass guitar, and in particular its relationship with the drummer in a band, but unfortunately, my fingers tend to go up and down, instead of horizontal!
