Anyone who asks the question that is the title of this post is both a reasonable person and in good company. Hopefully we can answer your questions here. If not, we will be more than happy to discuss the matter further either by telephone or in person.
The Initial Business Plan
Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC (still our official corporate name), doing business as WARP3 Insights™, was founded in early 2006. Our business plan called for starting out exclusively in the New Product Development (NPD) consulting arena and evolving into a firm that did NPD consulting AS WELL AS inventing, designing and patenting our own breakthrough products...but things changed, as will be described later in this post.
Non-Competition with Our Consulting Clients A critical ethical principle that we vowed to uphold, even at expense of losing potential business, was (and still is) to NEVER develop, under any circumstances, an internal project (i.e. Wiederholt & Rickert Partners) that competed with a product manufactured by a consulting client. Spin-off Companies As our own product portfolio grows, we will "spin-off" separate companies to bring our own products to market. We are in the process of forming one such spin-off company presently that involves a merger with one of the firms, Fiddarci Lutherie (U.S. based, in Birmingham, AL), that assists in the manufacturer of many violin parts, as well as entire instruments. The name of the new merged firm has yet to be announced. The start-up, doing business as Rickert & Ringholz Musical Instruments, currently sells several amazing travel or packpacker fiddles and a baritone violin via an online store (www.fiddleandbowstore.com). Instrument Designs Have Achieved International Respect Some of the most respected musicians in the world (such as Darol Anger, Natalie Haas, Aladair Fraser) own and have performed with Rickert & Ringholz/Fiddarci Lutherie instruments. One of the oldest and widely-respected instrument catalogs, Elderly Instruments, will sell some of the instruments via its online store in the near future. In addition to U.S. sales, the online store has sold instruments to players in the U.K., Australia, Italy and Japan, despite the heavy duties/taxes and low U.S. Dollar value. Bottom Line on Why We Chose Violins and Rowing Craft We chose innovative modern violins and rowing craft for ocean and extreme river conditions as our initial internal product development domains for the following reasons:
Both are such niche products that it would be unlikely that we would have conflict of interest issues with our consulting clientèle.
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Don Rickert has unique access to the violin and fiddle playing, building and repair communities (important for doing good consumer research), owing to his own decades of experience as both a player (Don was a professional fiddler, guitarist and bassist while in graduate school) and maker of musical instruments.
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Don also has deep (and very difficult to establish) experience as an "insider" within the competitive rowing community, both as a member of several racing "crews", as well as serving on the Executive Board of the Atlanta Rowing Club.
See, it all makes at least a little bit of sense. Some Rude Awakenings About the Musical Instrument Business
It is VERY expensive to start a musical instrument company
Achieving respect and trust is REALLY hard work
The effects of startup debt is challenging to overcome
We have made great process with respect to #1 and #2 above...still working on #3.
Why We Concentrated on In-House Product Development Earlier than Originally Planned
Bottom line: Not enough consulting work several years ago to sustain a viable business! We discovered all too quickly that the marketing/marketing research/design and product
development media greatly exaggerated the true market size for the type
of services that WARP3 Insights provided. With the exception of some of
our clients, companies were simply unwilling or unable to pay a fair
price for consumer-centered research & design services, either from
‘suppliers’ or from in-house teams. We were even "stiffed" for over $50,000 worth of work by a major "respectable" corporation. We
learned that executives, when interviewed by magazines, often
exaggerated their commitment to in-depth consumer-centered research and
design. We also learned that the limited work that really does exist went to a handful of famous research/design firms—the ones that
everyone has heard of.
Why the Time is Right for Re-Focusing on Our Consulting Business
You can read about this in Part 2.
