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Meet Scott Nason of Music Go Round in Littleton (Southwest Denver)

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott Nason.

Scott, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was going to College at CSU in Fort Collins and studying business management. At the same time, I was playing in a band with my brother John and a good friend (Brian Coates), while working at a pawn shop. That shop had a huge music department that sold new and used instruments. It was during this time that I realized my two loves were music and business.

I knew that I would want to own my own business someday, but had no idea what or when.

Shortly after I got out of college, I was reading a trade magazine and read an article about a franchise called Music Go Round. I was amazed… I could do my two favorite things at the same time.

What came next was probably the hardest part of the entire process. I had to convince people to invest in me because I was just out of school and had no money. It took about a year, but after a ton of research, proposals, trips to the corporate office, and little blind faith, I found my investors… my parents. They were very hesitant but finally agreed to co-sign on a loan for me. There was no charity here, I had to pay back every dime on my own.

Once the ball was rolling, I talked my bandmate, Brian, into moving down to help manage the store. He was a huge part of my success for 18 years until he bought his own store (which is doing great in Aurora, CO).
These days, the business is doing really well. I have 12 employees and spend most of my time in the office doing accounting work.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
When I first started, I was looking at opening a store in Aurora because there was already one in Littleton where I lived. After a few weeks of looking into a new store, the Littleton store owner let me know he was thinking of selling. He had only been open for a year or two but realized it just wasn’t a good fit for him. He had never done retail before and just couldn’t get into it.

At the time, I really wanted to start my own store (out of pride), but soon realized that it would be a lot easier to have a store that is up and running.

It was a lot easier to not have to deal with site location, signing a new lease, build-out, etc. but I soon found that there were other challenges. The original owner ran things in a very different way than I wanted to. It took years to change the mindset of staff and customers to know that things were different. Once they did, it was all positive. My store quickly climbed to one of the top stores in the chain.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Music Go Round – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
We are your ultimate used gear resource. We buy, sell and trade used and new musical equipment and accessories. Our biggest selling category is guitars, but we deal with drums, keyboards, prosound, band instruments, and more. We pay customers on the spot for their gear, which gives them a quick, fair way to get rid of old gear and get some cash. We offer more in trade, so we see a ton of people trading in old gear toward something newer.

We brought in over $1,000,000 worth of used gear last year. That’s a lot of money paid out into the community, and a lot of great gear for our customers who are looking to buy.

We also have an amazing luthier (Doug) that works out of our shop and has his own repair business as well. He can offer nearly any instrument repair you can imagine, and his work is fantastic.

In addition, we offer lessons for many types of instruments. We have private lesson rooms at the back of the store.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
With a lot more focus on internet sales, we’re really working on our web presence. We picture every piece of gear we buy in to put on our website. Even our local customer’s shop the website first before they come in. Customers can purchase from our site to pick up in-store as well, so they don’t have to worry about that special piece of gear selling before they can get in.

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Getting in touch: VoyageDenver is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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