MAS Distro

Progressive brand representation model emphasizes respect, communication, and the long game.

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FEW MARKETS HAVE SEEN a bigger explosion of new products than the effects pedal sector, with new brand names elbowing for retail space alongside ensconced industry veterans. Guitarists, insatiable consumers of new sounds, are lured to a growing, chaotic underground of boutique designers, compounding the market’s saturation and competitive pitch, and complicating retailer stocking strategies. MAS Distro, a Minneapolis-based business, has emerged to help worthy innovators not just to be seen and heard, but also to build their brands for sustainable growth and partner with like-minded retailers. Billed as “the bridge between musical brands and global distribution,” MAS Distro is offering an alternative approach to the industry’s standard rep and distribution models to serve a growing new breed of guitar gear consumer.

MAS Distro represents manufacturers from as far away as Canada, the U.K., and Indonesia, but the majority are in the U.S. Currently represented product lines include Greer amplifiers, Disaster Area cables and MIDI accessories, and StringJoy fretted instrument strings, but its focus is on effect pedals, with brands including 1981 Inventions, Alexander Pedals, Benson Amps, Cooper FX, Disaster Area Designs, Fairfield Circuitry, GFI System, Greer Amps, Rainger FX, Spaceman, and Subdecay FX.

What began as a common story of “guitarist enters retail” took detours and, ultimately, an entirely different path for MAS Distro founder Sayer Payne. While in university, he developed an interest in recording bands, and he later relocated to Minneapolis for its richer session scene, building out recording studios and taking jobs in guitar stores “to meet musicians.” Over time, he became more interested in gear and music retail, and he was particularly drawn to observing customers’ experiences: a kid’s first guitar purchase, or customers inspiring each other on the showroom floor. For good measure he mixed in brief stints in retail management and consulting—for example, helping businesses set up an online store.

"The competition means that brands
have to compete at the highest level
at all times."

Starting in 2008, a brief foray into pedal manufacture with his own Heavy Electronics brand taught Payne much about m.i.’s supplier-retailer nexus. Working in a vintage guitar store “just as the recession was dampening demand for $4,000 guitars,” he saw that customers would still want to purchase gear, albeit at a lower price point. More consequentially, the experience helped him cultivate a large circle of industry friends and colleagues—and a list of what he considered to be the ideal stores for his products in each town. “I did better [selling my pedals] than I should have because of those connections and relationships.”

That Payne’s personal stints on both sides of the counter preceded the effect pedal market’s current level of saturation shaped the ideals and goals he would later apply at MAS Distro. “Storeowners wanted to hear the whole story behind a new pedal,” he recalls wistfully. When the profusion of new pedal brands and products began making it harder for smaller producers to be noticed and taken seriously by retailers, some of them turned to him for guidance. It was during that period that he discovered that he enjoyed working with retailers more than building pedals. “In general,” he says, “I enjoy working with people more than working with things.”

Starting around 2010, still under the auspices of Heavy Electronics, he began informally consulting with tyro (or underexposed) suppliers to help them sell their wares. Three years later, he launched Motherlode Audio Supply, which he later shortened to MAS Distro. (Payne isn’t picky about how people pronounce his company’s name: spelled out as m-a-s, or as a single syllable—“mass”—or, among Spanish-speaking customers, as “mas,” meaning “more”.) He is picky about the suppliers his company represents. In addition to offering standout products, the integrity and personality of the suppliers are essential elements of partnership with MAS Distro, he explains, because they are also relevant to consumers in this growing corner of the musicians’ community. He seeks manufacturers who, beyond selling their products, want to cultivate a relationship with end-users. In turn, these end-users develop a kinship with the brands and a desire for them to succeed that typically spreads organically, often via social media, throughout that community.

MAS Distro provides different levels of service to suppliers according to their needs and goals. Some may seek only limited operational guidance or use of MAS Distro’s infrastructure; for example, its recently established U.S. fulfillment center for international brands to ship through.

Although the company does provide some standard distribution services, it doesn’t resell product. At the same time, Payne strives to distinguish MAS Distro’s role from typical rep arrangements, whose focus he characterizes as “coercing sales,” in favor of fostering a sincere “connection between the dealership and the things that really matter with the brand.” This is especially true of its select “folio brands,” which currently number 12 and receive a more comprehensive range and depth of assistance. Taking these manufacturers under their wing, Payne and his team avail their full commitment of skills and services to assist with the growth of each client’s brand.

Among the first steps of the partnership, folio clients consult with MAS Distro’s panel of high-level professionals specializing in particular business disciplines such as administrative tasks, operations, logistics, media and marketing, etc. “The relationship is about more than just selling things,” says Payne. “We create media for them and help facilitate their operations. If they’re having a problem with production, for example, we have tools and contacts that help find and deliver solutions.”

MAS Distro offers a wide range of “folio brands” to a roster of 300 retail customers in the U.S.

MAS Distro’s internally created marketing assets are primarily video materials designed for redistribution on third-party YouTube sites, Instagram, and the content creators’ own profiles. The company’s team also advises client brands on content creation “to the extent they’re interested and capable” and arranges third-party content creation of materials that can be used by each brand and all the dealers and distributors handling it.

One of MAS Distro’s more important missions is to help its clients achieve sustainable growth. Brands that are in demand are guided to avoid the temptation to open “more retailers than there are customers” or inadvertently encourage their dealers to undercut each other’s pricing. And in Payne’s words, it also strives “to pair the product with the dealers who do the most work to actually create growth, rather than just soak up transactions.” The priority, he adds, is “the quality of the experience,” not just “the scale of the opportunity. It’s imperative that we have people who are inspiring and fun to work with.”

Payne suggests that the effect pedal category “is saturated with products, but it’s not saturated with ideas. There’s still a ton of room for new brands, and when they come to the table with something exciting, they’re rewarded if they know how to use that demand effectively.”

He doesn’t buy into the notion that “creative types”—innovators developing potentially successful products—are necessarily ill-equipped for success in the business world. However, experience has taught him that even minor weaknesses or lapses can torpedo a fledgling brand’s prospects. He saw companies with promising products stumble and lose momentum from something as basic and avoidable as a production or fulfillment delay. “The competition means that brands have to compete at the highest level at all times,” he says. “You can’t just have a good product but not guarantee timely delivery. To establish a new brand and grow it, you can’t just be good at circuit design or marketing or any one thing; you have to be good at everything and fire on all cylinders.” For suppliers chosen as a MAS Distro folio brand, its team first identifies the aspects of the business needing improvement—“existing barriers to the next stage of growth”—and devises holistic solutions for surmounting those barriers.

Payne stresses that while MAS Distro dedicates extraordinary attention and resources to its folio brands, the company is eager to help all of its supplier clients access markets, rationalizing that a generally more active market will contribute to a healthier ecosystem for all.

"When they buy a pedal,
[these customers are] buying a ticket
to support the brand
and watch what becomes of it."

Toward the same goal, MAS Distro currently deals with more than 300 retail customers, including some that only sell a few, or even one, of the products in its catalog. According to Payne, while the majority of its customers buy “quite a few” of its catalog items, benefiting from the consistent and efficient access to multiple brands, they value the company’s á la carte approach, with no requirements to order particular products or brands. Trust is established, in part, by the company’s determination not to “soak them with buy-ins. If [a pedal] is not plainly moving off the shelf under its own pressure, not only do we not want to sell it to you; we don’t want you to have it there.” Instead, the company helps each retailer pair “what actually makes sense in terms of their customers, not just what they’ll buy from the brands we work with.”

For retailers, MAS Distro’s brand curation facilitates accessing and ordering from 12 brands at once, with similar efficiencies in monitoring shipments and paying bills. Marketing strategies that emerge for one brand can be repeated across the entire product range. Dealers can access the company’s “massive” media folder to help promote the brands to their own customers. “And if they’re interested in micro-targeting or promotional activities that are very granular at the store,” says Payne, “we have time and resources to do those kinds of things too.

“I think retailers sense that they should have a better relationship with the manufacturers they work with,” he continues. “My goal is for a few high-quality retailers that we don’t work with yet to see that we offer a better experience and more respect of their long-term opportunities, an experience that’s more collaborative and more focused on trying to improve what they do as retailers instead of just trying to get a little chunk of it.”

Effect pedal market saturation and margin pressure notwithstanding, Payne is bullish on the emerging sub-sector MAS Distro is serving. He holds that the boutique effects pedal market has given birth to a special breed of customers who want more than a quick purchase; they want to connect in a personal way with the product, the brand, and the people behind it, and become a part of the community. “When they buy a pedal,” he says, “[these customers are] buying a ticket to support the brand and watch what becomes of it. If you’re looking for that old industry feeling of people really rooting for music brands, this is where that’s happening.”

www.masdistro.com