We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Charlie Andrews. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Charlie below.

Charlie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Taking care of customers isn’t just good business – it is often one of the main reasons folks went into business in the first place. So, we’d love to get a conversation going around how to best help clients feel appreciated – maybe you can share something you’ve done or seen someone do that’s been really effective at helping a customer feel valued?

The soul of Badges Drum Shop is love for drums and the drummers who play them. This drives everything about the shop which was designed to be a place where the local drumming community can feel at home, flourish and be creative. There is even a hangout area equipped with drums, comfy seating, decades of drum magazines, a water cooler and coffee right in the shop.

This respect naturally extends to online customers. When I speak to a customer, it’s never with pressure or a pitch but a genuine desire to help that drummer find the right sound for them. I send sound files, photos, whatever they need to feel great about their decision. For any purchase, I pack and ship with a great amount of honor for both the gear and the drummer who will play it.

It’s a joyous process that I hope comes through in every interaction.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Throughout my life drumming provided purpose, healing, a sense of community, friendships. It was the absolute focus and joy of my life. I wasn’t 100% certain what to do with that career-wise. When college took me to Nashville and then an internship at Pearl Drums I experienced the business side and product development side of the drum industry and fell in love with it. At a later internship my boss who was a drummer saw an opportunity in Cincinnati for a true drum shop. I’ll forever be grateful to him for encouraging me to be the one to fill that hole. After college I decided to take that leap of faith and built Badges Drum Shop. It is, after all, more than a business to me; it’s a way to share the instrument I love.

What I believe sets Badges Drum Shop apart is the sense of community. Badges is not just a shop. We have lessons here and hold clinics and masterclasses that give local drummers a chance to interact with some of their drumming heroes. People come here just as often to sit on the couch and talk drums as they do to buy drums. When they do buy, I try to approach it as matchmaking, showing respect for their budget as I help them achieve more success or more satisfaction as a drummer. I carry only products I believe in so I can make every sale large and small with confidence of that satisfaction.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

As it was for every small business owner, surviving a pandemic was a surprising and monumental challenge. I had been in business only a short time and was just hitting my stride when my state shut down all non-essential businesses. 

While I was fortunate to qualify for some small city and county grants, there wasn’t much funding to be had for a new small shop without employees. PPP loans were focused on payroll and required history that I didn’t yet have, so I knew I’d have to find a way to pay my fixed costs until the world opened back up. I moved every marketing opportunity online that I could, poured all the support I could into the community, worked long hours in the shop planning for better days, and stopped paying myself completely for the balance of 2020. It was a leap of faith that exceeded even starting my business in late 2018.

I learned that it’s times like this that community gets you through. Drummers who could buy continued to buy and some people who weren’t even drummers started ordering things like sweatshirts just to help me out. Every day was a gift and every sale a reason for gratitude on a whole new level and I’ll never forget it.

How did you build your audience on social media?

People have sometimes asked me about my store name Badges Drum Shop. Drummers have historically referred to the logo on a drum as its “badge.” Since drum badges stand as a symbol of pride and quality for both drummers and drum makers, “Badges” seemed like a fitting name for my shop.

That same reverence for quality that goes into the branding of a drum must come through in all my shop communications including online.

Social media is obviously so important for small businesses and it’s tempting to overuse it in a way that offends authenticity. Something I decided early on was that I would treat social media as an authentic extension of my physical shop and at least for me this has served me well.

Just as I present warmth and quality in the shop, I show warmth in quality in the images and conversations I put online. Just as I try to be available but not to pressure people in the shop, I post regularly but not so often I wear out my welcome. And just as I engage with a community community of drummers in my physical shop, I treat online drummers as part of that community. I don’t chase likes and follows but authentic relationships.

This approach keeps social media both manageable and enjoyable for me which I think is really important for making it enjoyable for people who find me online.

Contact Info:

• Website: badgesdrumshop.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/badgesdrumshop/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/badgesdrumshop
• Twitter: twitter.com/badgesdrumshop
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsLXfTyWY6-k3NOwoTVhjjg
• Yelp: yelp.com/biz/badges-drum-shop-mason

Image Credits
n/a – all photo credits belong to me and my shop