Genn Dusold, for example, first joined the company in 2014 as a summer job during college. “I was hired to clean instruments; I was really good at the saxophones,” she laughed. “But after college, I moved back home, and my sister came across a Facebook text post, not a Facebook ad or anything, just a text post with no image, that expressed Brighton was looking to hire a full-time sales person. My sister tagged me in the comments, and then Richard commented back, ‘If Genn is looking for a job, have her contact me right away.’” Eleven years later, Dusold is now the
store’s general manager and also head’s up the dealership’s very popular social media pages, including its TikTok ac- count which has some 17,000 followers and 540,000 likes. When asked for her top social media tip, Dusold, not surprisingly, said it’s all about involving your store’s employees. “Always get your staff involved,” Du- sold said. “Especially your salespeople because those are the folks greeting any- one who walks through the door. I’ve worked with everyone here long enough that I know their personalities, so it’s easy to say, ‘Hey, can you hold a guitar
moving to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, in the early 1960s. “They moved here because there wasn’t a music store that was catering to music schools for rentals, lessons and supplies,” Schiemer explained. “They started Brigh- ton Music Center to fill that void. After moving here, they also started selling pianos, organs and other instruments. Throughout the 1970s, they grew and brought on electronic gear, however, as they were growing, the steel mills shut down and this area lost some 60,000 jobs in the matter of six months. Basically, there was a mass exodus from Beaver County.” Schiemer shared a fun anecdote in regards to the early years of Brighton Music Center. “One funny story was, because they weren’t selling very much at the time, anytime they sold a guitar, they’d drop five cents in the store’s payphone to call the other person and tell them and then they’d hang up right away to get the money back,” he said. In the 1980s, Brighton Music Center opened its second location in the North Hills area of Pittsburgh, and, in April 2011, Schiemer and Wittmer, along with Schiemer’s wife Beth, purchased the busi- ness from one of the founders’ sons. “I had been working here for 20 years at that point, and the ownership came to us and said, ‘I’m either going to sell the business to you guys or to Music & Arts,’” Schiemer said. “And I thought, ‘If you sell to Music & Arts, we might not have jobs.’” Wittmer, who had been working at Brighton Music Center for 13 years at that point, said he and Schiemer felt a strong desire to keep the Brighton Music Center “family” together. “I will say one of the things, at least for me, was there were a bunch of amaz- ing teachers at the store,” Wittmer said. “Teachers that, like Richard said, were family and had been in this business with the original owners. Part of me was like, ‘Man, where are all those guys going to go? Where do those great people that have taught and done this for so long end up if the business sells to someone other than us?’ So, that was also something we considered when we decided to buy the business. We felt like the ‘family side’ needed to be kept together.” IN THE ‘PEOPLE BUSINESS’ Employee longevity is a defining trait at Brighton Music Center. General manager
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