Building Team Unity The final piece of the partnership puzzle is creating an environment amongst the West Music team that breeds collaboration. “We’re a very collaborative organiza- tion, but we know that collaboration takes time,” West said. “We have our buyers and merchandise managers buy across the entire organization, and they work directly with suppliers ensuring that supplier relation- ship is strong.” West said his entire West Music team also understands the goal of the business is not to just complete business deals, but in- stead to create more lifelong music makers. “We make sure every member of the West Music team understands it’s not just about a transaction, but it’s about under- standing and appreciating each other and what our overall goal is — to create more musicians,” West said. “When it comes to marketing, sales and performance, we make sure to get the right people in the room together. I think if we look at our team, we’ve got some exceptional people working across the organization, and we make it all happen because we work to- gether as a team.” MI
respect for the arts, and my dad [founder Steve West] was always focused in that way, too,” he said. “So, we’ve always tried to stay really invested in the local performance arts organizations, so we can find partnerships and find ways to amplify and develop audi- ences, as well as develop more music makers. Primarily, we aim to give people the idea of saying, ‘It’s not about just seeing someone play an instrument. You could actually be playing the instrument yourself.’” Advancing Educators West Music currently works with 343 school districts in eastern Iowa, western Illinois, southern Wisconsin and southern Minnesota, so helping its educators to ad- vance is a major initiative. One example of this? Music ConstructED, a West Music- backed program that provides music educa- tors with hands-on professional develop- ment, resources and tools to enhance their teaching and music curriculum founded in 2020 during the middle of the pandemic. “Music ConstructED started as a part- nership between a couple of educators as co-founders and our CEO Robin Walenta,” West explained. “We came together to create
professional development resources and a lot of virtual resource opportunities, as well as found ways to build an ecosystem for the education community. Then, over the last five years, we’ve tried to partner with various teachers all over the country to have them create content that’s really useful and been practiced in the classroom and then find ways to compensate them through our royalty system.” West said building partnerships with mu- sic educators nationwide is just as critical as creating relationships with customers and community. “We created Music ConstructED as a separate entity from West Music at first, because we wanted it to find its own legs and find its own identity,” he said. “Most recently, we’ve been trying to find ways to help get that content in front of teachers, so they can find it and discover it more easily and then bring it together with the products and services so that way they’ve got the full solution and the full kit. I think if we can find them content, as well as product and materials, that really closes the whole loop. Then, we can set up for a great educational experience.”
DECEMBER 2025 I MUSIC INC. I 41
Powered by FlippingBook