Shane Kinney owns and operates the 20,000-square-foot drum shop that is housed in two former barns.
T ucked three miles away from the coast in northern New Hampshire sits Drum Center of Portsmouth, a 20,000-square-foot drummer’s paradise comprised of two old barns located on a mostly rural road. Despite its unassuming locale, Drum Center of Portsmouth (DCP) features a wood-laden showroom that’s staffed with some 20 dedicated drumming professionals and stocked with all of the latest acoustic kits, digital sets and every conceivable drum accessory one could need. Its deep stock, large social reach and rustic interior vibe has made DCP a must- stop for drummers traveling through the New England area. And is also the reason many Excellence-voting suppliers nominated Drum Center of Portsmouth as Music Inc.’s 2024 Retailer of the Year, with one voting supplier dubbing DCP, “The drum shop that all drum shops should aspire to be.” “We stock what we know our customers are going to want,” said owner Shane Kin- ney, when asked how DCP ensures it has what its customers need. “I’ve been doing this long enough to know what breaks when and know when to order something to make sure we always have the right products in
stock. We know what our customers are going to need.” SHOE-STRING BUDGET BEGINNINGS Kinney founded DCP in 2009 after working at another drum shop in Maine for about 10 years. As a drummer himself, he wanted to create a distinct shopping atmosphere for fellow drummers. “I wanted to do something different, and I really wanted to create a unique experi- ence for customers,” Kinney said. “So, I decided to break off on my own.” Some 15 years and three moves later, Drum Center of Portsmouth has found its home in North Hampton, New Hampshire, after Kinney bought the building the store is housed in in 2017. But growing DCP into the footprint it has today took time, as Kinney joked that he started the business on a “used shoe-string budget.” “We started in an 800-square-foot space and were based there for the first 10 months,” Kinney explained. “So, I started it on a shoe-string budget. I always joke that it wasn’t even a new shoestring, it was a used shoestring. So, I started with nothing really and threw it all into the business.”
After a year and a half, DCP expanded to a slightly bigger location before moving to the 20,000-square-foot showroom it has today seven years ago. “We like to boast and say that we’re the largest drum store in the world,” Kin- ney said. “I don’t have any factual proof that we’re the largest, but I do know the independent drum stores out there, and there’s nothing like this out there. So, we have a very unique selling position here.” SOCIAL MEDIA MAVENS Another way Drum Center of Portsmouth has positioned itself in a unique way is through its active social media presence. With some 89.3K YouTube subscrib- ers, 54.1K followers on Instagram and 57K followers on Facebook, Drum Center of Portsmouth’s reach extends far beyond its New England home base. One Excellence- voting supplier applauded DCP for its “qual- ity content creation,” while another said the store’s videos are “on pulse the with latest trends.” Kinney said the store’s social media team has developed over the years to pro- duce the high-quality demo, comparison
42 I MUSIC INC. I DECEMBER 2024
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