Rock Star Recipes Ltd

When a couple of university mates sat down to brainstorm an idea for a business venture they came up with Rock Star Recipes (RSR), a youthful, entrepreneurial company that four years on is selling online music courses to thousands of internet customers and leading the world in online guitar courses.

The Christchurch firm currently offers several online guitar and piano courses and is planning to introduce new courses for bass guitar and drum by the end of the year.

“We are a true 21st century global company,” says Jon Coursey, one of the founders and RSR Managing Director, “all our products are sold over the internet and 98 percent of our sales are made to overseas customers.”

Mr Coursey says RSR knew from the outset it could only be successful if it sold internationally – New Zealand alone wasn’t a large enough market to support its products.

The firm doesn’t consider its target markets to be geographic areas, though it has sold products to more than 60,000 customers in 71 countries. Rather, its target customers are all people with computers, internet connections and an interest in playing music regardless of where they live.

Being an internet company, Mr Coursey says the challenge is how to transform the inherently impersonal internet sales experience and turn it into quality, personal service. RSR never meets its customers face to face and deals with less than one percent by telephone.

The same is true of its sales force. RSR’s sales are made through largely anonymous “affiliates”, companies and individuals located all over the globe who specialise in marketing over the internet.

“This whole affiliates area is a huge and fast moving industry and has proved the most effective way of reaching our target market,” says Mr Coursey.

Despite never meeting its sales force nor its customers in person, he says RSR has been extremely successful in mitigating the colder, harder aspects of buying online through such things as personalised emails, its website and the clever use of technology such as video and audio incorporated into its online courses.

RSR is continually looking for new ways to improve the interactivity of its software – next up is likely to be plug n play, which will give customers feedback on the accuracy of their playing.

Creativity and innovation are what makes RSR’s music courses a market leader and what helps the company meet the challenges of a high New Zealand dollar, says Mr Coursey.

 “We were the first to use extensive video in lessons and we’ve developed several software games to teach various aspects of music theory and sight reading music.”

He says business moves very quickly online, and keeping at the forefront of trends and ahead of competitors is paramount, adding a great deal of agility is required to continue to lead the field, especially when your competitors can find out all about you and your products from your website.

“Keeping in mind that anybody working in their bedroom can produce a guitar course and sell it online, a challenge is how long is it after we release a product that our competitors catch up,” says Mr Coursey. “There are also questions of trends in online use and delivery methods, and more fickle issues like the perception of a product’s value if identical material is delivered as a DVD rather than a download.”

RSR researches what its customers want through online surveys and search engines, analysing the number and frequency of searches for terms relevant to its products.

Surveying has revealed it largest client group is 35-55 year old males living in the United States.

“We think that age group is people picking up guitar for a second time after the kids have left home, perhaps less keen to get involved with a tutor and want to learn at their own pace at home,” says Mr Coursey.

“A key strength of our courses is motivation – that’s something we do really well. We keep the students excited about learning the instrument.”

RSR’s staff now number nine. All but one are under 30. RSR considers youth and technology are an exciting mix and youth are the trend setters when it comes to the web. All the staff are passionate musicians, something Mr Coursey says is key to RSR’s growing success.

“Basically everyone who works here is extremely talented, thinks creatively, is a little bit quirky and a bit ‘geekish’ when it comes to computers.”

This year RSR will sell nearly $1.5 million worth of music courses, almost all to overseas customers, ironically, without ever having left the country.

“Basically exporting via the internet enables us to reach the world without leaving the comfort of the office,” says Mr Coursey. “Exporting has also created jobs for a number of talented, lovely people who I get a kick out of working with, and who take some pride in being the new interpretation of Kiwi and Canterbury ingenuity.”
 
Contact: Jon Coursey, Managing Director, Rock Star Recipes, phone 03 365 0800, email jon@rockstarrecipes.com, www.rockstarrecipes.com