Page 28 - 914INC - Q1 2016

The Sound of Success
Rock Island Sound, which originated from one man’s love of guitar, has become a three-sYtore hit with Westchester music lovers. By Ken Valenti
College in the 1990s.“I would go to school in the morning, then teach in the afternoon and play at night,” he recalls. “So in those days, I didn’t sleep much.”
He opened the Rye store first, in September 2005. Many of his students lived in that area, and a friend of his in real estate knew of a small shop available on Milton Ave, near Rye Playland. (He named the business after a speck of land, Rock Island, which he’d spied on a map of Long Island Sound in a Rye diner.) It cost him roughly $100,000 to open the shop, and when he did, he was teaching 50 or 60 students himself, working seven days a week. Two years later, he hired a drum teacher.
Beating the Chains; Mastering the Internet
In 2009, he expanded and opened the shop at 6 Main Street in Tarrytown in what had been a shoe store. Bessolo did an extensive renovation. Then, three years ago, he opened his larg- est shop, at 54 Main Street, a couple of blocks away from the second. Formerly an attorney’s office, the 2,000-square-foot space includes five soundproof rooms for teaching. He estimates that each store took another $100,000 to open. Along the way, he
p
Paul Bessolo, owner of Rock Island Sound, uses strategic pricing, personalized service, and value-added offerings to compete with the big chains.
recalling Roger Daltrey in the 1970s, and you may hear “Lay, Lady, Lay” or “Wild Horses” playing in the background among the gleaming Fenders and Gibsons hanging in rows on the walls.
But if that style of music has passed its prime in the popular scene, Bessolo’s stores are only becoming more vital. Over the past decade, Rock Island Sound has grown from one store to three—one in Rye and two in Tarrytown—surviving the struggle with big-box stores and nav- igating the challenge of Internet sales by also offering music lessons and a full range of services.
His business started with the lessons. Bessolo began playing guitar and piano as a child growing up in Argentina. After arriving in the United States 23 years ago, he was eking out a living playing in rock and blues bands and doing studio work. But he wanted more security.
“You can make a living as a mu- sician. You can get by,” he says. But if you want to get to the next level, you’ve got to do something more. “So you teach to complement your income,” he explains.
Bessolo took on students even as he went back to school and studied classical composition at Purchase
26 914INC. Q1 2016
Photographs by Michael Polito
ou don’t hear Dylan, the Customers can learn to play a Stones, or Pink Floyd on the wide range of instruments, have in- airwaves the way you used struments repaired and rent all the to, but they’re still playing at sound equipment needed for a wed- Rock Island Sound. Find ding gig. “We have everything you yourself talking to the store’s need for a band to perform,” Bessolo
owner, Paul Bessolo, his blond curls says.
MONEY TALK