A vision in his music

A vision in his music - Customisation is the key for VI Music, director Lester Low tells TAN SEO YEAN

Business Times, The (Singapore) - March 18, 2008

PERSONALISED service for every customer's needs - that's the business philosophy driving VI Music, a music publishing and production house.

'I want to provide good service to my clients - really personal, where they can have warmth,' director Lester Low said in a recent interview. Such a strategy, or the lack of it, has helped VI Music build up a pool of regular customers and students who stuck with Mr Low and his partner, Liu Zhiwen, when VI Music shifted its premises four times to date.

Started in 2003 with minimal investment as a music publishing house, VI Music acted as an agent for composers. Realising the slow returns of the business, VI Music extended its services to music production where composers and writers of the company do song demos and recording in the company's in-house studio. Other than composing and demo-making, VI Music also branched out into training people in unplugged singing.

VI Music has a small team of two instructors while Mr Low deals more with the operational aspects of the business like administration, marketing and accounting.

As a small start-up, it attracts its customers usually by word-of-mouth, by virtue of the good service it provides.

'We very much customise all the requirements of our students and customers,' Mr Low said. The current 80 students at the company are allowed flexibility in attending their courses.

He said: 'The students can take a break from the lessons if they have to go overseas and resume when they come back. They just have to arrange with the instructor. I want my students and every member of the company to be comfortable with each other.'

Mr Low believes that the close relationship shared between students and instructors is also essential for successful collaborations.

During the frequent gatherings at VI Music, the composers can look for suitable collaborators like demo singers and lyricists, rather than being paired up to work with someone else.

In fact, Mr Low places such importance on the 'synergy' in the company that he had to make sure all his instructors 'bond with our family' before working with them.

VI Music (which stands for 'vision in music') did not start off well. The company could not have survived, if it wasn't for the passion Mr Low and his partner have. Mr Low said: 'In any creative industry, passion is really what keeps you going. Without passion, we would have given up long ago.'

Business started to pick up only in 2005 when both founders gave up their jobs to devote their time fully to their passion. 'If you don't leave your comfort zone, you will always be relying on something,' Mr Low said. He had a diploma in engineering and decided to quit his logistics day job, leaving him with no other income to rely on.

He said: 'When I became a full-timer here, I started to think of plans and strategies, any ideas I could use to bring in the sales. That's how we actually pushed ourselves to the next level.'

It was not an easy decision for Mr Low to quit his job and make his passion his career. Singaporeans are brought up to be practical; they are realistic, he said.

Mr Low held on to a make-or-break mentality when working to boost the company's profile.

And it helped. The company's revenue grew by 80 per cent from 2003 to 2005 and it started to make money last year.

But Mr Low is always looking for opportunities to improve. 'When people ask me how I'm doing, I always reply, 'could be better',' he said.

Recognising that the market is already saturated with music courses catering to young people who are also star-wannabes, Mr Low wants to focus on a niche market of corporate customers.

He said: 'I think everybody loves singing; it's just that some dare not sing. But n! ow everyone in the market is targeting teenagers, the superstar kind of thing, or the aunties and uncles who like to sing karaoke. One segment is being neglected - and that is the corporate sector. They may need to entertain clients in karaoke lounges. Thus they will be more confident about singing if they pick up a few techniques from us.'

Joint projects VI Music also works with institutions like Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) in music composing competitions and regularly holds seminars to share their experience in composing as well as in dealing with the intellectual property (IP) of the songs they compose. 'It's like seeding - people usually come back to us much later,' Mr Low says.

Indeed, most of the students and composers at VI Music are fresh graduates who go back to them after they have started earning money. VI Music also signs up the top ten compositions at an annual NTU music composing competition, hoping to market them to recording companies.

Through the recommendation of a friend, VI Music clinched a deal to work with Aviva for their dinner-and-dance in 2006. The company sent its staff for preparation courses before their performance. Some of the staff at UOB and members of the NTU alumni also became VI Music's customers after collaborations with the company.

But Mr Low reckoned that to clinch deals with corporations is not easy for his small company.

He said: 'It was so difficult to get any networking just by cold-calling the companies. But I keep trying. Hopefully, I can convince the human resource departments to tap on the recreation funds of the company, for their staff to come here where they can learn to sing and at the same time relax and bond with each other.'

And, to prove his point that his company is willing to customise its unplugged singing courses for customers, he said that his company once customised its courses for a group of Buddhist monks to help them to chant 'in pitch, in timing'.

Despite the challenge, the instructors at VI Music are willing to provide handwritten music scores to the students. 'As long as it is music, melody, I think we can work it out. We focus more on the theory aspect,' Mr Low says.

Other than taking care of his customers' needs, Mr Low also takes care of the team of composers working with him. With exclusive 3-5 year contracts, VI Music works closely with its team of composers.

Mr Low said: 'We want to take care of our writers. We want to make our writers feel that they are wanted. That's why we push their songs aggressively. When their songs are sold in the market, they are very happy. I am also very happy - just like seeing your son get married.'

Index Terms: Special Focus

Record Number: 11F7C011273CE430

Copyright, 2008, Singapore Press Holdings Limited