FI V E M INUTE S W ITH
ANDY ROSSI
Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Korg USA By Brian Berk Considering he has spent a lifetime in the music industry, Korg USA senior vice president of sales and marketing, Andy Rossi, has plenty of great information to share. We got the opportunity to pick his brain during in an in-person interview at the company’s Melville, N.Y., headquarters. So, let’s get to the interview, starting with a rundown of his storied career. The Music & Sound Retailer: Take us through your background and career in the MI industr y. Of course, many know you were at Fender. Tell us about that experience, as well as why you wanted to join Korg USA. Andy Rossi: It’s a common story. I’ve spent a lifetime in the music industry. I come from a very musical family, played in bands in the New York area, worked retail, attended music schools and gained a lot of great experience doing all that. I was one of the smart guys in the band, helping to handle the money and logistics, strategy and such. But that means one of two things: You are smart enough to take the band somewhere, or you are smart enough to know when it’s time to get out. For me, I knew that life was not for me, and I wanted more stability, to have a family and so on. Early on, I joined Steinberger Guitars and started to learn about the MI business. On a quick side note, now that Korg USA purchased Spector, Ned Steinberger was here [at our headquarters] just a couple of weeks ago. He and I reconnected. He designed one of the earliest Spector basses, so the circle came all the way around. After a few years at Steinberger, I joined Korg USA when it was splitting the sales team to handle Marshall and Korg. At the time, they were hiring reps just for Marshall. I was a rock and roll guitar player with great sales chops and a good feel for what makes this industry tick. So I was offered the position with Korg selling Marshall. I remember thinking, Oh my god, this is heaven. And it was heaven. It was a great job. During those years, big stacks were still very popular. I did that for a few years, and it was really fun. I got to work with all the iconic New York retailers in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and really learned a lot. From there, I went on to a be a Fender sales rep, did that for a few years and became the east coast regional sales manager for Fender. I spent 20 years at Fender, working all the way up to senior vice president of global sales. During my time at Fender, I started to travel around the world, getting a global education of what the music industry was really like. I got my “master’s degree” in the global music industry. I give a lot of thanks to Fender for that.
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As things were changing at Fender, my time came to an end there. I left Fender and was living in Phoenix. I started to wonder, What’s next? I didn’t want to just get any job. I wanted to see if I could apply what I learned in business, not just selling guitars, but to be part of a team that was trying to grow and go to a company that had good growth potential. So, I contacted Joe Castronovo, the president and CEO of Korg USA. I told him I was interested in joining a good team at a smaller company than where I was at. I didn’t want a big corporation. Joe and I talked, and I came back to New York as senior vice president of sales and marketing at Korg USA. The company was reconfiguring itself, and Joe was rebuilding the company and I wanted to be part of that. In the five years I’ve been here, we’ve really reconfigured the brands, reconfigured the organization and reconfigured a lot of our programs. The company is on a straight path for growth now, and we have more to do. The most recent change was Korg USA purchasing Spector, as I mentioned. We were the distributor of Spector and knew there was more potential that could be met if we owned it. We have a diverse environment here. We are not just a distributor. Of course, we also own Korg and Vox. From minute to minute, we can be talking about Spector sales in the Europe and then Blackstar or Korg sales in the U.S. It’s a lot of fun. Never a dull moment. Keeps you on your toes for sure.
The Retailer: You mentioned owning Spector instead of distributing it. In general, what’s the difference in owning a brand
MAY 2019
