Right in Our Region ........................Cover

Right in Our Region

GearFest: Fort Wayne’s Global Reach

Sweetwater’s GearFest pivoted from a location event to an exclusively online event with global reach last year. Bassist Ian Hill, of Judas Priest, and Peter Frampton are among headlining celebrities who’ll take part in this year’s online event June 25 & 26.

By Peggy Werner

For fans of Sweetwater GearFest, this time of year is music to their ears.

GearFest is known around the world as a free, action-packed, two-day event of online seminars, workshops, live performances, artist appearances, great deals, giveaways and, most of all, the latest gear news and products offered by Sweetwater of Fort Wayne, Ind. This year’s event will be June 25 & 26.

GearFest Executive Director Bob Bailey says there’s nothing like it anywhere else.

“The Deal Zone is the first place people run to and we have customers from all over the world wanting to meet up with the hundreds of companies showing the latest products and gear for recording artists,” he says.

Panels of engineers, producers, light designers and awardwinning song writers and musicians will talk about what they do and the art of achieving excellence in their fields. Watch demonstrations and videos of new gear featuring Sweetwater experts and vendor representatives. Attendees will get the inside scoop directly from manufacturers and learn what’s coming out next in brand-name equipment.

Traditionally held on the Sweetwater campus in Fort Wayne, GearFest pivoted to an exclusively online event last year and will be online again this year, Bailey says.

“This year’s online GearFest has been greatly expanded and improved with more presentations, more big-name artists and better deals,” he says.

Among the many headliners at this year’s festival are

Grammy-winning musician, singer, songwriter and producer Peter Frampton and bassist Ian Hill of Judas Priest. More big-name artists will be announced on Sweetwater.com in upcoming days.

Sweetwater is the largest online music retailer in the world. It specializes in recording equipment and software, guitars and guitar accessories, bass guitars and accessories, keyboards and synthesizers, drum sets and drum accessories, live sound equipment, DJ equipment, microphones and more. All shipping is free and products come with a two-year warranty. There’s live phone support, flexible pay options, an onsite repair shop and an online Knowledge Sweetwater was founded by Fort Wayne resident Chuck Surack in 1979. It specializes in recording equipment and software; guitars, keyboards, drums and their accessories; and other music technology items. Base with more than 27,000 articles on music technology and audio engineering. free arcade, fitness center with a personal trainer, salon and

Sweetwater focuses on providing exceptional customer spa, medical clinic staffed by a full-time doctor and a registered service and employs more than 500 highly trained sales engineers, nurse. Everything is open to the public, except the fitness center many of them musicians, explains Heather Herron, vice president and medical clinic, which are for employees only. Sweetwater of corporate communications. employs more than 2,000 people. The sales engineers undergo 13 weeks of proprietary training The main building is also home to the Sweetwater before interacting with customers. Continued training takes place Academy, serving more than 900 students. A large outdoor twice weekly so that they have the latest information on new covered amphitheater hosts summer concerts and other events. products. Customers are paired with a specific sales engineer Sweetwater was founded by Fort Wayne resident Chuck who gets to know them and their goals. Surack in 1979 as a recording studio in his home. He went “That one-on-one approach is at the core of what we do. from the recording studio business into the music technology It’s not about the sale, it’s about helping our friends make their retail business after he was frustrated in his own attempts to dreams come true,” Herron says. find a reliable, knowledgeable music technology retailer with

The Sweetwater campus is 163 acres large, located on the affordable prices, strong customer service and technical support. west side of Fort Wayne. The main building is about 400,000 In the early 1980s, the revolutionary Kurzweil K250 square feet large. There’s also a 500,000 square-foot distribution keyboard emerged. The groundbreaking keyboard gave center on the southwest side of the property. The campus houses musicians and composers access to realistic orchestral sounds, the music store along with a performance theater, three large among others, opening new possibilities for music composition conference rooms, a full-service diner, gourmet coffee shop, and performance.

Surack created his own sound library for the keyboard and gained a national reputation as an expert at programming the instrument. Renowned musicians such as Stevie Wonder and Kenny Rogers began consulting with Surack, purchasing K250 factory options and upgrades through him, and eventually Sweetwater became a Kurzweil dealer.

As Surack’s expertise became known, customers kept coming back to him for product advice and eventually the company began representing more product lines and rapidly developed and implemented its unique philosophy of relationship-based selling, which treats customers as friends. ❚