Here we are in a brand new year, just one year away from the year 2000! Who would have ever believed it would get here so quickly? Of course, at the pace things move at Sweetwater, it probably should come as no surprise that the days, weeks and months are simply rocketing by.

Still, with all this change, it’s sometimes fun (and often important) to go back and look at where we started. While Sweetwater had been in business as a recording studio for quite a few years, it wasn't until the late 1980s that we began to get heavily into retail sales. And 1990 was the year that we really took the plunge and began to get the word out to musicians and engineers that there was another way to buy quality equipment at great prices from people who actually knew what they were talking about.

How many of you remember our Fall 1993 issue which introduced the Korg X3 and the first Marantz CD recorder?

We started with some small ads in the various industry magazines, but most of our business came from the best source possible: Word-of-mouth. Nothing beats having satisfied customers tell their friends about a product or service that really is better than the competition (which, at that time, was mostly local music stores). At the same time we were already publishing our Sweet Notes newsletter, though at the time it was only a black and white, four-page mailer, but it was amazing how many calls we’d get each day from people requesting that they be added to the mailing list.

By 1992 (the year we first featured the landmark Kuzweil K2000 on our cover), we had expanded Sweet Notes to an 8-page format, and in 1993, made the move to 10 pages. We had a few writers (mostly Sweetwater Sales Engineers) and an electronic publishing specialist on staff to put together each issue. Finally, in 1995, we made the big switch to full color and 12 pages (an issue that also introduced the world to our brand new Web site!).

Yet here we are in 1999 - not quite four years later - and you are holding in your hands the first fully bound, 16-page issue of Sweet Notes! And we think it’s better than ever. Still, the basic philosophy behind the publication hasn’t changed: We try to make the articles interesting and informative without too much of a sales angle. We figure that once you know what new products are out there and what you might be interested in, you’ll call us.

We should also mention here that just about all the issues of our 1999 Equipment Directory have been mailed, so you should either have your copy already or have it in your hands in a matter of days. Copies are also going out to all our new customers.

And may we say here that we think our creative team is without equal in the industry - they turn out absolutely first class work on super tight schedules just about every single day! Thanks for all the extra effort people.

Now with all this information out there at so many people’s fingertips, you can bet we’ve had to add more phone lines and more operators to take your calls. Even so, during peak times, you might get a recording before being transferred to an operator, but as we continue to add lines (it’s pretty much a never ending process around here), this should happen only on the rarest of occassions.

We’ve also been adding new Sales Engineers on a regular basis and have been actively recruiting all across the country (we know you’ve seen the ads here in Sweet Notes and in all the major magazines). Check out Jeff Radke’s column for more about our sales staff and why they are light years beyond being “order takers.” These folks come in with a head stuffed full of real world knowledge and experience and, from what we’ve seen, only seem to get smarter every day.

Thanks for a wonderful 1998! See you next issue.