Ellis Drum Shop
By
Hundreds of drums of all shapes, sizes and colors, originating from as far away as Morocco to as near as the workshop in the basement cover the walls and flood the showroom floor of Ellis Drum Shop in St. Paul.
In the mid ’90s, Tim Ellis dreamed of a place where he could store his collection of drums and develop an operation where he could better serve his burgeoning and loyal clientele. From that dream Ellis Drum Shop, a boutique retail store that would eventually design and manufacture its own line of custom drums, was born on University Avenue in 1996.
Ellis, who has been a drummer for more than 35 years, used to run the drum shop at Guitar Center in Roseville. He said that he was disgusted with the way Guitar Center treated its employees, vendors and customers.
His clients, like Minnesota jazz drumming great Phil Hey, loved him and followed him to his next endeavor at Torp’s Music in Minneapolis and eventually into the first Ellis Drum Shop.
“I’ve known Tim for a long time,” Hey said. “I have actually only been to Guitar Center once in my life and it was when Tim worked there. I hated the store and never went back, but I really liked him. He was very friendly and had a ton of knowledge about drums. I was actually one of the very first customers in their old store on University.”
That store was a 1,500-square-foot space Ellis rented for the first five years of his venture. The open space shrunk to the size of a hallway once it was filled with the drums, cymbals and accessories he had purchased with a $150,000 loan.
Business was good and by the end of the first month Ellis was turning a profit.
“From all the experience I had in sales I knew I could sell screen doors on a submarine, but I knew the key was to have a really good business plan and I had to hire out for that,” Ellis said.
From the beginning, his focus was on service. Ellis said he wanted to create a “truly unique atmosphere for drummers of all walks of life.” He wanted to create the Midwest’s first full-service drum shop where drummers could hang out and where the employees were personable and knowledgeable about drums. In fact, every one of Ellis’ employees is a drummer who was hired based on personality and music experience.
After five years, Ellis grew out of that first shop and bought a building nearly five times its size on Snelling Avenue. Business continued to blossom and Ellis began to offer drum lessons and even to build its own line of high-end custom drums, which are used as the house kit from the Turf Club to Seventh Street Entry. Dave King of Happy Apple and Halloween Alaska also plays Ellis drums.
Rob Demarais has built drums for Ellis for three years. He can fabricate and assemble a drum kit in two or three days, but usually quotes a four-to-six-week wait because he is so busy.
In 2001, when Hey was going through what he called a “devastating divorce,” Tim Ellis offered to build him his own custom set of drums simply as a friend taking care of another friend.
“I play that kit about 90 percent of the time now,” Hey said. “I can throw new heads on them and they tune up easier and stay in tune longer than any of my old drums.”
When Hey walked through the door of Ellis‘ showroom, Connor, who works days behind the counter and nights behind the drum-kit of a New Orleans-style jazz band, boomed, “Phil Hey everyone!” Connor and the other two employees on the floor and the two customers in the store at that time gave the middle-aged jazz drummer a standing ovation.
But when Carlos, a young neighborhood drummer who appeared to be no older than late teens or early twenties walked in, he was treated with that same warm care that Hey and all the regulars at Ellis receive.
“Our service is the biggest thing,” Tony said. “It’s what keeps people coming back. We are the face of a shop. We don’t all wear the same uniform and we don’t use computers for anything we do. We want our customers to know that we are ordinary drummers just like them and by doing all our receipts and everything by hand it helps us interact with them. We educate people, we talk to them and we care about them just like we would want them to do for us.”
Although Ellis Drum Shop has taken about a 15-percent hit this year compared to last year’s sales, possibly due to the poor economy’s affect on the music industry, its owner is not worried. Last year he opened a store in Richfield that is doing very well and, other than another small shop in Illinois, Guitar Center is really its only competitor in the Midwest.
“Our stick prices are about a buck-80 below anybody else and we just slaughter Guitar Center on drum head prices,” Connor said.
“If I could open up a store in Guitar Center’s parking lot, I would,” Ellis said. “I don’t fear them — I just fear that they are too far away for me to steal their business.”