Protection Racket Ltd

Protection Racket in Japan

Protection Racket is the UK’s number one brand of drum and percussion cases, used by musicians such as Donavan Hepburn of Take That and Ian Paice of Deep Purple.

The company, Protection Racket Ltd, has been working alongside UK Trade & Investment’s International Trade Adviser, Chris Knight, to develop its export business and, by 2007, had succeeded in building an international presence in the US and parts of Europe. Following an enquiry via its website, the company turned its attention to Japan. With around 2,000 music industry retailers and a thriving school-based teaching programme, Japan represented a strong potential marketplace and Sales Director, Tommy Armstrong, was keen to find out more. He turned to the Export Marketing Research Scheme for advice on to researching the Japanese marketplace:

The Export Marketing Research Scheme, managed by the British Chambers of Commerce on behalf of UKTI, provides advice and funding for eligible companies wishing to research a potential export market. It is one of a number of UKTI services developed for UK exporters.

Tommy spent seven days in Japan talking to retailers, musicians and distributors. The results were unexpected, as Tommy explains:

“Japan has roughly the same population as the UK and we expected the market to be broadly similar. In actual fact, it is very different. Space is a real issue in Japan and we discovered that most people simply do not have room to keep a full drum kit at home. Whereas in the UK, and most other countries, a drummer playing two or three gigs a month would transport his kit with him by car, in Japan most musicians travel to the venue by public transport; the venue itself would have the basic kit already set up for the band to use. This had major implications for the marketing of our products. For a start, as musicians don’t need a full set of cases, the market was smaller than we had anticipated,  and because the cases are carried on trains and buses, the cases need to be far more portable. This explained why our earlier attempts to interest Japanese distributors had been fruitless.”

In the light of the marketing research, Protection Racket set about designing a new range of backpack-style cases and cases with shoulder straps. The new range of products, designed specifically for the Japanese market, helped secure the services of Yamaha Music Trading, one of the largest and most prestigious distributors in Japan. Protection Racket worked closely with Yamaha to refine the Japanese product range, which is now finding a market in other parts of the world as well.

Tommy concludes:

“Japan has become a significant market for us and working with Yamaha is opening many doors. They have customers in many different sectors and they are proactive in identifying new product lines that will meet their customers’ needs. Every month they are ordering a container-load of product, with around 400-500 pieces.

“The visit to Japan was the key; it gave us a whole different feel for the market. Without doing the field research, talking to people face-to-face, finding out exactly how the market works and what customers really want, I doubt we would ever have succeeded there.”