Peter Wolf’s Entrepreneurial Spark at Work Building Brands and Writing Songs

By: Rick Landers

Peter Wolf with a Knagg's Keya T3 model - Photo credit: Steven Baumgardner

With his formidable music industry connections and hard won experience, international marketer Peter Wolf launched his company, Brandwolf, while working his magic getting the word out on the new Knaggs Guitar brand and producing his own brand of music. We first met Pete during his time at Paul Reed Smith Guitars, where he served the company as its Director of Global Sales and Marketing.  He’d begun his tenure at PRS when the company was in its infancy and was a key team player, as PRS Guitars became one of the most respected guitar brands in the world.  That experience, coupled with his prior marketing and sales work in Europe have proven to be instrumental in the early success of Brandwolf, but more visibly with the launch and steady growth of Knaggs Guitars.

After 18 months in business, Knaggs Guitars has been recognized by many of the top music publications and has received accolades for it’s line-up of guitars that are named after Knaggs Guitars operation’s locale, near the Chesapeake Bay in Greensboro, Maryland. In a short period of time the company has stacked up an impressive series of electric, bass and acoustic guitars that include the Choptank, Severn, Potomac, Patuxent, Keya, Chena and Kipawa models.

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Rick Landers:  In many respects it seems that you epitomize the entrepreneurial spirit of the music business, with your Brandwolf marketing firm, your collaboration with Knaggs Guitars, as well the release of your most recent CD.  How did you first get involved seriously in the music business and what drives you to succeed?

  Peter Wolf: Well, thanks, I appreciate that.  My involvement in the music industry was an accident in a way. Good friends of mine had started a small music store in Koblenz, Germany while I was drafted into the German army.  After my service, I first finished business school and started to work for a bank in my home town. We always stayed in touch, though and I took several trips with them to England to buy equipment you couldn’t really get in Germany back then.  I was sort of playing guitar, drums and some keys but nothing in earnest, really and also helped them organizing concerts and shows. At some point they offered me to become a partner and I took the offer, left the bank and started to work in the store.  Ironically, Juergen and Georg, my future partners initially asked me to help them doing wholesale, and looking for exclusive products we could market and sell in a fast growing environment. You have to keep in mind that during this time we would personally meet pretty much everybody that would become a household name in the musical instrument’s industry in the decades to come. It was an interesting scene with no real rules unless you created them. [Laughs]

The store grew really fast and by 1980, we moved into a 15,000 sf building, presenting a fully fledged store and doing 5-6 Million Deutschmarks in revenue per year.  We were a bunch of kids who worked really hard and learned pretty much everything by doing it.  I was running the guitar department and our reputation became to always ’have’ the latest coolest equipment.  People would visit the store from all over Europe. That’s how I became the importer and marketer of such brands as Hamer, Rocktron, Grove Tubes, Lakland, SansAmp, PRS and many others.

Rick: What prompted you to leave your native Germany and move to the States? 

Peter: Things were moving fast and in 1990 I decided to start a distribution company, which I named ‘PRS Guitars Germany’, exclusively importing and distributing several high-end guitar/amp related brands such as Soldano, Grove Tubes, SansAmp etc besides my main brand PRS.  That’s when it started to really take off in Europe and Asian markets. PRS grew fast and my involvement and friendship with Paul and PRS and the success we had together led to working directly for them. I became International Sales Manager for PRS in 1997, traveling the World and preaching the gospel for several years. In 2003, I moved to the U.S. and was promoted to Director of Global Sales and Marketing, until I left in March 2009.

Rick: Do you find the States a more fertile ground to start and develop a business, compared to challenges that you would face in Europe? 

Peter: I always thought that in the past, until some really greedy people screwed it all up! [Laughs]  I don’t think this is the case anymore.  Something has gone fundamentally wrong in the U.S. and needs to be fixed.

Rick: Many musicians would do well to better understand the business side of the music industry, if you were a mentor, what would you recommend a musician to do in order to gain insights and skills necessary to succeed?

Peter: It always depends on the individual situation. There are no general rules you can apply. I think it is important to have an understanding of finances and it is important to find people you can trust and work with, on all ends of the spectrum.

 Rick: What kinds of services do you offer prospective clients at Brandwolf?

Peter:  Brandwolf services focus on building and enhancing brands and products lines, strategic product development, artist relations and development and other support. I’ve met a lot of people and I have a pretty good understanding of distribution, logistics, branding, marketing, management, building infra structures internally and externally, sales and all these things that need to happen to grow a brand or put a product on the map, and make it stay.

Knaggs Guitars was the recipient of the "Best New Manufacturer 2011" award presented by the Music and Sound Retailer - Joe Knaggs (left} with Peter Wolf (right) - Photo credit: Larry Melton

Rick: Working with the start-up, Knaggs Guitars, have you found different challenges and opportunities than those experienced during your early days with PRS guitars?

Peter: I was still in Europe when PRS started.  I met Paul at the Summer show in Chicago in 1986 and they were already a year into it.  From what I gathered, was told and figured out myself, it was a similar situation except they didn’t know as much about the subjects I just mentioned. They had to learn all of it.  The other main difference is that they only came out with one single model and shape.  On the manufacturing end, this makes things a lot easier.

 Rick: What kind of personal and professional network have you been able to nurture over the course of over 30 years in the business and what kinds of values do you think are critical sustaining solid working relationships?

Peter: I’ve met a ton of people from all walks of life and have been able to gain insights in individual countries, societies, international businesses and even believe systems. I would say my most solid relationships are with retailers, distributors and media on a global level. I always thought it is important to see how products are doing in different markets, who they are represented by and why and how the brand is perceived from a higher vantage point.

As far as values are concerned, keeping your promises is probably the most important one.  To earn trust and respect, combined with hard work and persistence are most important. It is equally important to making smart decisions along the way and trying to come up with solutions that help everyone involved.

Rick: I see that Knaggs Guitars will be at Winter NAMM. Will the full product line be staged at the exhibit or just a couple representative models?

Peter Wolf - Photo credit: Aldo Garcia Solares

Peter: Yes, we are excited to be on the floor for the first time.  We will have a small booth with Fuchs Audio Technology whom I’ve been helping in the past two years.  We will have a few models there, perhaps five or six. There isn’t enough space, really to show more product.

Rick: Where can we find you while we’re roaming NAMM?

Peter:  We’ll be at booth # 5398 in Hall B.

 Rick: Tell us about your latest music project?

 Peter: I haven’t really done much lately.  I just didn’t have the time and muse and setting up two companies in this environment has been a challenge.

A few of previously unreleased tracks were picked up by my brother’s label in Sydney and are now available on Itunes and other Music down load sites.

I think there are three tracks right now under my name and then there is the Supernatural catalog of songs, as well.  I was thinking about doing a ‘Best of’ album at some point, but it would be too much at the moment. Perhaps next year, though.

Rick:  Keeping you life balanced between Brandwolf, Knaggs Guitars, your music and family life has to be a chore to keep things straight and to make certain your priorities are level headed. How do you keep all the balls in the air at once?

Peter: [Laughs] It’s been a hamster wheel.  I call it “the wheel”, actually.

I try to take it day by day and get everything done I think  needs to be done. Of course, there is much planning as well and consideration on any level.  There are a growing number of things, though that aren’t planned and happen anyway. I sometimes find it hard to accept

I can’t plan and control everything. I think I’ll start yoga soon. [Smiles]

Rick: When starting a business, it’s easy to let things run amok by trying to do all things at once, rather than a Kaizen approach that suggests incremental steps to reach one’s goal. Have you found that you’re drive to succeed needs to be harnessed in some way?

Peter: I’d always prefer the Kaizen approach, of course. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way.  We’ve basically started this company on a shoe string and had to be very careful with spending. I’m pretty sure we would have been able to do it much smoother had we had more capital to work with. Banks and this financial environment. Don’t get me started! We have good friends, though and people who believe in us. We have a very experienced team, headed by one of the best designers and builders I have ever met and I have met most of them. We have a very unique product line and our shapes and designs have a lot of potential. Last but not least, we have only really started to build instruments in May 2010 after finding the space, getting and setting up all the machinery, building jigs and fixtures, programming, sourcing and an endless list of other tasks.  We’ve only been in it for 18 months and our instruments are being played and cherished in over 20 countries already.  It is important to remind ourselves of that once in a while.

Rick:  Let’s fast forward to five years from now. Where do you want life to take you?

Peter: It would be nice to have some help and mentor some people to be able to delegate some of it.  I would like to make and play more music and perhaps have a vacation from time to time with family and friends who are spread across the planet.  Other than that, I’ll just stay on “the wheel” and keep things moving forward.