A Roberts Creek artisan and entrepreneur has struck what could be a highly lucrative deal with Canada’s biggest music retailer to start selling his instruments in its stores.
For more than four years, Brynn Clingwall has been turning out a few hundred “melodic steel instruments” annually from his garage-sized, home-based workshop on Flume Road, selling them under the name Kindred Spirit Steel Drums both online and through some small music stores. Now nationwide retailer Long & McQuade has agreed to start selling his growing product line of metal drums.
Clingwall didn’t have to go knocking on the retailing giant’s door – it came to him. “I’m not sure how they found me,” he said in an interview. “It might have been some of my customers out in Ontario asking why they didn’t stock my instruments. So, I agreed to send [Long & McQuade] a test shipment, and now they’ve ordered a bunch more to sell in more of their stores.”
Clingwall had help initially developing his business through the Sunshine Coast Community Futures’ Local Entrepreneurs Acceleration Program (LEAP) in 2015. Since then, he’s been hand-manufacturing steel-tongue drums, ranging in size from 20 to 30 cm (eight to 12 inches), along with larger solid metal drums called handpans, which vary from about 50 to 58 cm in diameter. But the word “drum” is misleading. When you tap one of these with your fingers or soft mallets, what you hear is not a drumbeat or a metallic clank, but a subtle range of musical tones. The instruments can be purchased with various sound qualities and in a few different keys and scales.
“That allows people to have a freer expression with music because there are no wrong notes,” Clingwall said. “You can jam away on them.”
It’s something that Clingwall, an amateur musician, does himself whenever he gets the time, which is not often. “I’m usually too busy to play, but I do shows, playing at yoga studios and things like that. It gives me a little bit of a break.”
There will be even fewer such opportunities in the near term. The high-sales season of Christmas is coming, and there are also those Long & McQuade orders to fill. Add to that, Clingwall has started using a different manufacturing method for his smaller, steel-tongue units, a spun steel process performed in Vancouver. Up to now, they’ve been made from the tops of disposed propane tanks, which he recycled under an agreement with local landfills. But he said his product will be even better for it. “Spun material is more consistent for tonality.”
The retailing breakthrough has Clingwall pinching himself, but he credits his doggedly methodical approach to his craft. “This has been something I’ve been working on for years, slowly spiralling up,” he said. “If it’s going to be super successful long-term, this deal will define it.”
