Family business marks 25th anniversary: Players Music Accessories.

IN 2008 PLAYERS MUSIC Accessories celebrates 25 years as a family-owned business manufacturing a complete line of premium band, orchestra, guitar, and percussion instrument cleaning and maintenance products. Since 1983 the company has been a leader in private labeling, sublimation printing, and silk screening on micro fiber cleaning cloths.

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Company founder Tony LaLonde started his career in the music industry working in the family repair shop in the 1950s. His father was an early inventor of drum products and holds patents on drum pedals, drum head rings, hi-hats, mouthpiece pullers and several other products. LaLonde has followed in his father's footsteps with five music product patents including the clean sweeps for flute, clarinet, and saxophone, snake brushes for brass instruments, weight adjustment systems for Duratech drum sticks, and a guitar mute.

In 1976 LaLonde opened Tony's Music & Repair, a "dinky little store" that became the first of four music retail stores he would open in the San Jose bay area. His supplier, Coast Wholesale, couldn't keep him in stock on maintenance kits. LaLonde learned early on that he could greatly increase his profits by making add-on sales to his band rental customers, and thus developed some effective sales and merchandising techniques for doing so.

In 1983 LaLonde turned his flair for merchandising "small items" into a new business. Players Music Accessories manufactures and markets a full line of oils, polishes, snakes, brushes, swabs, cloths, maintenance kits, violin shoulder pads, Duratech Drum Sticks, and other music accessories.

In keeping with the family tradition, Tony's daughter Jodi Ann Parker is the current CEO of Players Music Accessories.