William J. McCormick.

WILLIAM J. MCCORMICK, longtime chairman of Jordan Kitt's music, the nation's leading keyboard retailers, died on December 24 after a four-month bout with melanoma. He was 69 years old. In a successful 36-year career in the music industry he applied a disciplined management style to continually reposition his Maryland-based retail chain to adapt to the changing dynamics of the keyboard market.

A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, McCormick graduated first in his class at The College of Holy Cross in nearby Worcester, and then earned an MBA from Harvard. His career trajectory from Harvard to the piano and organ industry was a circuitous one. Jordan Kitt's Music, which dates back to 1912, had been acquired by the Checchi Corporation, a small conglomerate, in 1969. McCormick had gone to work for founder Vincent Checchi in 1962, helping him turn around a struggling sugar mill in the Philippines. Five years later he took a job with the Glendinning Companies, a noted marketing consultant. Then in 1971 Checchi persuaded him to come back to Washington and run Jordan Kitt's and two sporting goods retailers. While he was initially skeptical about taking the helm of a piano and organ retailer--"Everyone said organs were a growth business because of the coming 'leisure boom,' but I was skeptical," he once recalled--he saw Jordan Kitt's as a solid business opportunity. "Owning my own business was a priority, and I saw the possibility of being able to acquire Jordan Kitt's," he said a few years ago.

In 1971 Jordan Kitt's was a company with a strong core team, a good reputation in the marketplace, but a lack of strategic vision. Within three years, McCormick rectified that failing, closing six of the company's seven locations and opening nine new stores, primarily in mall locations. With the new stores, the company expanded its reach into the nearby Baltimore market. In 1976 he acquired 51 percent of the company from Checchi Corp. In 1983 he purchased the remaining 49 percent at a valuation seven times his original purchase price.

By 1981 Jordan Kitt's operated 21 mall stores in Washington and Baltimore. But as the organ business began to fade and the economics of mall locations changed, McCormick looked for new avenues of growth. He gradually exited mall stores and replaced them with larger freestanding stores that were better suited to merchandising grand pianos. He also used strategic acquisitions to enter new markets, buying Wilmington Piano in the Wilmington, Delaware/Philadelphia market; Temple of Music in Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Steinway Piano Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. More recently, he formed a partnership with Schmitt Music of Minneapolis to acquire Beautiful Sound of Chicago.

For a small, supposedly unsophisticated business, the music industry has humbled a large number of well-credentialed executives. McCormick stands as a notable exception. He came to Jordan Kitt's with a Harvard MBA and lengthy experience in packaged goods marketing, yet managed to be extremely successful. Reflecting on his career, he once recalled, "When I took over I knew I didn't know how the business worked, so I listened to people who did know--people in our organization like Marvin Moore and Clem D'Avella; other retailers like Bob Schmitt [Schmitt Music, Minneapolis], Bob McDowell [Ludwig Aeolian, St. Louis], and Bud Streep [Streep Music, Florida]--and our suppliers. They gave me invaluable lessons about margins, inventory, promotion, and people management. If you try to translate package goods marketing principles into the piano retailing without understanding the differences between the two businesses, you're going to fail." Of other MBAs who stumbled in the industry, he said, "They thought they didn't have anything to learn. Most of them never walked into a dealership, and they didn't have a clue. The problem was really just arrogance."

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McCormick served as chairman of the American Music Conference and was a NAMM director. He was also a director of the Washington Performing Arts Society, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Business Bank of Virginia.

McCormick is survived by a son Joseph and daughters Cathleen McCormickFromm and Maureen McCormick-Grant. His son-in-law, Rick Grant, Jordan Kitt's current CEO.

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