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Sylvia Woods Harp Center
Year Founded: 1992
Core Business: Selling Celtic and classical harps, along with harp recordings, sheet music and books
Revenue in 1997: $950,000
Revenue in 1998: $1 million
Employees in 1998: 5
Employees in 1999: 5
Goal: To offer the finest instruments to professional and amateur harpists
Driving Force: Growing popularity of folk and New Age music
By JASON BOOTH
Staff Reporter
Looking for a $30,000 classical harp trimmed with gold leaf? You don’t need to fly to Europe or even New York. Just drive to Glendale and visit the Sylvia Woods Harp Center.
With more than 50 harps on display and annual revenues approaching $1 million, the store is acknowledged as the biggest retail outlet for harps in the United States, and possibly the world.
“Often, if you call the harp maker, you’ll have to wait four months before delivery,” Woods said. “But if you call me, chances are I’ll have a couple on the showroom floor.”
Through her store and mail-order business, Woods sells about 200 harps a year, plus a large selection of harp recordings, sheet music and literature.
The harps range in price from about $1,000 for a smaller Celtic instrument to as much as $30,000 for a full-sized classical model gilded in gold. Woods buys the Celtic harps from several craftspeople throughout the West Coast, but the classical instruments come from just two sources in Chicago and Italy.
“I sell the best,” Woods said. “That’s why people come to me. I know my reputation is on the line every time I sell a harp.”
The attention to quality is appreciated by customers.
“When you buy a harp, you have to trust the people at the distributor to understand the sound that is right for you,” said Paul Baker, a professional harpist who plays with several orchestras and performs for Hollywood film scores. “You can count of the ears of the people who work there.”
Along with being a successful business owner, Woods is an accomplished musician good enough to win the All-Ireland Harp Championship in 1980 and to tour the world with a folk music group.
In fact, her business began as a sideline to her music career. While touring, she continually received inquiries about where people could buy harps and sheet music.
“I was referring people to the only Celtic harp maker around,” she recalled. “Then I realized it was really silly, that I should be selling (harps) myself rather than making referrals. So I became kind of a moving store.”
She started the mail-order business through her home. But it grew so rapidly through the ’80s that she opened the shop on Glendale Boulevard in 1992 to accommodate the growing operation.
She says 75 percent of her revenue is still generated by mail orders that come from as far away as Asia and Africa. Many of the harps she sells never hit the showroom, but are shipped directly from the maker to the customer.
“When I started, there were mostly just the big classical harps,” she said. “Today most of the business is in small harps, because they are much more easy to play, cheaper, and easier to lug around.”
The rise in popularity also has been reflected in the market for recordings of harp music. Woods said that when she started her mail-order business, few recordings featuring the Celtic harp were available. Today dozens of new recordings are released every month.
Also helping business is the “New Age” movement; former hippies, who now have the money and time to play the harp, are among the best customers.
Woods even sees a surprising amount of impulse buying. “It’s amazing how many people call me up who have never seen a harp, never touched a harp,” she said. “They just send me $5,000, and I send them a harp.”
Occasionally, interior designers buy harps simply for the look they can add to a room.
Along with Woods, the store has two full-time and two part-time employees. The full-timers have been there since Woods opened the store.
These days, Woods focuses on bookkeeping and working with customers and suppliers. She also finds time to write. “I go away to Hawaii for a month at a time to write my books, and I’m not at all worried about my business,” she said. “I know I’m very lucky because most store owners never go on vacation.”
