Pedro Fernandes & Co
Established with a mission of serving musicians for over 90 years, Goa’s oldest music store Perdo Fernandes & Co is also its biggest store that stocks a wide variety of Indian and Western musical instruments.
Established in the year 1928, ‘Pedro Fernandes & Co.’ is Goa’s biggest and only musical station that deals with manufacture, sales and repairs of all sorts of musical instruments. Having earned the reputation of being Goa’s only multi-musical repair station, Ashley Fernandes says that the store has completed 91 years of faithful service in November, this year!
Ashley further goes on to mention that his grandfather, Late Pedro Fernandes had started this business and used to be a violin player in local orchestras and bands during his younger days; and also worked at various music shops in Delhi and thereafter went to Malaysia to perform as part of an orchestra and represent his talent on an international platform. Upon his return to Goa, he found that there was an evident lack of infrastructure here for Goan musicians to import and purchase musical instruments to pursue their love for music. This became a prime reason for Pedro Fernandes to start this business! So also, his active participation in a popular musical band as the lead musician and exposure to platforms such as the ‘Governor’s Ball’ helped in generating business.
When asked about the kind of clientele and the age groups of people who frequent his store, Ashley very modestly stated that music has no age and that people of all ages right from children to retired persons step in and are lost in the pleasing environs of music and musical instruments.
Right from professional musicians to music lovers – a wide range of people visit Pedro Fernandes & Co. The approximate turnover of the store is a whopping four to five crores annually!
A distinctive facet of this store is that, they have in-store a diverse selection of musical instruments and also stock certain instruments which aren’t sold on a habitual basis.
All instruments are handled with extreme care and after-sale services are also offered by the store, which mainly covers the repairs aspect. Elucidating on the range of the products stored and sold at his store, Ashley mentioned that the price range of the instruments vary from a meager 50 rupees to an enormous 50 lakhs while the instruments themselves range from Indian to Western, microphones to sound systems, professional audio systems and so on!
To additionally quote Ashley on customer satisfaction, he says, “The most satisfying part of a business is when we see families coming to a store for generations, people who used to shop from my grandfather, come back to shop from me. To have people coming to our store for the last 91 years, is something that speaks volumes about our service.”
According to Ashley, the principal challenge that he has personally faced in course of running his business is to ensure availability of instruments as and when required and keeping up and being updated with constant changes in the massive field of music. With technological advancement, music is also evolving from analog to digital and thus the tenacious struggle to compete with this hi-tech era is also a major challenge!
Every flourishing business has some or the other action plan to enhance, amplify and improve their position in the market as well as maintaining its reputation. Similarly, Ashley Fernandes has plans of harnessing existing technology to expand their age-old business beyond the frontiers of Goa, and institute it at the national level.
Interestingly, Ashley himself happens to be a bass guitarist by passion, although he can play various other instruments, as well.
While in conversation, he shared few memorable episodes from his tuneful past. Ashley spoke of his meeting with George Harrison of The Beatles, and nostalgically narrated how George autographed his Bass guitar, and played with him, alongside two Goan musicians at ‘The Taj’ in 1990.
He further spoke of the day when Jim Marshall, founder and owner of Marshall Amplifications, visited his store and signed another of his guitar.
The musical artist known as ‘youngr’ who has recently performed in Goa, also paid a visit to his store and his entire band jammed up outside the store.
While concluding the conversation with a message to the readers, Ashley said, “It is scientifically proven that music makes you smarter. It’s an incredibly pleasant way of soothing your senses – especially with the stress that we suffer nowadays – so I recommend that everybody picks up a musical instrument and learns one at the earliest. It doesn’t have to be a large, life-size, expensive one, it could be something like mouth organ or even a flute. As long as it makes you happy, indulge in the world of melody. Music is life and that is why our heart has beats!”
