FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP – Chris Diehl and Justin Cleveland, the third-generation owners of Freehold Music Center, realized something was wrong when they saw traffic to the store’s website plummet and its voice mail fill with customers asking if they were still open.
Then it hit them. Freehold Music Center-Musical Instruments & Lesson Studio, a store two miles south on Route 9 that spun off from the original Freehold Music Center, was closing. But the piano store was still open. Their customers got confused.
“The big thing that happened was that, first off, everyone thought we were closed,” Diehl said.
Freehold Music Center, a piano store on Route 9 with a legacy that dates to 1951, remains open, selling keyboards to star musicians and amateurs alike. The owners said Jack Antonoff, a songwriter and producer for various artists, including Taylor Swift, had one delivered to his home on Long Beach Island. And baby boomers are picking up the hobby in retirement.
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Diehl and Cleveland have taken some of the old-school sales skills they picked up from their grandfather, Michael Diehl, and taken the company into the digital age. The internet has helped them expand their reach. But, as they saw recently, it also forced them to scramble to assure consumers that the Freehold Music Center store that closed was the one that sold guitars.
The disruption was a sign that consumers are getting bombarded with information, skim headlines and spend less time digging into details, presenting a new risk for businesses trying to protect their brands, experts said.
“There are so many ways to get our attention — and also many more things that are distracting us and calling for our attention,” said Ellen Bernhard, professor of communication at Georgian Court University in Lakewood.
An early customer named Bruce Springsteen
Diehl, 39, lives in Millstone with his wife, Stephanie and year-old son, Brodie. Cleveland, 43, lives in Brick with his wife, Cindy and three daughters, Maggie, 17; Emmaline, 4; and Ruby, 2.
In addition to the Freehold Township store, Diehl and Cleveland own Pianos of Princeton in Lawrenceville. And they have become the latest family members to own a business that has a rich history.
Michael Diehl started the business in 1951 on Throckmorton Street in Freehold, selling records and offering guitar and accordion lessons. The store changed locations, moving briefly to Diehl’s home on South Street, where it rented a guitar to a young neighbor, Bruce Springsteen.
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One year, a customer wanted to buy an accordion and trade in a piano. Diehl agreed. He placed an advertisement for the piano in the newspaper. And he quickly fielded 15 calls.
“I said, ‘I think we should get into the piano business,'” said Michael Diehl, now 96. “I learned all about pianos: how to tune, how to repair, how to sell, how to buy.”
As people migrated to the New Jersey suburbs, the business grew to seven stores with locations in Freehold and malls, including the Ocean County Mall in Toms River, which Diehl’s son, John, took over. But keeping up with the mall leases was difficult; musicians were downsizing from pricey organs to less expensive keyboards.
Business splits in two
The company scaled back, and in 1992, Michael Diehl decided to split the business between pianos and other instruments. He sold the non-piano business to Bill Marinella. The two businesses continued to operate under one roof at the Freehold Mall on Route 9.
Michael Diehl slowly retreated from the business, turning over the operation to John, before he officially retired at the age of 82. John leaned on Chris to develop the store’s website. And he sold the business to Chris and Justin when the lease expired in 2016.
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The piano and musical instrument stores went their separate ways. Diehl and Cleveland moved the piano store to a new shopping center on Route 9; Marinella moved his business to a new location in the Freehold Mall. But both hung onto the Freehold Music Center name.
“Somebody told me once that is very difficult to turn a business over to his son, but it’s almost impossible to turn it over to a grandson,” Michael Diehl said. “And I’m very proud that we have two grandsons that are running the business very successfully.”
Freehold Music Center sold 450 pianos last year, thanks in part to unlikely catalysts. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, consumers picked up a hobby they had always considered. And the baby boomer population, reaching retirement age, had more time on their hands, the owners said.
The momentum came to an abrupt halt, the owners said, when Marinella announced in February he would close his store and retire in a move that attracted plenty of news coverage.
Diehl and Cleveland said they have gotten stuck in something of a case of mistaken identity. The piano store began to sink on Google searches. Its owners were offered condolences by people they ran into. “I heard some bad news that you might not be around much longer,” one customer said on a voice mail. “Hopefully you still are.”
Bernhard, the Georgian Court professor, said the confusion was a sign that word travels fast on the internet, sometimes with harsh consequences. To combat it, she said, businesses should have their own robust social media presence.
“There’s so much information, so much content and keeping up (with social media) is really the best way to get people to see your brand and to recognize it,” she said.
Diehl and Cleveland have been busy on Facebook and Google trying to get the word out that they haven’t gone anywhere.
They take heart knowing that they can survive a brief slump. Unlike, say, food, their inventory doesn’t go stale. But they can’t keep pianos in the warehouse forever.
“It doesn’t go bad,” Justin Cleveland said, “but we have to pay for it.”
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter who has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry for more than 20 years. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.
