BizAims

<<<Read the Part 1<<< Pascucci grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the son of Italian immigrants of modest means. His family had a musical bent, and Vito began playing the trumpet as a young boy. By the time he was 12, he was traveling to Chicago on weekends for lessons. After his lesson, he used to stop in at the Chicago Musical Instrument Company and watch the repairmen. When he was a teenager, he began repairing instruments in the back of a music store run by his older brother, Ben. In 1943, Pascucci was drafted into the army. He applied to join the army band, and was given a spot as the band repairman. Pascucci's band included three former members of the Cleveland Symphony, and with this kind of competition, he could not make it as a trumpet player. But later the famed swing band leader Glenn Miller began putting together his own army band. He snagged the symphony players, and they recommended he take Vito Pascucci as well. When Pascucci got a letter ordering him to report to the Glenn Miller band, he thought it was a hoax. Pascucci spent days trying to get the letter authenticated. He had no idea how Miller would have heard of him. When they finally met, Pascucci recalled that Miller treated him like a nonentity. But Pascucci had a chance to show his skills when a bandmate came to him with a smashed trumpet that he needed to be able to play the next morning. Pascucci worked all night and repaired the damaged trumpet with only a broomstick. Miller was impressed, and they began having lunch together every day. They became good friends, and came up with a plan to launch a chain of Glenn Miller Music Stores when the war was over. They planned to import European instruments, which were of better quality than U.S.-made ones.

Glenn Miller's plane disappeared over the English Channel on December 15, 1944. Pascucci was crushed at the loss of his friend. Nevertheless, he went on with plans he and Miller had made, and arranged to visit musical instrument factories in France. He wanted to meet the maker of Noblet clarinets, because he had seen those instruments at the Chicago Musical Instruments store he used to haunt as a child. Someone directed him to the Leblanc factory in La Couture-Boussey, where he met Georges and Leon Leblanc. The family had suffered during the German occupation. The Leblancs had had to trade clarinets for food in order to survive. The factory was down to only 20 workers, and raw materials were virtually non-existent. But the family instantly took to the young American repairman, showing him the workshop and teaching him some new skills. When he told the Leblancs about the Glenn Miller Music Stores idea, they instead asked him to distribute their instruments in the United States. Pascucci was taken aback. He felt that he did not know enough about business to take on such a responsibility. But the Leblancs liked him and trusted him. He left the factory with a duffel bag full of clarinets, and Leon Leblanc promised to meet him in the United States when the war was over.

Leblanc kept his promise and wired Pascucci to come to New York in 1946. The first order of business was to sever the firm's relationship with Gretsch & Brenner. Walter Gretsch had died, and the Leblanc business contract had passed to his daughter Gertrude. Gertrude happened to be married to John Jacob Astor, one of the wealthiest men in the country. Pascucci could not believe Leblanc would choose him, a poor Wisconsin boy, to run the U.S. distributorship, rather than the Astors. But all this worked out, and Pascucci entered a 50-50 partnership with G. Leblanc Cie., forming Leblanc USA in May 1946. Although Leblanc had wanted Pascucci to work in New York, where the musical instruments import business was centered, Pascucci insisted on returning to his hometown. So he signed a lease for a tiny storefront in Kenosha. He began by taking in the Leblanc instruments and making them playable, something Walter Gretsch had never bothered to do. Demand for musical instruments was on the rise, with the war over and a return to peacetime activities. With the baby boom that followed the war, school music programs also grew quickly, and Leblanc USA began supplying inexpensive instruments for beginners.

Expansion in the 1960s 

The school market was the best opportunity for the young company, as the country's school-age population swelled. The company began importing inexpensive, durable instruments that were easy to play. It began in the 1950s with a line of metal clarinets. But plastic clarinets were already popular, so the firm abandoned metal and began making plastic student instruments. Demand was so great that the French factory could not supply enough. So Leblanc USA began manufacturing its own instruments for the first time, forming the plastic bodies and fitting them with French-made keys. This new line was given the name "Vito." Eventually the entire "Vito" clarinet line was made in Kenosha, including the keys. The small factory expanded in 1953, and then again several times in the 1960s.

Leblanc worked to tame the school music industry, which had been a highly fractured market. In 1950 the company hired a music educator, Ernest Moore, to work on educational programs and materials for music teachers. Leblanc was the first wind instrument manufacturer to hire a music educator, and it continued to keep the post filled with distinguished pedagogues up to the present time. Leblanc also began organizing monthly meetings for musical instrument dealers, giving them a chance to compare notes and discuss ways to improve the business. The dealers who met under Leblanc's auspices adopted a rent-to-own policy, whereby students rented an instrument for a year and the payments could be put toward an eventual purchase. This became the standard way the student music industry worked, and it made sense for both the students and the instrument dealers. Some of the dealers who had met at the Leblanc meetings later organized the professional group the National Association of School Music Dealers. >>>Continue>>>Part 3.