Flavoreeds: Luring Kids In With Candy After Eight Years Of Careful Strategizing
After eight years spent meticulously designing a reed that tasted as good as it sounded, Walt Ostermeyer, the President of Flavoreeds, finally came up with a recipe for success. Boasting a wide range of flavors, Flavoreeds is one way to keep kids from turning away from their reeded instrument of choice.
If only this could apply to other hobbies involving wood -- flavored baseball bats, flavored karate boards, flavored paint -- maybe America's youth would stop wasting time on violent video games and pick up a hobby or two.
WALT OSTERMEYER: My name is Walt Ostermeyer, and I’m president of the Flavoreed company. And we also run a small retail store in Fort Wayne, Indiana called Mr. Music. Then directors would come in and complain that the students wouldn’t wet the reed long enough before they put it on the mouthpiece because they didn’t like the taste of cane, and reeds are made out of cane or bamboo so that’s not a very pleasant taste. So, the ladies in our store remembered the flavored toothpicks and so they said we should be able to do the same thing with the reeds, and it only took us about eight years and we did it. It took that long because we didn’t want to change the good quality of a playing reed by flavoring it, but now we have it down and it’s a pleasant experience and the kids enjoy it.
GRETCHEN HASSE: What’s your favorite flavor?
WALT OSTERMEYER: Well, my favorite flavor is Pina Colada. [LAUGHS]. No alcohol.
GRETCHEN HASSE: Okay. Very good.
WALT OSTERMEYER: But we try to take this one off the market because it leaves a little blue on the lip. We didn’t want that at all. That’s the only one that bleeds on the lip a little bit, but the kids loved it so much they insisted on it and it became our best seller. Now, you figure that one out. Sometimes you just don’t know until you try things.
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