Moorman’s store, Overture Audio, had rented space from Fox on S. Main since 1989. He’d been in the sound business even longer. As an undergrad at Ball State, “I was a full-blown audio fanatic, and I was causing my roommates and friends to go buy stereos,” he recalls. So as graduation approached in 1981, he decided to see if he could make it a career.
“I sent out 125 resumes and got back maybe seven responses,” he says. “But this little place in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said, ‘Come on up and talk to us.’ That was Absolute Sound” on State St., upstairs from what’s now Amer’s Deli.
Back then, running an audio store “was pretty easy, and just about anybody could make money,” Moorman recalls with a smile. “You asked a college kid what he needed, he’d say a stereo and maybe a car and beer. It was mandatory.”
He became manager of Absolute Sound and ran it for eight years. “Then in May of 1989 I walked up to the front door and my key didn’t work the lock. My boss walked up and said the owners had sold the stores.
“I was married and had just bought a house, so I panicked for about a week. Then Duncan Cole, a customer of mine who owns Sam’s Store, found out and asked me to have a drink and talk about it. He’s the one who said, ‘Why don’t we open a store?'”
Cole recalls the meeting. “I had borrowed a pair of speakers, and when I took them back the door was locked,” he says. He remembers telling Moorman, “I want a hi-fi store in this town, and you’re the guy to do it. You’re young and full of yourself.”
The thought of having his own store “had not even crossed my mind,” Moorman admits. But they soon formed a successful partnership, with Cole supplying the capital and business experience and Moorman the passion and technical know-how.
Cole’s investment in Moorman paid off–but after fourteen years, he got tired. “I’d work Sundays at Sam’s and then ride my bike to Overture and work on the books for a couple hours,” he says. “I had a wife and three kids, and I wanted more time in my life. I knew Keith could run the thing successfully, so I sold my part to him in 2003, and after that I bought Sam’s from my father.”
By then, the audio business wasn’t so easy. First, turntable sales plummeted when CDs replaced records, then CD player sales plummeted when .mp3s replaced CDs, then speaker sales plummeted when dinky earbuds replaced enormous speakers. And then along came the Great Recession, which shuttered hundreds of audio stores across the country.
“The worst years [on Main St.] were the last years,” Moorman says. “We tightened our belts, but 2009 and 2010 were particularly bad … I was looking at the numbers, and I thought it can’t get much worse and be worth doing.”
That’s when he thought about retiring. “But I have three guys here that have been working for me for a very long time and I was really close to,” he says. So he set out to find a new location.
He came upon the former O’Leary Paint on W. Stadium. “I thought I’d maybe rent but the number was steep. I asked the agent about renting to own, and he told me they would be willing to sell outright. It turned out it was cheaper to buy than to rent.”
The building needed “everything,” Moorman recalls. “We got it down to a forty-by-one-hundred-foot box. Everything is from scratch, and thankfully I was blissfully ignorant of what it might cost to turn it into what I wanted.”
Having friends helped. “When it came time to get a contractor and painters, plumbers, and woodworkers, I realized I’ve known all these people for years,” he says. Mark Braun, aka Mr. B, was one of five local musicians who had a hand in the remodeling.
The new location brought in new customers–and they’re buying new kinds of products. In the past, “we weren’t getting that many youngsters who were interested in having a real cool stereo, ’cause they thought their iPod or computer with little powered speakers were enough,” Moorman says. “But there are a couple of product categories that are much more appealing and important to younger people right now. The headphone thing has gone crazy, and so has computer audio.
“One of the big surprises to me was how good [high-resolution] digital music can sound now. We’ve got devices that can make music files sound better than a $20,000 CD player.”
Then there are the improvements in headphones. “At the old location we sold some headphones, but it was very much secondary,” he says. Now, “we’ve got maybe forty different headphones and earbuds and a place for people to audition them. The price range is from forty-nine bucks up to a thousand bucks, and we sell those regularly.”
And an old category has come roaring back: people are buying turntables again–or bringing old turntables to Overture Audio’s expert, Tom O’Keefe, for service: “We have guys who drive up from St. Louis so Tom can work on their turntables.”
Moorman, fifty-eight, still thinks about retirement–but he no longer thinks about closing the store when he does. “I would like to see myself gradually work one day per week less,” he says. “I’m a pretty avid fly fisher. If I could do that one more day a week, that would be fine.”