Heather Farr Edwards all the time knew she wished to be within the “music-adjacent” trade. Her foot within the door got here from pestering the editor of Relix, a dwell music overview journal that began as a Grateful Useless e-newsletter. She received an internship reviewing dwell reveals in New York in her early 20s, moved to the world of company company PR for some time, earlier than some LinkedIn serendipity led her to a task as head of PR for the worldwide musical instrument market, Reverb.

Over her decade on the firm, Edwards has seen Reverb develop dramatically to change into the world’s premier gear-focused market. Behind the scenes, the corporate has seen its justifiable share of adjustments – most notably being purchased by Etsy in 2019, and turning into impartial once more in April 2025.

It’s extra than simply press releases

“I all the time say I’ve had a full profession’s value of expertise at Reverb. The corporate has developed a lot in 10 years, and so has my function. At first my job was getting the phrase out about Reverb by all means obligatory – its story was intertwined with that of our founder David [Kalt], how he was a guitar retailer proprietor [Kalt owns Chicago Music Exchange] who was having hassle promoting and discovering gear on-line, and launched the answer to his personal downside.

“After we have been acquired [by Etsy] I actually noticed my function evolve from telling Reverb’s story to telling the story of our neighborhood. That may vary from finding out up on new tax rules to assist sellers make sense of them, to naming the convention rooms in our workplaces. Final 12 months I wrote a whole parody of Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty primarily based on what the CEO wished to say to the crew in his finish of 12 months message. So it runs the gamut!”

Inspiring confidence is all the pieces

“On the finish of the day, we’re an e-commerce platform, however most individuals aren’t shopping for a guitar day by day. So we get to consider how one can encourage individuals who aren’t available in the market for the time being – and we’re fortunate, as that’s a extremely enjoyable factor!

“The purpose of our content material helps musicians really feel extra assured within the buy that they’re making, whether or not that’s by way of a demo video or different content material. We take that accountability actually severely. Reverb didn’t invent shopping for music gear on-line, however I believe it’s protected to say that individuals are extra comfy doing so now – and Reverb has seemingly had a hand in that.”

Love of drugs can convey artists and followers collectively

“The artist retailers on Reverb aren’t cash grabs. 99 per cent of the time the artists look of their storage and go, ‘Shit, I’ve received an excessive amount of stuff,’ or ‘I’ve used this 20 years in the past and never touched it since’ – and should you care about gear, all this stunning stuff with a thick layer of mud excessive of it’s actually upsetting!

“Artists select Reverb as a result of, whereas we will’t assure these items doesn’t find yourself in some show case, we provide them the most effective likelihood of their gear going to somebody who’ll apply it to tour or within the studio, or will at the least noodle with it on their sofa.”

Knowledge can inform some nice tales

“As a newly impartial firm, I do suppose we’re getting again to our roots – being a music gear firm that’s actually good at tech, not a tech firm that may do music. Typically information tells boring tales – however ours doesn’t.

“It goes again to that accountability with our content material – the info is admittedly helpful should you’re a purchaser or a vendor and making an attempt to grasp the worth of what you’ve. Early on we made an effort to make sense out of the complicated information we had. So now we’ve got these actually wealthy insights, which we don’t need to simply sit on and use for our personal good.”

Relating to the massive adjustments, present don’t inform

“The toughest factor about going by way of an enormous change like being offered might be the private aspect of it. We’re people, we’re within the boards, we’re studying issues that individuals take into consideration a change. From our aspect, it’s nonetheless numerous the identical folks – not a lot has modified when it comes to what we’re making an attempt to do, which is create the most effective place on-line to purchase and promote gear. However I’ve discovered by way of this entire course of that acquisitions and gross sales simply carry a unfavourable weight to them – even when the fact isn’t like that.

“And so my strategy as a communications particular person is all the time to be trustworthy – my strategy has by no means been to ‘spin’ issues. It may be simple for any person to say, ‘Oh, this firm received bought by an even bigger firm, all the pieces goes to go downhill!’ I can’t inform any person that’s not going to be the case, we simply need to present those that!”