How Dothan, Alabama’s ChordBuddy maintains its success
Travis Perry first had the idea for ChordBuddy when he was 18 years old, though it took 30 years and an economic downturn for him to do anything with the concept.
After the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis shuttered his Dothan-based real estate business, Perry turned to teaching guitar lessons “to keep my family in our house.” One night, his teenage daughter, Bradi, asked him to teach her to play a Taylor Swift song on guitar, but she quickly found that the guitar strings hurt her fingers — a common complaint for first-timers.
Perry, remembering his old idea, fashioned a device out of “two Fudgsicle sticks, a pencil, a rubber band and some rubber grommets.” It was the first ChordBuddy prototype — and by October 2010, a more refined version of the product was ready to hit the market.
ChordBuddy does for aspiring guitarists what training wheels do for beginner cyclists, Perry said. “Training wheels allow you to ride a bike without knowing how to ride a bike. As you gain your balance and confidence, you start moving the training wheels up until they’re not on there anymore. It’s the same with ChordBuddy.”
The ChordBuddy device attaches to the neck of a guitar and allows users to play a full chord by pressing a single button. “You don’t know how to play, but you’re pressing buttons, strumming, singing and playing the guitar,” Perry said. “And then slowly, as you learn your rhythm patterns, you literally pull the tabs out and start making those chords with your own fingers.”
That’s a process that typically takes about two months — a period in which most guitar novices give up. ChordBuddy keeps users “engaged and playing and having fun” long enough to stick with the instrument, Perry said.
It took dedication to get ChordBuddy off the ground. “I thought when I invented this thing and it hit the market that music stores would be beating my door down,” Perry said. “That did not happen. … For 18 months, it was a nightmare. I was literally driving around from town to town with ChordBuddies in the trunk of my car, begging music stores to take them.”
An appearance on the ABC reality series “Shark Tank” changed all of that overnight. Perry was featured on the third season of the program, successfully pitching millionaire investors on the ChordBuddy system. “The night ‘Shark Tank’ aired, we sold 7,000 ChordBuddies in one night,” Perry said. “We had sold only 3,000 in the 18 months prior to that.”
Syndicated airings of that episode kept ChordBuddy in the public consciousness, but after four years the reruns stopped, and Perry found himself having “to stand on my own two skinny little marketing legs.”
“It almost shut us down, because it took two years for me to find someone who could actually move the needle,” Perry said. “It’s a struggle with most small businesses these days. It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve kept the doors open.”
Each year, he said, the business can count on a holiday bump of new guitar players. “We’re not as seasonal as the Christmas tree business, but we’re pretty seasonal,” Perry said, with a laugh. “We do about 75 percent of our annual income in the fourth quarter.”
Through all the ups and downs, though, Perry has “kept our core values” by keeping the business and its employees — 16 to 26 of them, depending on the season — Dothan-based.
“Here in Dothan, employee-wise, people just have a hard work ethic,” he said. “We’re not scared of work. We’re not afraid of getting out there and busting it and sweating it. … My employees are the best employees that I could ask for, and I’m so proud to have each and every one of them.”
And while Perry said he hopes to retire within the next three years, it’s likely that ChordBuddy’s Alabama focus won’t change. In fact, Perry’s plan of succession will keep the business remarkably close to its roots.
“Within the next three years I’d like to sell ChordBuddy or possibly turn it over to my daughter Bradi, who’s presently head of our shipping department,” Perry said. “She might have an interest in taking the company over.”
This story was previously published by This is Alabama. Want to read more good news about Alabama? Sign up for the This is Alabama newsletter here.