Eagan woman is state’s School of Rock impresario
Stacey Marmolejo of Eagan is opening her third School of Rock location on Oct. 2 in Burnsville. Submitted photo
Stacey Marmolejo, 50, will open third School of Rock location on Oct. 2 in Burnsville
by John Gessner
Thisweek Newspapers
Stacey Marmolejo of Eagan is Minnesota’s School of Rock impresario. She owns two franchises of the storied rock’n’roll academy for kids and is opening a third in Burnsville on Oct. 2.
But it wasn’t a failsafe business model that lured her away from a job in marketing, which Marmolejo finally left in January to concentrate on her schools.
To win customers she was banking on an emotional connection, the kind of buzz her own son felt years ago after attending summer music camp and performing in a camp-ending concert.
“When I first saw (School of Rock) it wasn’t so much about my career, because I know nothing about music,” said Marmolejo, 50. “I was just looking at my son and knowing how he felt when he got off that stage that day. I knew there had to be other kids just like him, and I knew there were no places in the Twin Cities like it.”
Marmolejo’s Schools of Rock in St. Paul and Eden Prairie each offer three seasons of instruction, each with its own concert finale. Students, ages 8 to 18, get weekly individual lessons and a weekly three-hour group rehearsal.
At the new Burnsville school, located at 13400 Buck Hill Road, Marmolejo will add a Kindermusik program for children ages 6 months to 7 years.
School of Rock story
The School of Rock story – which is said to have inspired the 2000 “School of Rock” movie starring Jack Black and has been the subject of a film documentary and many articles – began in 1998 in Philadelphia.
Rocker Paul Green and his band had a following among local teens.
“They started hanging out where the band was rehearsing, and he started giving lessons and tips to them,” Marmolejo said. “Then he started formalizing the lessons. He has this concept that taking music lessons and never playing a gig is like going to basketball practice every day and never playing a game.”
Green found club owners willing to provide performance venues for his students and began franchising the School of Rock concept in 2004.
Marmolejo, whose former job as vice president of marketing for California-based Affinity Media allowed her to travel, visited both coasts looking for performance and instructional opportunities for her son, Nate, a piano and guitar player then in his teens.
She met with Green and School of Rock’s then-CEO, Joe Roberts.
Sold on the concept, Marmolejo was waiting when the state approved School of Rock franchising in 2006.
“In St. Paul, I went into an old warehouse that had no other tenants at the time we moved in,” she said, describing her first school, in Lowertown, which has been expanded since opening in September 2006. “It was a place where the bricklayers union taught guys to lay tile. So it’s all these different mish-mash designs all over the place from the floor to the walls. In my opinion, it had great character and sort of that rock’n’roll vibe.”
To finance the venture, Marmolejo remortgaged her house, tapped her savings and kept her job, contributing part of her salary each month. “I probably had $400,000 into St. Paul over a two-year period, and the start-up costs,” she said.
She hired professional musicians as instructors. “And nights and weekends, I’d be over there answering phones and scrubbing toilets and whatever it took to get the job done,” Marmolejo said. “The payback was the kids and the parents.”
To launch her second location, at 6585 Edenvale Blvd. in Eden Prairie, Marmolejo secured a Small Business Administration loan through Business Bank of Minnesota. The bank is also helping to finance the Burnsville school, located near Burnsville Center, but Marmolejo said she needs less help this time because cash is flowing at her other locations.
“St. Paul is more profitable than Eden Prairie, and Eden Prairie has just come into profitability,” she said. “It takes about two, two and a half years; that has been our experience.”
Between the two schools, Marmolejo employs 22 part-time music teachers and six full-time staffers, including a director of operations and a music director. The two schools give 220 lessons a month to a student body numbering around 190.
Burnsville will be the nation’s 60th School of Rock. Owner Sterling Partners has ambitious plans to add another 250 company-owned and franchise schools over the next five years.
Founder Green sold last December to Sterling, a private-equity firm whose holdings include Sylvan Learning Centers, Marmolejo said.
“All musicians talk about not selling out to the man. Well, Paul sold out to the man,” Marmolejo said, adding that Sterling has brought welcome upgrades to School of Rock’s business systems.
Her son, now 21, is now a “struggling” but eager professional musician in Los Angeles, said Marmolejo, who can’t wait for the next crop of students.
“Most of these kids, they’re not your jocks, they’re not your academicians,” she said. “They’re musicians first and foremost, but the school band didn’t always do it for them, so they haven’t found that outlet. … When they come to School of Rock, they see other kids just like them and think, ‘I’m not weird, I’m not awkward.’ ”
For more information about the Burnsville School of Rock, call Kristen Beckman, director of operations, at (952) 934-7625.
A grand opening is set for Oct. 16 from 2 to 5 p.m. Mayor Elizabeth Kautz has been invited to perform an honorary guitar-smashing ceremony.
John Gessner is at burnsville.thisweek@ecm-inc.com.
