NAMM president & CEO John Mlynczak: ‘This is the true return of NAMM’

From January 21-25 2025, the annual NAMM Show returns to the Anaheim Convention Centre for an extended extravaganza of MI and pro audio exhibits, networking opportunities, educational sessions, and a lorryload more to boot. Headliner caught up with president and CEO, John Mlynczak, to find out all about the upcoming show, how he is gearing up for his second NAMM at the helm, and the trends set to shape the industry in 2025.

“This is the true return of NAMM,” an exuberant John Mlynczak asserts at one stage during what proves to be a far-reaching conversation with Headliner just over two months out from opening day. It feels like an accurate assertion. Since 2020, the NAMM Show, like much of the industry, has been in a state of flux, with brands, businesses, musicians, and indeed, trade shows desperately trying to regain a sense of pre-pandemic normality.

In the case of NAMM, it’s taken four years to return fully to familiar territory. A digitally driven remote iteration of the show was the order of the day in 2021, while in-person versions in 2022 and 2023 were held in the discombobulating months of June and April respectively, as the event took a staggered path back towards its natural home on the industry calendar. And while 2024’s outing did indeed take place in January, plans for it were taking place 12-18 months in advance.

NAMM 2025, therefore, is in many ways the closest to a pre-pandemic NAMM that the industry has seen. Organisers, attendees, and exhibitors have been able to prepare in a more stable environment.

“After four years of disruption we have all the brands back and they're all back in a new and innovative way,” Mlynczak beams via Zoom from his office in Carlsbad, California, as he fills us in on what can be expected from this year’s show. “Two years ago, we were talking to the brands that might not have exhibited in ‘24, but we were still having conversations about what the future of trade shows looked like. What is the value of setting up shop for three days on an exhibit floor in a world where products are 360 camera angle-designed and put out on YouTube?”

“What we'll see, and what we're excited about, is a show that is representative of the industry today and in the future. We have three days of exhibits – Thursday, Friday, Saturday – and we're opening earlier than usual on Tuesday, because we know a lot of people show up on Tuesday anyway. And we're offering more education - more brand education for the first time - several sessions where exhibitors that might just be setting up and going to grab dinner can learn about branding, marketing, AI, and all those hot topics that affect them.

“We also have global media Wednesday, which will see a full day of education sessions and bands, and lots of other content. So, we're trying to thoughtfully plan out a sequence: show up Tuesday morning, leave Sunday morning, and it'll be nonstop. Both Tuesday and Wednesday will have networking opportunities so people can come in and find who they want to connect with and build those relationships early. Then by Thursday, Friday, and Saturday on the floor, you're hitting it running. That's going to be really exciting.”

Evolution and expansion

In 2025, Mlynczak will look once again to bring his vision for the NAMM Show to fruition without diverting too far from the template that has made it such a hit for over a century. Last year marked his first outing as president and CEO since the departure of his predecessor Joe Lamond, who had served in the role for two decades. Now, with his inaugural show under his belt, Mlynczak is working to evolve and expand the show without comprising its essence.

“How do you evolve something that has worked because it's been so traditional?,” he ponders aloud. “I think the first thing is don't break the core. One thing we're doing is evolving around the edges. I worked in software before this and there's an agile mentality that I work with when I think about this.

“Do a small test - a calculated experiment - and fail fast. Then test a little bit more. It's easier to scale success than try to build success at scale. So, we're taking that approach with the show. First, we strengthen the core. When you see the big brands back, a lot of them may have a small display for people to hang around and see instruments and their brand story. But they have another area where they want to do core business - those backroom meetings with their dealers, distributors, international suppliers. That is the core of NAMM being a trade show; a non-public trade show where business happens. We protect that first and foremost. That's the nucleus.

“Then all of a sudden, you might get atoms or electrons flying around,” he continues. “That's where the buzz happens. And we must be careful. We want to create buzz and evolution with influencers and brand experiences, but they're calculated, controlled experiments. If they work, we'll scale them in the future. If they don't, the damage is contained. That's how you evolve something so traditional.”

This strategy has also been implemented on an internal level across the NAMM organisation.

“We've made internal structure changes,” says Mlynczak. “As a team, we have to be more nimble. We're inviting our brands to challenge us. And we don’t want to tell them we can’t do something because we don't have the internal team to make it happen, or we can't leverage our partners at the convention center or the hotels to create a certain space. We have to say yes.

“At the time of this conversation we are nine weeks from the show and we are still talking to brands: ‘You want to try this? Let's try that.’ We have to be able to move faster so we can test, try, succeed early, or fail fast. That shapes how we approach the future of the show. We always come back true to trade, but on the outside, we have to be creative, quick, and able to take risks.”

Strength in numbers

On the subject of maintaining the trade core of the NAMM Show, Mlynczak is quick to highlight and contextualize projected attendance figures for NAMM 2025. Prior to the pandemic, the show was notching up attendance figures in excess of 100,000. In the wake of Covid, those numbers have inevitably taken a hit, and Mlynczak is in no rush to drive those figures back up purely for the sake of it. As he puts it, the onus is very much on bringing in the right visitors, as opposed to simply making up the numbers.

“I could get 100,000 people to the show, no problem,” he states. “I can get 150,000. Anaheim can't take that many of course, but we could in theory. A lot of people may say, ‘Oh, 2020 brought in 115,000 people’. This year our goal is 75,000. We could sit around with our board and our members and make a strategy to say, ‘I want all these people at the show’. But we're not doing that. And not because we don't love musicians.

“The show is designed to strengthen these companies who pay to exhibit because they want stronger businesses. And the business strength comes from a perfect balance of all their dealers, all their international distributors, all their key partners. Of course, there are high-level influencers, artists, the future generation, and entrepreneurs. But you need the right mix of all that. So, we're not flooding it with a bunch of consumers. Nothing wrong with consumers, but our job is not to be a consumer show and sell instruments. Our job is to create brand demand so that for the other 360 days of the year, our companies can sell products to consumers.”

Likewise, NAMM is not defined by a few days in Anaheim at the start of each year. As an association, it is working year-long to service its members and the industry as a whole. So what kind of trends has Mlynczak seen over the past 12 months? And what impact are they likely to have on the year ahead?

“What we're seeing right now is 2025 being the year of stability,” he observes. “During Covid, pro audio and live music all stopped. School music skyrocketed. And then guitars and home pianos skyrocketed when people were at home and wanted something to do. They bought Pelotons and ukuleles, right? But in ’22 and ‘23 we had over-inventory. And all of live touring is skyrocketing. Everything else is stabilizing.

“It almost looks like a stock market graph. Sometimes it's smooth and sometimes up and down. But after you get through five years of up, down, up, down, you can draw a trend line and say, OK, we ended up here. That's where we are. Everything we're seeing says 2025 is the year of stability. The ups and downs have stopped. A lot of retailers were over-inventoried on certain categories, and then interest rates went up. So, you're sitting on a lot of inventory with high interest rates. All of that has settled down. We're seeing retailers reporting they’re sitting on seven months’ inventory, not 18.

“We're looking at Q4 sales across the US and other continents and looking at where consumer behaviours are going to go. A lot of people are still being conservative with their dollars - we're not going to see categories jumping or declining.”

A life in music

Mlynczak’s deep knowledge of the market and his meticulous approach to developing NAMM as a show and an organization is underpinned by a lifelong love of music. And it is this combination of business acumen and an understanding of the passion that drives the industry that fuels his approach to the role of president and CEO.

“It's so funny, even hearing that title still, it's just a dream come true,” he smiles. “Music changed my life. I've been playing music since as long as I can remember. As a kid there was always something - a guitar, a piano at home, and just banging on my mom's Tupperware when I was four years old. I did a career summit last night and was talking about my path, and I'm like, ‘I just played music’. 

"I wanted to be a music teacher; I wanted to be a musician. By 23 years old I had a music education degree, I had a master's in music, I'm gigging, playing trumpet all over Louisiana. I'm living and teaching during the day, gigging at night. And then it was like, where do I go from here?

“That's when I did a second master's in educational administration. I got involved in some education advocacy work at the State Department and started thinking about how we take music technology and broader music curricula and create more music makers through teaching programs about non-traditional music paths. That propelled me into my job with PreSonus and later with Hal Leonard Publishing and their technology divisions.

“When the NAMM job came up, I was like, ‘Oh God, good luck following Joe Lamond! Some schmuck's going to have a hard time here [laughs]’. And then people started saying, ‘John, you should apply’. My first reaction was no way! Imposter syndrome; I'm not good enough; I'm not old enough. But then more people said, go for it. So, I thought, fine, I'll go for it.

“I told the committee, ‘I love this, but NAMM, in a lot of ways, could be more forward thinking’. An industry association needs to propel an industry forward. And if you look at any industry, sometimes associations react to their industry. It’s easy to be reactive to or representative of an industry, but you look at Gary Shapiro [CEO, Consumer Technology Association], that’s when you push an industry forward. That’s what we want to do. We’re here to push the industry forward. That’s what jazzes me. And I think I’m the right person at the right time.”

With a heaving schedule to return to, we have just enough time to ask Mlynczak if he has any words of advice for those attending NAMM for the first time in 2025.

“Make a plan and know when to throw it out,” he says with a laugh. “You come to NAMM knowing the opportunities that exist, and you leave with opportunities you never knew existed before. Make a plan but don’t stick so closely to it that you don’t go through a new door that opens. There are so many opportunities. Go down every path a few steps. You will find things you didn’t know existed.”