You clearly know a lot more about the current investment strategies of investors and the market conditions of big box or wanna-be big box chains. Keep it up and I believe people will start coming back to the local store.
I used to work in a guitar store and I know the ins and outs of retail. I also worked as store manager and area manager over three other stores besides my store next to a mall in the parking lot. You have to know the demographics of your area so that you can make plans and predictions for your stores base. I used to go to other stores that were our competitors and window shop to see what the competitors had in stock and price shop.
I'm really enjoying videos. As an artist who has been creating guitars from locally harvested wood, and as an entrepreneur who has a small artist shop in a small West Virginia town, your videos are enlightening and mirroring our experience. Looking forward to your 3rd video in this series
Good luck Mark. I bought my first quality guitar from a shop half the size of yours in San Francisco. A beautiful Guild D50 which turned fifty years old recently. I remember going back a few times until I decided to use my rent money to help pay for it.
I'll add that I've never been much of an online purchaser type. I like to go to the store and see exactly what I'm buying. I straddle that line of GenX /Millennial. But obviously times have changed, and you have to buy things online because you can't buy it locally anymore. Hell, I remember when you had to go to the parts guys with 100 paper catalogs and he had "inside" connections to orders parts that weren't readily available in the store. The one thing that I'm not sure will ever fully "take" is the purchase of an inconsistent item. For example, a pack of Ernie Ball strings I'd say is consistent. If I buy it from you, Sweetwater, GC, Sam Ash, etc; I can be reasonably assured that they're the same item. However, if I'm buying a guitar, even with a plethora of pictures posted online, I'm still taking a gamble. Though the major online retailers offer the likes of free shipping, extended free return periods, I don't want to be inconvenienced if I get something subpar. If I pay a lot of money for a brand new guitar and it arrives with a big scratch or doesn't feel well, then it sours the experience. Now if I decided to return it, then I'm inconvenienced having to deal with Customer Service/RMA/Boxing/Post Office and then waiting for a hopeful replacement as a best case scenario. As you said in your hardware store example, I'd say let the online stores sell the screws, but let the local market sell the paint.
This is so great! Thank you, Mark. I owned a small guitar shop in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 70s-80s and find your discussion fascinating. I appreciate your clarity and candor.
This guy is the real deal. Love these videos and the small shop mentality which is why I bought my first guitar. These are the humans that motivate new guitar players and support experienced players who need real expertise. MERICA'
Really enjoy these videos. Subscribed! P.S. I've been to the store, it's not super close to me but not super far away either - I'll have to get back there.
Great insight! Thanks, Mark. The pandemic pushed me to Reverb, giving me a bit of an addiction. Mostly, I think my business went to individuals or small stores. Later, I went to a local store and ordered online from an independent. But … if I had been in your area, I would have thrown business your way … and after looking at your offerings, still might.
I never went big box music shop, I understood the need to keep small retail alive through the decades. I'm not much of a customer though, just buy some strings and plectrums. i don't need 20 guitars.
Sears was good for tools-those were the days. And Radio Shack-I could try to explain that shop to my son and he probably wouldn’t believe me that a shop like that existed.
My first Hi-Fi stereo VCR was from Radio Shack, it cost $500. I will say there are things I bought at Radio shack as a child that I still have and that still work. And plenty of older Craftsman tools in my box. The new tools let's say Craftsman are just the same stuff you get at harbor freight.
I wouldn't do it myself, but I CAN imagine buying an elec guitar online. A Strat is a Strat, kinda, and adjustments can be made if needed. But I can't imagine at all buying an acoustic on-line; there's just too much variability, in how it feels and sounds. When I'm buying a guitar, I make all effort to shop local.
Hi Mark. Not sure if you remember me. Either way it’s good to see you back 2 times(one just now)since I’ve started watching I’ve noticed I’m “ unsubscribed” I didn’t do that. I love your channel. Thanks for nothing CZcams
It is true that online retailers are tough competition for small, independent stores; but your Amazon example of ordering strings and getting them in a couple days is a thing of the past (at least in my experience). They can't seem to move anything in under a week anymore, for which USPS is partly to blame because they're horrible. But I think Amazon was overwhelmed during Covid and they're still struggling to meet demand. I haven't even seen an actual Amazon delivery truck in over a year, and their reliance on outside carriers hurts their business. On top of that, they've decided to place ads on Prime content that subscribers are paying for, forcing them to pay an additional fee to get rid of the Amazon ads. I became very disillusioned with Amazon and I'm sure I'm not alone.
Sweetwater is the #1 seller of musical gear in the country. To survive in local shops, you need a great lessons program and a strong repair/setup tech(s). Anyone can buy the most common guitars and get great discounts. On many guitars, the retailer makes 40% of the street price in gross profit. I buy 100% of my stuff online. No hassles, great service, and always the best prices. I haven't been in a guitar store in over 20 years. I've been playing for 50 years. That's how much things have changed. The best part about GC is the return policy. If I buy a used axe I see on their site, if I don't like it or it's not as described, I literally bring it to my local GC for a refund. If GC does close, I strongly doubt it will have any effect on the guitar market at all. If anything, Sweetwater will grow even larger. Local shop days are numbered unless they do a big instrument leasing biz, a busy lessons biz, and a busy repair biz. I don't like how we've changed. I loved when I was young and would spend hours at the local music shops every weekend. Sadly, progress changed how we buy. I even buy all my picks, srings, straps, and other accessories online. It's too easy and the selection is far bigger than most local shops can have readily available. Good luck Mark. I hope you do a nice business and are around in 20 years.
If I may, anyone who says they're "always getting the best prices," probably isn't. Curious about your alleged info re margins. And, if you call this "progress" (for someone who spent so much time and every weekend at their local shop, quite possibly annoying them to no end) you're exactly the type of anonymous individual the internet was designed for. To wear the fact you haven't been to a local store in forever as a badge of honor, is a sad indictment of the state of play. Yet you somehow feel informed enough to tell operators how to run their businesses, even tho you haven't any intentions of crossing their threshold. I suspect you're missing out on the experience far more than they're missing you. 🤔
@@gshep42 Never gonna happen. The locals simply don't have the selection, the pricing power, or the inventory. I can usually choose from 4 to 8 of the exact same guitar at Sweetwater. The specs and pics are amazingly detailed. My business was forced to sell to a jumbo version of what I had. That was the only way to survive. These days, it's just so difficult to compete, you gotta do what you gotta do. Change sucks, but if you don't change with the market, your business will die. What I wouldn't give to go back to the old ways. Sadly, that ship has sailed.
@@kendaniels2179 far be it from me to tell anyone how to run their business. You're correct, I have zero intention of crossing the threshold of any local music store ever again. They don't have the buying power or space to compete. If you think I'm wrong, look at Sam Ash. They just closed multiple stores. Why? Because the B&M model isn't working. The only way they survive is to put big money into their website and go that route. As to where I get my information from, it's not rocket science. Phillip McKnight, a big CZcams channel does a Livestream he owned a B&M for a fairly long time and has shared markups, buying from the big manufacturers, and every other kind of detail anyone asks about. He's a wealth of great and precise information. It's based on real world ownership of a busy store. FWIW, I was a partner in a business that generated 300 plus million a year in gross profits with ,600 ish employees. We were a power house in what we did. Then things changed and everything went from phones to screens. We adapted quickly and did okay. When the market continued to flourish and the monies required to remain a big player became way too huge for us, we sold the business to the biggest player in the field at that time. Again if you don't change you die a slow death in just about any business. That's not an opinion, those are the facts. I've lived it. I hated it, but in the end selling out was our only choice. That or die that slow death. So I'm very confident in my numbers and my opinion. That said, it's still just an opinion and yours is just as relevant as mine. If you're going to come on YT and try to educate people about how a particular business works, it's good to at the very least know and fully understand the clear trends in said business. I'm no expert, but my buying habits have changed 100%. I try to go with the flow, and B&M stores by and large are dinosaurs. There are a few select categories that will always do well in the B&M model. IMO selling musical instruments ain't one of them.
Another thing to consider is the ridiculous cost of doing business nowadays. Rent on commercial properties is insane. In my area 1200ft^2 in a shitty half occupied strip mall is $4500/mo. I don’t understand how any business could survive with overhead that high.
Hi gary. What is the 2ndhand price for a fender MIM telecaster going for in your shop. I just bought one a 2012 model in great cond. Im from south africa and just curious what they go for there.
When I had my store (2002-2008) years ago called it a “race to the bottom.” Manufacturers wanted to make a product as cheap as possible. You could buy a guitar that said “Fender” on the headstock at Walmart and Best Buy! But instead of making new musicians they ended up frustrating their guitar students with a guitar that played terribly, couldn’t stay in tune, and sounded awful. Parents would say “ I don’t want to buy my kid an expensive guitar that’s just gonna end up under the bed….” In reality by buying the cheapest guitar out there they were guaranteeing their kid would fail. Fender shot themselves in the foot by doing this in my opinion and they flipped off the dealers that have been supporting them over the years as well. I’d make about $15 selling an Affinity Strat…..let me rephrase that, I had to order 6 Affinity Strats at a time, I had to sell 4 of them just to break even. In my little town I might sell 6 of those guitars during Christmas season, but we saw twice as many Walmart Strats, I think they were called Starcaster, come through our door with broken strings, necks out of whack, and for $20 we’d put on a new set of strings, intonate the thing, and sign them up for lessons. So I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, I made about $15 on the Walmart strats without having to buy them first. Unfortunately I don’t recall any of those kids coming back to upgrade their instrument later. Everyone wants the cheapest price now with absolutely no concern that the place you buy from will still be there in the future when you need help. You have to sell twice as many guitars to make half the money these days. I’m glad I’m not doing music retail anymore. It was the funnest business I’ve ever run at the time. Now I’m happy running my recording studio, sound company, and sound and light installs. I still love talking about this business though.
I have a starcaster p-bass...34" scale with a 12" fretboard radius...and they marketed that to kids lol...after upgrading literally everything though, it's now a nice giggable bass with an outlandish headstock that still says fender on it
So if Guitar Center goes under, what happens to all their stock and what does it do to the independent shops if their instruments hit the market at bargain prices? Thanks for the overview.
In 2002 Mars Music went belly-up and a lot of manufacturers went under because of this. Cadence Cases was a line of cases I carried back when I first started my business. I met them in ‘99 and started using their cases in my production company. When they started selling through Mars I thought that would be a good move for them. Unfortunately when Mars filed for bankruptcy Cadence didn’t get paid (or got paid pennies on the dollar) and they too went out of business. GC has struggled before and some manufacturers put them on “credit hold.” I would hope that a large company like Fender or Roland would be able to absorb a loss that big.
That's a whole other video. You'll notice the Guitar center is going heavy on used gear sales now. So they'll have a lot of used inventory that hits the market suddenly
Very interesting that you never mention how you actually PAY THE RENT! Which, in my 50 years of experience with small, local, "Mom & Pop" music stores has always been LESSONS, LESSONS, LESSONS. Without the student in the tiny back rooms learning how to play the guitar (or other instrument) there is no way to pay the rent, electric, and other overhead costs. How does a independent music store compete with Amazon when Amazon is selling guitars, shipped for free to your home in a day or two, for $80.? (Glarry). In my experience, the small independent music stores are for those musicians that are social animals and kinda "hang out" there... bullshit with the sales people. Jam on some guitars, test out some stuff, keep an eye out for some used stuff that gets traded in. But actually paying the bills and paying the overhead, and paying the staff by selling guitars, strings, and amps at a 10% margin??? No way is that a sustainable business model. I love the comparison you make between the neighborhood hardware store and Home Depot. Every little town here in North Jersey had an Ace Hardware 20 years ago. Now, out of perhaps 20 of those shops, there is one left. ONE! That's just evolution. 20 years from now maybe we will all be buying stuff online and getting it delivered 20 minutes later via drone. Or maybe we will have replicators in our home that just materialize guitars out of thin air. As a wise man once said: "You can't stop progress".
Change with the times, or the times will change without you. I don't care what your "margins" are. It's up to YOU as the business owner to find new and creative ways to stay afloat. You've got so much wasted revenue collecting dust in that store and in storage. Start moving more product. Figure it out. WITHOUT expecting consumers to do it FOR you.
Entertaining, educational and leaves you wanting for more. The CZcams series we did not know we wanted
Interesting. Wish you all the luck in the world in keeping that store open. We need it.
Thanks for the private equity piece of the presentation. Enlightening.
I really enjoy these “chats.”
So glad you decided to start posting more!
You clearly know a lot more about the current investment strategies of investors and the market conditions of big box or wanna-be big box chains. Keep it up and I believe people will start coming back to the local store.
I used to work in a guitar store and I know the ins and outs of retail. I also worked as store manager and area manager over three other stores besides my store next to a mall in the parking lot. You have to know the demographics of your area so that you can make plans and predictions for your stores base. I used to go to other stores that were our competitors and window shop to see what the competitors had in stock and price shop.
I'm really enjoying videos. As an artist who has been creating guitars from locally harvested wood, and as an entrepreneur who has a small artist shop in a small West Virginia town, your videos are enlightening and mirroring our experience. Looking forward to your 3rd video in this series
Good luck Mark. I bought my first quality guitar from a shop half the size of yours in San Francisco. A beautiful Guild D50 which turned fifty years old recently. I remember going back a few times until I decided to use my rent money to help pay for it.
I'll add that I've never been much of an online purchaser type. I like to go to the store and see exactly what I'm buying. I straddle that line of GenX /Millennial. But obviously times have changed, and you have to buy things online because you can't buy it locally anymore. Hell, I remember when you had to go to the parts guys with 100 paper catalogs and he had "inside" connections to orders parts that weren't readily available in the store.
The one thing that I'm not sure will ever fully "take" is the purchase of an inconsistent item. For example, a pack of Ernie Ball strings I'd say is consistent. If I buy it from you, Sweetwater, GC, Sam Ash, etc; I can be reasonably assured that they're the same item. However, if I'm buying a guitar, even with a plethora of pictures posted online, I'm still taking a gamble. Though the major online retailers offer the likes of free shipping, extended free return periods, I don't want to be inconvenienced if I get something subpar. If I pay a lot of money for a brand new guitar and it arrives with a big scratch or doesn't feel well, then it sours the experience. Now if I decided to return it, then I'm inconvenienced having to deal with Customer Service/RMA/Boxing/Post Office and then waiting for a hopeful replacement as a best case scenario.
As you said in your hardware store example, I'd say let the online stores sell the screws, but let the local market sell the paint.
This is so great! Thank you, Mark. I owned a small guitar shop in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 70s-80s and find your discussion fascinating. I appreciate your clarity and candor.
Love this series - please keep it going.
Really enjoying your insight. Keep up the good work. 👍
This guy is the real deal. Love these videos and the small shop mentality which is why I bought my first guitar. These are the humans that motivate new guitar players and support experienced players who need real expertise. MERICA'
Inept is correct! My local Guitar Center is caca. I am surprised that it’s still open. Wish I had a Gary’s close by.
I'm a business school graduate and this guy knows what he's talking about. Still find it fascinating.
Hey Mark, .. thanks, .. liking the tenor of your speak.
Enjoy these, thanks for song them.
Really enjoy these videos. Subscribed! P.S. I've been to the store, it's not super close to me but not super far away either - I'll have to get back there.
"Gary" is basically summing up an MBA program. I hope he continues these videos, they are business school pr0n! 😂
Thank you, part 3 will be my prognosis for the future.
Great insight! Thanks, Mark. The pandemic pushed me to Reverb, giving me a bit of an addiction. Mostly, I think my business went to individuals or small stores. Later, I went to a local store and ordered online from an independent. But … if I had been in your area, I would have thrown business your way … and after looking at your offerings, still might.
Hello from New Jersey.
Hey Mark. You're back! Great.
Thank you, we're going to try and start the "live" show again soon
Nailed it.
I never went big box music shop, I understood the need to keep small retail alive through the decades. I'm not much of a customer though, just buy some strings and plectrums. i don't need 20 guitars.
Sears was good for tools-those were the days. And Radio Shack-I could try to explain that shop to my son and he probably wouldn’t believe me that a shop like that existed.
I was probably the last generation who was able to buy great Craftsman tools at Sears and Realistic brand police scanners at Radio Shack.
Old things gooodddd….new things baaaaddd. Grrrr. 👴
@@tjh780 Yes! The scanners! My dad had a Bearcat Scanner.
My first Hi-Fi stereo VCR was from Radio Shack, it cost $500. I will say there are things I bought at Radio shack as a child that I still have and that still work. And plenty of older Craftsman tools in my box. The new tools let's say Craftsman are just the same stuff you get at harbor freight.
@@GarysGuitarsUSA Craftsman tools were the only brand I would buy. Not anymore.
I wouldn't do it myself, but I CAN imagine buying an elec guitar online. A Strat is a Strat, kinda, and adjustments can be made if needed. But I can't imagine at all buying an acoustic on-line; there's just too much variability, in how it feels and sounds.
When I'm buying a guitar, I make all effort to shop local.
Hi Mark. Not sure if you remember me. Either way it’s good to see you back
2 times(one just now)since I’ve started watching I’ve noticed I’m “ unsubscribed”
I didn’t do that. I love your channel. Thanks for nothing CZcams
Thanks for resubscribing.
It is true that online retailers are tough competition for small, independent stores; but your Amazon example of ordering strings and getting them in a couple days is a thing of the past (at least in my experience). They can't seem to move anything in under a week anymore, for which USPS is partly to blame because they're horrible. But I think Amazon was overwhelmed during Covid and they're still struggling to meet demand. I haven't even seen an actual Amazon delivery truck in over a year, and their reliance on outside carriers hurts their business. On top of that, they've decided to place ads on Prime content that subscribers are paying for, forcing them to pay an additional fee to get rid of the Amazon ads. I became very disillusioned with Amazon and I'm sure I'm not alone.
Sweetwater is the #1 seller of musical gear in the country. To survive in local shops, you need a great lessons program and a strong repair/setup tech(s). Anyone can buy the most common guitars and get great discounts. On many guitars, the retailer makes 40% of the street price in gross profit. I buy 100% of my stuff online. No hassles, great service, and always the best prices. I haven't been in a guitar store in over 20 years. I've been playing for 50 years. That's how much things have changed. The best part about GC is the return policy. If I buy a used axe I see on their site, if I don't like it or it's not as described, I literally bring it to my local GC for a refund. If GC does close, I strongly doubt it will have any effect on the guitar market at all. If anything, Sweetwater will grow even larger. Local shop days are numbered unless they do a big instrument leasing biz, a busy lessons biz, and a busy repair biz. I don't like how we've changed. I loved when I was young and would spend hours at the local music shops every weekend. Sadly, progress changed how we buy. I even buy all my picks, srings, straps, and other accessories online. It's too easy and the selection is far bigger than most local shops can have readily available. Good luck Mark. I hope you do a nice business and are around in 20 years.
If I may, anyone who says they're "always getting the best prices," probably isn't. Curious about your alleged info re margins. And, if you call this "progress" (for someone who spent so much time and every weekend at their local shop, quite possibly annoying them to no end) you're exactly the type of anonymous individual the internet was designed for. To wear the fact you haven't been to a local store in forever as a badge of honor, is a sad indictment of the state of play. Yet you somehow feel informed enough to tell operators how to run their businesses, even tho you haven't any intentions of crossing their threshold. I suspect you're missing out on the experience far more than they're missing you. 🤔
Sounds like you need to reconsider spending at a local business vs big box. Part of the problem.
@@gshep42 Never gonna happen. The locals simply don't have the selection, the pricing power, or the inventory. I can usually choose from 4 to 8 of the exact same guitar at Sweetwater. The specs and pics are amazingly detailed. My business was forced to sell to a jumbo version of what I had. That was the only way to survive. These days, it's just so difficult to compete, you gotta do what you gotta do. Change sucks, but if you don't change with the market, your business will die. What I wouldn't give to go back to the old ways. Sadly, that ship has sailed.
@@kendaniels2179 far be it from me to tell anyone how to run their business. You're correct, I have zero intention of crossing the threshold of any local music store ever again. They don't have the buying power or space to compete. If you think I'm wrong, look at Sam Ash. They just closed multiple stores. Why? Because the B&M model isn't working. The only way they survive is to put big money into their website and go that route. As to where I get my information from, it's not rocket science. Phillip McKnight, a big CZcams channel does a Livestream he owned a B&M for a fairly long time and has shared markups, buying from the big manufacturers, and every other kind of detail anyone asks about. He's a wealth of great and precise information. It's based on real world ownership of a busy store. FWIW, I was a partner in a business that generated 300 plus million a year in gross profits with ,600 ish employees. We were a power house in what we did. Then things changed and everything went from phones to screens. We adapted quickly and did okay. When the market continued to flourish and the monies required to remain a big player became way too huge for us, we sold the business to the biggest player in the field at that time. Again if you don't change you die a slow death in just about any business. That's not an opinion, those are the facts. I've lived it. I hated it, but in the end selling out was our only choice. That or die that slow death. So I'm very confident in my numbers and my opinion. That said, it's still just an opinion and yours is just as relevant as mine. If you're going to come on YT and try to educate people about how a particular business works, it's good to at the very least know and fully understand the clear trends in said business. I'm no expert, but my buying habits have changed 100%. I try to go with the flow, and B&M stores by and large are dinosaurs. There are a few select categories that will always do well in the B&M model. IMO selling musical instruments ain't one of them.
Again, for you. Not necessarily everyone else...
Enjoy this video sequence, interested more about the best success formula for the small independant store.
Another thing to consider is the ridiculous cost of doing business nowadays. Rent on commercial properties is insane. In my area 1200ft^2 in a shitty half occupied strip mall is $4500/mo. I don’t understand how any business could survive with overhead that high.
Good point, commercial real estate is in turmoil now too. Very high prices, and declining shopping centers and malls.
We are lucky to have a good landlord, privately family owned, in a good part of town.
👍👍👍
Bighouse Guitars is a block away from me. I buy items from time to time, tip the workers, donate items to the shop. Nice, people, honest.
Hi gary. What is the 2ndhand price for a fender MIM telecaster going for in your shop. I just bought one a 2012 model in great cond. Im from south africa and just curious what they go for there.
Is that "Rickie" on the wall a 6 or a 12 string?
Good observations, thank you. I like Sweetwater for new but I also like buying from independent shops and people on Reverb. Is GG on Reverb?
We sell most things in the store. If there's something that hangs around too long it may go on Reverb.
@@GarysGuitarsUSA thnx for taking the time to respond
Gary, do you have a Klon for sale? It looks like I am seeing one in the pedal case behind your left shoulder.
It's a Klon Klone. Centaur I think.
Your in a mall 😂
I remember when al bundy worked there at garys shoe store
When I had my store (2002-2008) years ago called it a “race to the bottom.” Manufacturers wanted to make a product as cheap as possible. You could buy a guitar that said “Fender” on the headstock at Walmart and Best Buy! But instead of making new musicians they ended up frustrating their guitar students with a guitar that played terribly, couldn’t stay in tune, and sounded awful. Parents would say “ I don’t want to buy my kid an expensive guitar that’s just gonna end up under the bed….” In reality by buying the cheapest guitar out there they were guaranteeing their kid would fail. Fender shot themselves in the foot by doing this in my opinion and they flipped off the dealers that have been supporting them over the years as well. I’d make about $15 selling an Affinity Strat…..let me rephrase that, I had to order 6 Affinity Strats at a time, I had to sell 4 of them just to break even. In my little town I might sell 6 of those guitars during Christmas season, but we saw twice as many Walmart Strats, I think they were called Starcaster, come through our door with broken strings, necks out of whack, and for $20 we’d put on a new set of strings, intonate the thing, and sign them up for lessons. So I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, I made about $15 on the Walmart strats without having to buy them first. Unfortunately I don’t recall any of those kids coming back to upgrade their instrument later. Everyone wants the cheapest price now with absolutely no concern that the place you buy from will still be there in the future when you need help. You have to sell twice as many guitars to make half the money these days. I’m glad I’m not doing music retail anymore. It was the funnest business I’ve ever run at the time. Now I’m happy running my recording studio, sound company, and sound and light installs. I still love talking about this business though.
I have a starcaster p-bass...34" scale with a 12" fretboard radius...and they marketed that to kids lol...after upgrading literally everything though, it's now a nice giggable bass with an outlandish headstock that still says fender on it
do you have a website? to buy stuff?
It's not an e-commerce site it's just an informational site. We sell most things through the store. And some things on reverb and eBay occasionally.
Yo
Honest sales, that's the way to win. Don't cheat! Trust God!
So if Guitar Center goes under, what happens to all their stock and what does it do to the independent shops if their instruments hit the market at bargain prices?
Thanks for the overview.
In 2002 Mars Music went belly-up and a lot of manufacturers went under because of this. Cadence Cases was a line of cases I carried back when I first started my business. I met them in ‘99 and started using their cases in my production company. When they started selling through Mars I thought that would be a good move for them. Unfortunately when Mars filed for bankruptcy Cadence didn’t get paid (or got paid pennies on the dollar) and they too went out of business. GC has struggled before and some manufacturers put them on “credit hold.” I would hope that a large company like Fender or Roland would be able to absorb a loss that big.
That's a whole other video. You'll notice the Guitar center is going heavy on used gear sales now. So they'll have a lot of used inventory that hits the market suddenly
Very interesting that you never mention how you actually PAY THE RENT! Which, in my 50 years of experience with small, local, "Mom & Pop" music stores has always been LESSONS, LESSONS, LESSONS. Without the student in the tiny back rooms learning how to play the guitar (or other instrument) there is no way to pay the rent, electric, and other overhead costs. How does a independent music store compete with Amazon when Amazon is selling guitars, shipped for free to your home in a day or two, for $80.? (Glarry). In my experience, the small independent music stores are for those musicians that are social animals and kinda "hang out" there... bullshit with the sales people. Jam on some guitars, test out some stuff, keep an eye out for some used stuff that gets traded in. But actually paying the bills and paying the overhead, and paying the staff by selling guitars, strings, and amps at a 10% margin??? No way is that a sustainable business model. I love the comparison you make between the neighborhood hardware store and Home Depot. Every little town here in North Jersey had an Ace Hardware 20 years ago. Now, out of perhaps 20 of those shops, there is one left. ONE! That's just evolution. 20 years from now maybe we will all be buying stuff online and getting it delivered 20 minutes later via drone. Or maybe we will have replicators in our home that just materialize guitars out of thin air. As a wise man once said: "You can't stop progress".
Pandemic? What Pandemic? Do you mean Plandemic?
@InjectBleach-em9tg No, the earth is round like any other planet. Do you believe the Earth is flat?
Change with the times, or the times will change without you. I don't care what your "margins" are. It's up to YOU as the business owner to find new and creative ways to stay afloat.
You've got so much wasted revenue collecting dust in that store and in storage. Start moving more product. Figure it out. WITHOUT expecting consumers to do it FOR you.