Is Guitar Center next?
An older business model fades away.
When I started teaching guitar lessons in 1996, I did the lessons at what used to be known as “Thoroughbred Music”, on Lee Rd. in Orlando. A few years later, Sam Ash bought that store along with a few others in Orlando, Tampa and Clearwater. Subsequently, all of the music teachers were asked to discontinue teaching at the store on Lee Rd. We were told that it was because we were not employees of the music store, and we were not insured.
I believed then that this was a colossal mistake on the new management of Sam Ash. We had at least three or four guitar/bass guitar teachers, two drum teachers, a piano/keyboard teacher and a few woodwinds and brass teachers available in that store all week long. We were bringing in upwards of around 500 students a week into that store by default. This decision must have been a huge loss in profit for that store.
Many of my students would come to me to help them purchase brand new guitars, basses, amps, gears, pedals, picks, etc. I was even asked by management if I would consider employment at the store as a guitar sales representative because I was so good with customers. I politely declined the offer. A found out a few years later that Sam Ash had changed their mind and began doing lessons again at that store.
I have lived on the east side of Orlando for most of my life. There is a Sam Ash (probably closed by now) that is/was located on East Colonial Dr. Back in the day around the late 1990’s to about 2010 - that was the place to go if you lived on the east side and needed gear. I remember walking in that store many times, and there would be a sea of people from the front of the store all the way to the back. Every department was busy from open to close. In reality, other music stores in town, like Guitar Center and Georges Music, really couldn’t compete with the volume of customers Sam Ash was doing at that time.
Then, online shopping became a thing; and the changes in the ways customers purchased goods, forever changed the way music stores did business. Sales slowly dropped. The old business model that had worked so well for so many decades, could no longer compete with online shopping.
I understand that we live in an age where prospective customers “window shop” online now. It’s easier, it’s faster and you can shop in your pajamas. Whatever it is that you do purchase, can be delivered right to your door the very next day.
Here’s the problem I have with this. Would you buy a brand new vehicle online, sight unseen, with no test drive or a chance to kick the tires? I know that I wouldn’t. I would want to go directly to a dealership to exercise my options to haggle with the salesperson on the price. You simply wouldn’t wisely make such a huge purchase online. How are musical instruments any different?
I have been quite adamant about telling all of my students for the past 28 years that if you are thinking about buying a new guitar, you MUST go to the music store to try a couple dozen guitars first. You cannot buy a guitar without playing it. Every guitar ever made, was made for someone. The thrill of trying out 20 or 30 guitars is all part of the adventure in searching for that lost treasure. Buying a guitar online without trying it first, makes zero sense to me. In a million years, I would never do this. However, this seems to be the model that is putting music stores out of business. Is it just ignorance combined with apathy, motivated by the unquenchable thirst to have things conveniently delivered to your door? I just don’t get it.
You want to know what I think actually happens to those guitars that get bought online? I think they end up in closets faster than they ever did before. I think places like Sweetwater makes it so that if you want to return an instrument, it would actually cost more to do so than the instrument is actually worth. So, people who realize that they’ve made a mistake in purchasing something online, something that certainly wasn’t cheap - something they knew very little about - and they think of it as an expensive lesson learned. They’re out a few hundred dollars, and they probably end up donating the instrument or giving it away.
Guess how many times I have met with a new student who has told me that they were given a guitar several years ago, and that it had been sitting in a closet ever since. I honestly can’t figure out for the life of me, who is buying musical instruments online without trying them out first.
I wanted to share the following video with you in an effort to keep you apprised of the latest developments in the music world. Love to know what you think. Please leave a comment below.
You can go to this link to reads the article he talks about in this video.