Sam Ash Going out of business sale?
Is this supposed to be the draw?
What kind of price deal is this? One would think that if a company is going out of business, someone in the corporate office might be trying their absolute best to sell as much as they can before the doors actually close for good.
I saw the above picture on Facebook, and I had to copy and share it on here. Perhaps this is the “new math” in sales? I don’t know. I honestly have no clue why management thinks that “5% off” is the magic number to get rid of gear. Seems a rather arbitrary number to me. Shouldn’t it be more like “15%, 20%, 30% or even 50% off”? Especially on used gear?
Maybe I’m missing something. Even though I could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo, I’ve never actually worked in sales before, so I don’t know or understand the agenda here. I do know that if I wandered into a Sam Ash store today and saw this guitar for that price, I’d maybe offer the sales person $100 cash - take it or leave it. What do you think he or she would do?
It sucks that such an iconic music store is going under. It sucks that so many people are losing their jobs. It sucks that so much musical gear is being sold-off, under valued and for pennies on the dollar. Nice guitars used to go for $350-$3500 or more. That was the draw. You saved up for a really nice, high quality guitar, and you haggled the price with the guitar department sales person until everyone was happy.
Whenever any of my guitar students have asked about buying a new guitar, I have told them a thousand times to go to the music store to try a couple dozen of them out before they decide on the one they want. Every guitar is made for someone. You just have to find the one that was made for you.
Back in the day, when you bought a new guitar, you usually made it clear to the sales person that he or she was to also throw in a few free “extras” to seal the deal. This meant adding a couple packages of new strings, a handful of guitar picks, a shoulder strap, an amplifier cord, a gig bag or maybe even a guitar stand. This was all considered part of the sale. The store wasn’t losing money, and you got everything you needed to start playing your guitar.
That was long ago. Those days haven’t existed since the late 1990’s after stores like Sam Ash eliminated bargaining and haggling with potential customers, which in turn practically destroyed any meaningful commission the guitar sales person would get. It slowly began to change the way people purchased their music gear, from stores to online purchasing. The internet eventually sealed that deal on that too.
In a way, Sam Ash will be just like Radio Shack, Circuit City and Blockbuster Video. When corporate management falls behind and they don’t keep up with the trends, the company eventually goes away. The corporate world can be exceptionally greedy, self-destructive and self-sabotaging - and they usually take their employees with them through to the inevitable collapse. Very sad time in the music world.