Guitar Center is (headed toward) dead, and I don't feel so good myself*

[Re-Pete]

Someone once said "If you wanna make a small fortune in retail music supply, start with a large fortune".

It would seem a bunch of high-end MBAs saw some of the margins on musical equipment and said "we need to be in this business!". Unfortunately, those margins are wide because some big bucks can sit on the floor in inventory doing nothing for a long time while you sell strings, picks and saxophone reeds. It's kind of a feast or famine business to be in, so it's tough to carry long-term and/or heavy debt. Few things are predictable.

I'm in Australia, and our supply chain is small and often there's stuff you simply can't get at the local store - if there's one around. But what will piss me off big time, is if I go into a larger Sydney music shop, ask for D'Addario XLs for electric guitar, 010-046, and they say they don't have them in stock!  :doh: Not to have that when they display the brand logo on the shopfront is inexcusable. And conversely, a shop that does  maintain a good consumable stock will have me leaving happy and with a sale.  :icon_thumright:

Consumables (Reeds, strings, electrical cords, patch cords, picks etc.) should be where they base their business model on, not the one a month or longer instrument sale (where the margin is larger). AND MAKE SURE THERE'S PLENTY OF CONSUMABLE STOCK!

 

[drewfx]

Mom and Pop stores would have a hard time in the current world regardless of GC.

Even back in my early days the little independents always had some old stuff lying around not selling - and this was before you had digital everything that got replaced by a newer, cheaper and typically far more capable models every 2-3 years making anything a store had lying around a joke at its original price.

And between the easily accesible on line stores and ebay and cl, competition is fierce from both new and used gear.

 

[Day-mun]

Mom and Pop stores would have a hard time in the current world regardless of GC.

Even back in my early days the little independents always had some old stuff lying around not selling - and this was before you had digital everything that got replaced by a newer, cheaper and typically far more capable models every 2-3 years making anything a store had lying around a joke at its original price.

And between the easily accesible on line stores and ebay and cl, competition is fierce from both new and used gear.

Agree. We are the lucky generation to see the before/after affect of this brave new world's coming. -It is just easy as musicians to pin it on GC because this is where we see/feel it hit home. If this were a car building forum, we'd all be ranting about JEG's  or some auto-parts online distributor...

Funny thing (and totally off-topic): One of the Mom & Pop stores that is still hanging on in a nearby West MI town used to be a distributor for Warmoth in the pre-internet days! -Guess they had a hard time regrouping when W went exclusively to online sales, web ordering, and direct shipment...

But as much as I love the feel of the local shop, I sure ain't gonna complain about not having to drive 45 minutes on a weekday afternoon to look through a catalog, fill out an order form, wait months, and pay a middle-man to get my next W build!