How Guitar Center plans to beat its online competitors and safeguard the future of its physical stores
“That’s where we can win against Amazon. We’re not going to compete with the factory direct-from-China stuff. It’s not a winnable space”: How Guitar Center plans to beat its online competitors and safeguard the future of its physical stores
I went to a GC about 10 years ago and their staff literally knew nothing about guitars, or really even music. This was in Nashville, where there's really no excuse. Meanwhile I know the guys at my local mom and pop, stop by to talk shop sometimes and just goof off, and when they don't have it, my Sweetwater rep calls me every few months just to check in and see if there's anything I need.
So yeah, I don't really have any desire to ever go to a Guitar Center ever again.
When I was actively playing Sweetwater was amazing.
I stopped going to GC after a simple bad transaction.
I bought some bass strings. I don't recall the brand, but they were well regarded.
Well, manufacturing errors happen to the best of them, so I was annoyed when one string, essentially, wasn't complete.
It wasn't usable.
I go back a couple hours later (it was a long drive), bring the strings in, receipt, all that jazz. They wouldn't let me exchange them. They wouldn't refund me the money for selling a faulty product.
So fuck em. GC can rot and should only be used as an example of how NOT to run a music shop.
Yeah, it's a real shame that Amazon is poisoning the section of the market that GC had already poisoned for the independent guitar shops. Best of luck finding a new section of the market to destroy though...
Seems like a pretty weak strategy. Essentially saying “we will sell expensive stuff because people buy the cheap stuff online”. It’s not like they haven’t always sold the expensive stuff anyway - how is this any different? Not the sort of “strategy” I’d want to see if I was one of their investors/owners.
And GC continues its decades-long tradition of steadily declining