Official Luthiers Forum!

Flame was just about out. Please let it die.

Never saw a decent lap steel git in any G. C., so, I don't care if they disappear.
Only hope for mom and pop is if they're on the www.

I love how, at GC, if u walk into the the store with anything resembling a bag, they search it. Then search it again when u leave. Don't get me wrong. Shoplifters suck. Sign of the times I guess

Wow! I thought all the smoke and fire was in the dry Canadian forests. Seems that there is quite a bit coming from this topic. Time to hose it down, and cool off.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

The sunset tonight was intense! I assumed it was from the Canadian wildfires, but I hadn't checked the forum.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Boy.... I sure learned a lot about building a guitar from this thread.
Thanks to the OP for starting this.
Tom

I have never been in a GC and don't see myself going to one as I am quite sure that they wouldn't have anything I would be interested in. I play my own builds and Elderly is only 90 miles up 127.

We live about three miles from a GC, so I stop in to pick up a few sets of my favorite strings every month or so.

My curiosity piqued after the past few threads on set-up and fretwork, so I went into the acoustic room last time I went in. I was the only one in there for a few minutes as I looked around to see what they had. I picked up a Taylor and didn't get through tuning it before someone else walked in, picked up a guitar, sat down five feet away, and started strumming away. It's impossible to get a read on anything there.

GC sell house-brand Tele/Strat cases the fit very well.
I think they were $60.
I'm not far from a retail outlet, but I order them online so I get the shipping box.
I've bought three or four.

I walked into my local GC to look at Les Paul cases.
The doofus brought out three Strat cases and a soft gig bag.
I was suprised the guy working the guitar counter did not know what I was talking about.
I'll stick to ordering online from them.

It is cool to see such a wide variety of electrics at GC.
The mom/pop stores don't carry Gibsons, I was told Gibson required them to purchase a lot of stock to be a dealer.
However, I was dissapointed with the few LP customs I tried out at GC, I guess they don't make 'em like they used to.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

I've been lusting after a piece of gear lately and have found myself in a couple of music stores including a guitar center. I also pop into the local place down the street next to the place I always get my hair cut just to shoot the breeze and see how business is treating them.

Prior to going into the guitar biz full time, I used to sell really expensive capital medical equipment to hospitals and the thing that's painfully obvious to me is that most small time music store owners/sales people have no idea how to describe the value they add to the transaction so that the customers feel good about the transaction and for paying a few bucks more.

I actually learned this very early on when I worked at a motorcycle parts counter back in the early 90's. The internet was hardly around but we still had the catalog places to deal with. A customer would walk in, we'd spend an hour or more with them on the microfiche looking up parts, giving advice etc. and when we gave them the final price, sometimes their eyes would pop wide. In a lot of cases, there were a lot of parts that needed to be ordered and you could see that the customer had the idea that they should go mail order to save a few bucks. After a few months on the job it became really easy to spot when folks were about to bolt.

When I noticed the flee instinct building in them I'd have a little convo with them along the lines of "Are you thinking of mail ordering these parts? If you are, let me try to convince you otherwise...."

This is when I'd explain to them the time we spent together, the trip to the service dept to see if a part really needed to be replaced or could it be re-used, the phone support etc...all the things that we did that the mail order place wouldn't/couldn't do at the time.

I'd say that I had about a 75% conversion rate where after describing why it costs a little more at our store and why it's worth the extra money. Most people are pretty reasonable and understand that better service costs more and usually, it doesn't even enter their mind that they're "stealing" when they do all their research in a brick and mortar store and buy off the internet. Once it's presented to them in a kind way, most people understand that it's worth it.

I think for M&P shops to be successful, they need to learn better sales skills to be able to educate every customer that walks through the door to head them off at the pass when it comes to demoing locally and buying virtually. People really do not consider that by doing so they may eliminate the possibility of trying locally anymore because the M&P shops will go under.

If you or your store adds value, be proud of it and tell anyone who'll listen and explain to them that you have to charge more to be able to do this for a living. More times than not, they'll listen, understand, and put their iPhone back in their pocket (unless they're paying with Apple Pay)

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Wasn't going to post again here but there have been some very thoughtful, on-topics posts, thanks guys!

Andy's post is excellent and I could not agree more on all counts.

Folks really don't want to put their credit card information into some web site and read that the company was hacked a month later. Instead I personally am much more comfortable giving my credit card to a store and then reading a month later that the store got hacked.... Kidding of course but the real point here is humans are far more comfortable dealing with other humans, most of the time...

Brick and mortar (B&M) CAN compete with virtual concerns and win too! In addition all those poor, unfortunate trees that GC and MF kill to send us those July 4th sale fliers create demand but not necessarily for the sender. Some folks are into immediate gratification for one reason or another and would prefer to pop in the car and head to the local music store for their purchases. Besides if MF killed fewer trees we would have to opportunity to kill them first and make guitars out of them...

B&M music stores do have to be on their toes though and work very hard to be a destination of sorts, never, never, never offend Mr. and Mrs. Customer and be willing to form trusted relationships where the client's interest comes first, always - even if it means losing a sale.

Play the long game and it will likely pay off.

This is what I call having a parasitic relationship with the virtual resellers. Let them lose their soles spending millions on marketing and then step-up and step in front of the resulting sales dollars by providing a level of value that only positive human interaction can.

Andy very much describes this exact thing and I could not agree more.

One of the pitfalls of owning any store and I owned a couple of businesses when I was in my 20's is that in time we tend to get hard... We see the belt buckle and the risk to inventory and not the opportunity.... We also see every dollar that a client is proposing that we reduce a price to make a deal as coming out of our personal pocket... It's only natural, everyone has an angle, so-to-speak but lively negotiation does not mean that all parties cannot be made whole and happy.

I also think that although it's done in many industries distribution practices such as G*bson's that pretty much dictate much of how the products have to be presented and marketed do tend to favor large resellers and very much harm small Mom and Pop stores. I believe this to be short sided especially in the music business. One of the things that really sells in the music business is what super star is playing their heavy metal vomit tunes on who's ax... What did my hero Jimi or Eric do for the strat! What did Duane and Dicky do for the Les Paul, etc.

By favoring large stores producers may find that the next super star that comes out of small town somewhere with only access to what a Mom and Pop store could distribute we may see Ibanez get a bump in the play what the stars play game...

The smoke will clear and I still believe that there is opportunity for all in this biz and that's important. I also believe that in time small business owners will learn how to compete with Internet resellers and even how to turn the game around on them using their marketing materials and dollars to promote local sales.

That's my personal hope anyway.

Got into an argument with a repeat client yesterday.... I wanted to give him a discount because we appreciate him and I can and he insisted that Dave and I are a real asset for him to have so he insisted on paying full price... This is exactly what I mean by people really want to buy from people and if at the end of the day they don't it might be worth examining why...

I lost the argument....

Hesh,MF,GC,B&M...... Glad we weren't talking about Spruce&Mahogany

Happy to say that in Minneapolis we don't have GC. We have (Charlie) Hoffman Guitars, The Podium, and a few other smaller shops like Twin Town Guitars. Hoffman and The Podium are Ma and Pa shops and have been around since dirt. Probably longer than the "big box" GC in Roseville. But that one is for the suburban yuppies' kids...

I was mistaken earlier when I said we had 6 GC's in Michigan.

We have 9.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

I like to fantasize that people are starting to swing the pendulum back from cost, to value...

"I ordered a guitar online Friday and a drone delivered it to my front porch yesterday. Or should I say, dropped it from 100' in the air."

May those days never come...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Andy and Hesh made some great points...

One thing I have run smack into is that going after the Bottom of the market is NEVER a winning game... Trying to be the "Low price leader" will run you into bankruptcy faster than anything else... You are going head to head with Amazon, Walmart, Guitar center, Ebay, and all the other online retailers..... Unfortunately, too many Mom and Pop shops do only that - sell cheap stuff... I was a little surprised to find out that the REALLY expensive gear was the fastest moving stuff at one of the local stores - the high end stuff that played like a dream only sat on the rack for a day or 2... The cheap stuff would hang around for weeks because everybody else was selling the same stuff....

So many of the "Mom and pop" shops really didn't offer anything worthwhile except higher prices - and they are gone.... The ones that truly did offer excellent service and great products tend to be the ones that are still around... As Andy pointed out - they are also the ones who can point out what they bring to the table.... AND they make sure they bring real value to the table... Those guys know that if they try to go head to head with "Low price leaders" on price - they will lose all day long... But - what they CAN do is to provide service and a level of quality that the price only guys can't match - because if those low price guys offer service or quality - their prices go up too much....

For example - a GOOD local music store checks out 100% of instruments that show up... If they are messed up - guess what... They never even make it to the floor - the store ships them straight back. Several years ago - I heard was that 30-40% of Gibsons went back for QC issues... Rumor was that after being returned, they were then sent to GC and online retailers.... All I can say is that I ran through a whole bunch of messed up Gibsons at GC's... But - to be fair - the guys at the music stores said they had to send Everybody's stuff back once in a while - Martin, Taylor, Gibson, Fender - you name it, everybody had a lemon show up once in a while...

Those guys also understand that their profitable clientele isn't going to be professional musicians... Those guys are broke all the time... But - doctors, lawyers, mechanics, and engineers may well have money and WANT really good gear... That's the guy who wants a hand made electric that looks like a les paul... That's the guy who wants a high end acoustic guitar... That's the guy who will pay for the expensive setup and maintenance work... That's the guy who will pay YOU to find what HE wants - because he is swamped and has money, but no time....

The reality is that there IS a big market for the Mom and Pop stores... BUT - like anything else, they have to figure out how to bring value to the table...

Thanks

I must hand it to this forum....no other chatroom I belong to can go off topic, tickle politics, and remain civil like this group!!
To the thread: I live about 1.5 hours from Pittsburgh (the nearest, and only modern civilization by us) and I have had to adapt to a rural way of life. If not for the internet, and the big brown trucks of deliverance, I would go crazy. I have ALWAYS placed a priority on local businesses, having grown up with the M&P model in other areas.

There are many staples and extras that you just cannot find here, and must rely on e-shopping. Basically, in the 8 years I've lived in this setting, it has evolved into a "if it CAN be shipped, you can ONLY get it online" model. Even our Staples is closing and moving to online only. With few exceptions (grocery and large home improvement) either its at Walmart, or you go online to find it.

We have one private guitar shop, and to meet dealership requirements, he is limited to ONE major brand, and seems to do well. It just limits the selection of new instruments available.

Its not just guitars, its the whole marketplace in general. I cherish my childhood photos of me in the little-man stores.

Dave F