Interesting read about Guitar Center's end

I'm not sure that I see a necessary connection between "big box" and companies being used to orchestrate financial ploys in which bankruptcy is often a likely outcome but the money guys can still win anyway.

It's okay. You can still buy guitars at Best Buy.
 
Why are you crying now?

bapu
Big Box stores (of nearly all kinds, not just GC) are on the decline. They are the showroom, not a sales operation.
 
Next stop: InstrumentCo (i.e. Costco) where the employee can only tell you that Strats are on aisle 14 and Les Puals are on 17 (this week).

I dare say you are probably correct.
 
And as for... 'This Week?' Not sure if you meant i.e.  I hate when big department stores move any particular items far way in another totally illogical sections of the store, they seem to do this every month.  My wife and I had issues trying to find items in the pharmacy, groceries and other sections of the store... we considered leaving the trolley of items in the store and simply walk out! Sure, we asked staff but they also didn't know where the heck it is this and that (arghhhh)! .
 
Welcome to the Store for Zombies....  who roam around and around endlessly.
 

I'd hate to see GC go. It's the closest thing to home. On the other hand, a lot of times, when I tried a guitar there, it was pretty terrible - missing knobs and/or switches, poor set-up, loose jack, etc. 
 
 

bapu

Rain
I'd hate to see GC go. It's the closest thing to home. On the other hand, a lot of times, when I tried a guitar there, it was pretty terrible - missing knobs and/or switches, poor set-up, loose jack, etc. 
 
 

Krist,
 
Are you sure that's not a pawn shop you were in?

I know - and actually, I've seen Pawn Shops that took better care of their guitar inventories. 

craigb
I expect the next business model for brick-and-mortar will be a showroom-only order online type model.  Where you could have what you ordered sent to your home or to the showroom for pickup.

I think you just defined the reason Guitar Center failed as a business model. That is distinct from how it failed as a business. Its failure as a business is well discussed in the referenced article.The only music store with a significant inventory within a hundred miles of my home is Guitar Center, but except for a few special sales, I have never actually bought anything there. And no, I have never received any useful information from their employees.  Aside from teenage  illegal aliens there is probably no cheaper or more plentiful labor pool than musicians who need a day job, but I digress. If GC had a device I found interesting, it was almost always cheaper somewhere else i.e. online. The loss of GC (other than the fact that Sweetwater will now have no incentive to undercut their prices) is that I will have no place to audition real exemplars of the products I would be interested in buying. 
 
The reasons for the business failure, as the article indicates, has to do with the switch from investing in the underlying value of a company (what used to be quaintly labeled the "fundamentals" ) to the hope that you could unload the equity for more than you paid for it (speculation, or in the current parlance "value"). It sounds like GS would have failed in the past (because of the fundamentals) except for a ruinous "rescue" by some slick operators. Will consumers suffer as a result of this failure? Sure. Will our access to less expensive and more available products be limited? Of course. Does this mean that all brick and mortar enterprises are necessarily doomed? Remains to be seen. Opening showrooms to allow customers to try the product locally, only to order the product online, is probably not the answer. The competitor who decides not provide such a service will get a free ride from whoever does.

Well... I don't get it. The website is up and they had a Residents day sale. Am I missing something?
I hope they have an "everything must go" sale.
MARS was a much better store and they went under years ago. I ordered a guitar from Sam Ash on Monday, it is getting here tomorrow. They have a store 30 minutes from here and, now I am not complaining... just saying.. they didn't charge me sales tax. Is OK with me but I thought if they had a store in the state then they had to collect state sales tax. They were/are close to the Marietta GC. Since SA moved in I don't think I have been in GC, maybe once. SA is a little better, at last here. GC was/is horrible. The staff at MARS was always knowledgeable and helpful.. and tolerant.
I read a headline about Fender moving to sell direct to the end user while trying to look up this GC story. I wonder how that will affect things. It should affect a lot of mom and pop stores. It might help some other lines though that just may move in to replace Fender in the stores. Will it be a good move or a backfire?
 
J
 
 

Oh good! I guess...
 
J