Guitar Center To File For Bankruptcy

I do hope this clears the landscape for more independent shops but since the closing of my last true locally owned store earlier this year, I think it’s gonna be a while before someone signs a commitment letter to lease a storefront and order enough inventory to give it a go.

My closest guitar shop is busy. It's a really small place, so right now they have I think at most, two people inside at a time, and there are at times a line outside the door. I don't know how many people are buying, or what they're buying. Shop sells Fender and Gibson mostly, had some Godins for a while. Pretty good for repairs/setups.
 
it don't help when you take a guitar in the store to sale or trade they only offer one tenth of what yours is worth. Bad business with the customers that's what happens.

If they paid fair market value for it how would they make any profit when they go to sell it ?

their used stuff is generally really fairly priced, if not better than what many are asking in the private market, so only way that works is to buy low, no ?
 
My closest guitar shop is busy. It's a really small place, so right now they have I think at most, two people inside at a time, and there are at times a line outside the door. I don't know how many people are buying, or what they're buying. Shop sells Fender and Gibson mostly, had some Godins for a while. Pretty good for repairs/setups.

That is the problem with store fronts, be they mom and pop or big chains, they are essentially a showroom to try stuff out and then you go home and look got a deal online, used on Reverb, try to save sales tax Etc.

And that is even if someone had an intention to buy at all.....

I’ll be the first to admit going into GC plenty of times just to look around, play with stuff, while my wife was shopping at another store in the strip mall.....

There is usually a line to get into my local GC but there sure isn’t a line at the cash register
 
I'm sad for the employees who will lose their jobs. They may not be the most knowledgeable, but they're still people with lives and families and don't deserve to be pawns in the venture capital game.

Hopefully some small retailers will step in to fill the void; but until we're past covid, I don't think many people are going to want to risk the money to open a business and buy inventory. And maybe not even then, but there is something to be said for being able to play a guitar before you buy it. Although I have bought a few online that I've kept, including the 513 in my avatar that I got from GC ;-)

Or maybe Sweetwater will open some stores (and do it right), but their current model seems to be working pretty well... they might not want to change it even if the opportunity is there.
 
the ones I have last visited have crap guitars crap people and bad prices, other than that they are great.
 
Yeah, buying a guitar without having the chance to hold it is like buying a mail-order bride. You might get lucky, but it's a huge leap of faith.... Sweetwater has a good rep, though, and you can return one that just doesn't blow yer skirt up. The thing is, GC did the WalMart thing, and buried many of the locals. I guess we will see who/what fills the vacuum....


Agreed completely however I have bought a few guitars from Sweetwater that were first rate from a quality perspective as well as a transactional perspective.

I was really leery about not being able to physically play one first but I'm pretty comfortable with them now.
 
I don’t know any details, but the email I got said they’re going into Chapter 11, restructuring and staying in business. I don’t know how many stores might be trimmed in the process, but the letter states that they’re going into Chapter 11 in order ultimately to stay in business. I would miss them. I don’t buy a lot new from GC, but I buy a crapload used from them and I don’t see any place that fills that gap for me.
 
That's how bankruptcy works. They get to "renegotiate" the company's debts, otherwise known as welch on them. Anybody they owe money to gets screwed, company comes out in better shape as a result.

It's a profitable manoeuver.
 
There is usually a line to get into my local GC but there sure isn’t a line at the cash register

There have been plenty of times I was in a buying mood, and even found something I wanted, but it was all beat to shit from how it was treated by people in the store. Frustrating. I mean, if I wanted a well used guitar, I'd buy one for half price on CL.

I'm sure GC made a lot of their money on beginner packages. Think of how many people want to play the guitar, get something, and then never touch it a few months later. You're just not getting a lot of repeat business except from people that really play, and those people know what the other options are. I buy most of my stuff on Reverb, and I take a chance on getting a dud, but I'm usually looking for something really specific.
 
Anything owned by Bain Capital is destined to fail. The business model is based on buying companies, saddling them with crushing debt while stuffing their own pockets and then declaring bankruptcy leaving the creditors stuck with the bill.

Bain Cap is Romney's Gordon Gecko chop shop.

Don't ever sell out, Cliff.

From the Wikipedia article about BC.

In his 2009 book The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy, Josh Kosman described Bain Capital as "notorious for its failure to plow profits back into its businesses," being the first large private-equity firm to derive a large fraction of its revenues from corporate dividends and other distributions. The revenue potential of this strategy, which may "starve" a company of capital,[181] was increased by a 1970s court ruling that allowed companies to consider the entire fair market value of the company, instead of only their "hard assets", in determining how much money was available to pay dividends.[182] In at least some instances, companies acquired by Bain borrowed money in order to increase their dividend payments, ultimately leading to the collapse of what had been financially stable businesses.[59]
 
I've seen the harm GC can do to the companies they do business with firsthand. It's not something you ever want to be a part of. At the local level, there are some great people that got caught up in the GC machine and some great businesses that were buried by it. Business strategies employed by GC are part of the reason people resent capitalism so strongly.
 
On an interesting note, I've received 9 different promo emails from Guitar Center since Friday... Normally I might get 1 or 2 a week.
 
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