Dean Sales Representatives

Today I visited one of the remaining “local” stores I had not personally seen: 8th Street Music. They have a small retail store presence in Philadelphia, but sell many instruments on line both through e-bay and amazon.com. The bulk of their sales seems to come through on line sources, and they advertise themselves as the original internet music instrument retailer. Their history appears to support that claim.

So I went to the store because when I have looked for unusual guitars, like the Parker Fly or the Dean Soltero, their store always comes up as a dealer. I was unimpressed by the physical retail store, but I was impressed by the employees within. I had conversations with two of the workers, and mostly spent time with the second. He was able to find a Leslie West Standard, a one-pick-up version of the Soltero for which I have been searching. We talked about guitars, the local guitar market, the market for instruments in Philadelphia, and Dean guitars.

What I learned was that Dean has quality control issues, dealing with Dean is not easy, and the Dean sales representative was given much of the responsibility for the difficulty in selling their guitars. After playing the Dean, I decided that I liked the playability of the neck. But the guitar was poorly set up from the factory, and required some adjustments to the pickup, so it wouldn’t contact the high E string. The guitar was strung with 9’s, and while they certainly were easy to bend, the guitar had a thin tone that might have been caused by the strings. Or it might have been caused by the fact that it was a $600 single-pickup guitar. But I didn’t learn of the price until I was home, because nobody could find out how much it cost! I agree that Dean should provide their dealers with enough info that price should never be an unknown, but it was.

I plan to return to the store, perhaps next week. They have a Dean Soltero, American made, two pickups, in their NJ warehouse, and plan to get it to their store so I can play it. I’ll be interested in its tone, and hearing how much of a difference the second pickup makes in the variety of tones I can squeeze out of the Soltero. In the meantime, it was a nice way to spend an hour this morning. Its just a shame that parking in Philadelphia set me back $13.50 for 90 minutes. Ouch!

Starting a Website

After my last post, I decided it would be wise to invest a few bucks to grab my proposed domain name: adultguitar.com. In the harsh light of the day after, I have second thoughts about the name: does it sound too fuddy-duddy for my target market, which may be trying to recapture some of their youth? Regardless, the name is mine.The experience of establishing a domain name was quite easy, as I expected it to be. Domain registrars have had years to perfect the process. I went with Register.com, and am glad I did. buried in the fine print at the bottom of their website is info referencing awards they won from J. D. Powers for quality of customer service. As a newbie to setting up a site, I had opportunity to find out how good their customer service might be…..In mid-December, I switched to an iMac after having Gateway PCs for more than 10 years. Most of the switch has gone painlessly, with the exception of my Quicken program. But setting up a mail account for the mailbox at my new domain wasn’t happening last night. So I left a message for technical support at register.com. The form letter told me to expect help within 24 business hours. With the holidays, I wasn’t optimistic they would meet that time frame.So imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning to find my answer waiting for me. It was a simple thing I was doing wrong, but their standard on-line documentation wasn’t helping me figure it out. With the help of their e-mail, I was up and running in minutes. Even before my first cup of coffee! The only thing missing was a return address to send my compliments on a job well done.

Starting a Guitar Website

I have been thinking more about the idea of starting a website related to guitars and guitar playing. The working title is “Adult Guitar” and my early research shows this name is available (I’d better go register it!). The idea would be to offer articles to help those of us that want to play, or play more, as we get older. It might include reviews and links to instructional resources, on-line and otherwise, as well as gear reviews. Money would be earned through advertisements and perhaps selling instruments. Unfortunately, most manufacturers are not interested in internet-only dealers, and I’ve just about ruled out a storefront at this point. It is just too hard to make the economics of a store work well. At least as important as to what the site would do is what it wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t sell Gibson and Fender guitars. It wouldn’t have instructional videos, guitar tabs, or resources for bands (like MySpace has developed). It may have forums for musicians to connect with others to play together, and could sponsor meet-ups if the geography of visitors was conducive to off-line meetings. Most importantly, it would offer resources for integrating music into family and work life, which have become so hectic for most.I guess the first step is spending some money getting a domain name. 

Guitar businesses – not retail

Although I have not posted in awhile, that doesn’t mean my mind hasn’t been active thinking about guitar-related businesses. Sadly, I have spent much time going down the road of opening a guitar store, and I see no way to make money at it. There is a great risk that the enterprise would fail, and fail in an expensive fashion. I think I am being realistic with this assessment, and not reaching this conclusion from either pessimism or fear.So I’ve been asking myself what other businesses might I become involved with that would still satisfy my desire to be involved in something musical, or better yet, guitar-centric. I’ve thought about web sites, and realize there are many websites that cater to the guitar player demographic. I personally have over 20 bookmarks that I visit on an infrequent basis, and a handful that I visit regularly. I have 10 RSS feeds in my google reader alone (fortunately they don’t all generate to many posts). There are instruction websites, band websites, and of course, sales websites. The last thing the world needs is another FREE GUITAR LESSONS website.I am currently thinking about a website targeted towards people like me (surprise!). More specifically, the website would be targeted towards men and women in their 30’s through 50’s that play guitar, or used to play guitar and would like to play guitar again. That’s the working concept, anyway. 

Back to the business

On Tuesday I stopped by my hairdresser’s salon and picked up his items for sale: one Mexican Stratocaster, one 30W Crate all-tube Palomino amplifier, and one black Gretsch DuoJet. The DuoJet was the one main guitar he had been holding onto, and the one he kept saying he would never sell. When we last talked, I constantly tried to get him to sell the Gretsch, only to have him tell me he wasn’t selling it. I was quite surprised to find out he was letting me sell it.

After I got it home, I needed to make sure it played well enough for me to sell on e-bay without damaging my feedback ratings. By playing it personally, I can learn about and disclose any shortcomings in the description. Its also the fun part of doing this for my hairdresser. What I immediately noticed was that it was light, and had a great variety of tones. But the low E string buzzed loudly. When my daughters came home from school, they both mentioned how loud the buzzing was.

So this morning I decided to call my hairdresser and ask him about the buzzing. He claims to be good about tweaking guitars, and I wanted to let him have an opportunity to do that to this one. I felt that selling it as is, with me mentioning the string buzz in my description, would certainly net him a much lower price on e-bay than he otherwise would receive. When I called him, he was glad to hear from me. His wife is out of town, and he had told her the prior night that I was selling the Gretsch. Based on her reaction, he needed to get it back and not sell it.

So I have the amplifier listing ready to start on Thursday night, and I still have the Mexican Strat to sell, but neither item will earn as much for him, or me, as that Gretsch. So since I have some more time, I went ahead and registered my fictitious name with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and registered for what I think will be my state tax receipt number. Which is all I think I need to start selling guitars as Media Music.

Selling more guitars

Just as I was getting ready to set up a tax ID number for selling guitars, my hairdresser asks me to sell two more guitars and a nice amplifier. Since I’ve already sold one guitar for him, and made $50 for my trouble, I couldn’t say no. Plus, while they are in my “inventory”, I can play them all I want. So my tax ID number will have to wait for me to test these newest instruments, take pictures, write up descriptions, etc.

The things I do for friends.

Music Trade magazine

My new subscription to The Music Trades magazine started with the September 2007 issue which arrived last Thursday. I felt a tinge of excitement and familiarity, like seeing a friend for the first time after a long absence.

And then the cover story hit me: Piano Market Survival Guide (emphasis mine). And then the editorial, talking about how infrequent are years with growth in sales volume, and the last one, and the forecast for the next, wasn’t good but that was normal. And I thought to myself “This hasn’t changed much since 2001 when the threat was Guitar Center and the stock market crash eliminating h8uge sources of disposable income”.

Not all the news in the magazine was glum. I haven’t read more than halfway, yet, but the article on whether music instruction can be profitable, or just a loss-leader service to establish new customer relationships. I particularly enjoyed reading the comments of George Hines, from my favorite local retailer, Georges Music. I found the comments from Pete Gamber of Alta Loma Music in Rancho Cucamonga interesting as well, and he had some of the best ideas for using music lessons to improve instrument sales.

But perhaps most importantly, knowing that George Hines is with George’s Music gives me new avenues for searching the internet for information on the stores, management, operating philosophies, and possible career options.

Selling music instruments/guitars on the internet

I first considered opening a music instrument store when I left my last job as Environmental Services Manager at Consulting Services, Inc. (CSI), a company that was later purchased by XL Capital. It was 1999, I had purchased an acoustic guitar, and the dot-com stock boom was going full steam ahead. I would sit on the front porch of my home in Havertown, PA, smoking cigars, reading stock analysis reports, and Music Trade magazine. There was a small guitar shop about 2 miles away from my house, but I was too new at playing guitar again to spend much time there. Shortly, he went out of business.

Two issues were dominant in the pages of Music Trade from those days: MARS (since bankrupt) and Guitar Center were spreading everywhere, and undercutting prices for all the existing retail channels; the internet was spreading quickly and instrument sales were slowly happening on line, despite the difficulty of buying an instrument without first playing it. There was a lot of space dedicated to discussions about buyers trying instruments at their local retail store, and then buying it at Guitar Center or on-line for less than retailer paid for the instrument at wholesale. I remember thinking how the internet would never be a good source of music instrument sales, since a musical instrument is such a personal choice.

Now? I’ve bought one electric and two acoustic guitars on e-bay, and I am delighted with all of them. Also, I recently sold a Gibson ES-345 guitar on e-bay for a friend, although not for as much as I was hoping. (See! Bargains still exist on e-bay.) Typing “guitar” into Google yields 135,000,000 hits. Narrow it down to “guitar sale” and the hits are a more manageable 6.350,000. Apparently many people have decided to sell instruments on line.

So if I want to sell instruments on line, what would I use to differentiate myself from those other 6million hits? If I work out of my house, my overhead is low. So I certainly can match most low prices. But there has to be more. I need a supply of instruments at a low price, but that I would be proud to be affiliated with (sorry, cheap Chinese starter-guitars). Through Music Trade I found a supplier of reconditioned used guitars, that only sells to people with legitimate tax IDs. So one possibility would be to obtain a business tax ID number, and order used guitars for resale. Another would be to offer my services to buy trade-in guitars from people buying new instruments at local guitar stores. For instance, when I was at Georges Music, they told me they don’t accept trade-ins, accept in very rare cases. Perhaps they could give my nm,e out as someone that gives money for good condition used instruments. Then I could resell them for a profit. Its not worth the effort to Georges, but it might be for me.