Mom and Pop Guitar Shops

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jimistone said:
If a guitar is over $250....it's too high IMO.

oh wow...


I like GC too, they will get you new guitars from storage w/o any problem if you are looking to buy guitars. And I've also been to some GC's where they have their more expensive acoustics locked up and the expensive eletrics so high no one can get to them. And most importantly, they won't rip me off like private stores 'cause I can bargain with them. The prices at private stores around here are ridiculous...
 
ADU Guitarist said:
I'm from St. Louis as well. What store did you happen into? I tend to purchase most of my equipment at Fazio's Frets and Friends and I consider them the best store in St. Louis. GC Crestwood is next on my list and I NEVER shop at Mozingo's or Eddie's.

Fazio's Frets and Friends is great because it has a wide range from beginner gear to pro-equipment. They do not carry Gibson Guitars (you can order them though) but they do have a wide range of other guitars like Parkers, Deans, and Vintage Fenders.

Also their acoustic room is second to none. If you're looking for an acoustic that is the place to go.(They have a full line of Taylor's and a great relationship with Taylor Guitars, one of the worlds largest and oldest Taylor dealers, as you can see in this video: http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/gs/Video.aspx?file=bob_and_bryan_high.wmx&type=wmv That is one of the employees meeting with Bob Taylor.) Not to mention I have a great relationship with just about every employee there including the owners. It it a FAMILY business, and the family is not limited to those employed. They extend it to their customers.


The store in question is St. Charles Guitar Exchange. I drove from South County to visit that sorry ass excuse for a guitar shop. I'll check out Fazio's next, I really need a good studio guitar so I can stop recording kids with Squires.
 
Oh Man! I wouldn't term The St Charles Guitar Exchange in the Mom and Pop league. They're the St Charles version of McMarkup.
 
Track Rat said:
Oh Man! I wouldn't term The St Charles Guitar Exchange in the Mom and Pop league. They're the St Charles version of McMarkup.
Yea............def. try Fazio's.. Their website is http://www.faziosmusic.com/ and it will be closer to a 15-20 minute drive for you
 
Track Rat said:
Oh Man! I wouldn't term The St Charles Guitar Exchange in the Mom and Pop league. They're the St Charles version of McMarkup.


Yeah, I'm just usually a Guitar Satan shopper so to me that was mom and pop, not to mention the owner only likes to deal in cash, which to me is also a sign of "small time". The prices were really ridiculous. For like the Zack Wylde Epi they had on the tag $1199 but below that is said "ask for special cash price". So if you pay with cash it's cheaper? Seemed shady to me.
 
Two things. First of all, I wouldn't by a pick at that place. Second, nobody puts the "street price" on guitars anywhere I've ever been.
 
Outlaws said:
(and home sales is a little different from gutiar lol. Most kids don't get their kicks doing tours of open houses

Now that is TOTALLY untrue there might not be many "kids" that BS real estate/ mortgage professionals, but there ared plenty of grown ups that will waste an agents time on homes that they know they can't afford....
 
jonnyc said:
Yeah, I'm just usually a Guitar Satan shopper so to me that was mom and pop, not to mention the owner only likes to deal in cash, which to me is also a sign of "small time". The prices were really ridiculous. For like the Zack Wylde Epi they had on the tag $1199 but below that is said "ask for special cash price". So if you pay with cash it's cheaper? Seemed shady to me.

No, if you pay with cash, the shop doesn't loose a chunk of it to the credit card companies. There are fees associated with being able to operate with creditcards that we as consumers don't see. For a shop that isn't 'big', those fees eat at their potential profits. A small shop needs every bit of profit they can get more-so than someone like Gutiar Center simply becuase Guitar Center can offset a smaller profit margine simply via the large volume of items sold.
 
Upper_Cutt said:
Now that is TOTALLY untrue there might not be many "kids" that BS real estate/ mortgage professionals, but there ared plenty of grown ups that will waste an agents time on homes that they know they can't afford....


Well that could be true, I won't dispute that. But I still stand by my statement with reguards to kids.
 
I was a manager for a boutique guitar shop in MN for a while and I will say one thing that we did that made a big diference to everyone who entered the place.

Guitars are ment to be played and just hung up and not let anyone touch.
They wouldnt let you play a gibson.......... We would let kids play $20,000.00 guitars, we new they werent going to buy it.
But our deal was "Were not guitar center".
I never shoved a guitar into anyones hands, and I sold on average a couple of $1700.00 guitars a week. Why because I never assumed anyone would buy anything I just wanted them to try something new, something other than a fender or gibson(not saying there bad, I like gibsons). :D

Your experiance was with one group of yahoo's in one dying little crap store.
There is plenty of great mom and pop shops out there.

By the by, I just swore off guitar center and cut up my GC credit card......
Just my thought on most mom and pops.

-Blaze :D
 
No in Real Estate it's worse. You spend hours, days, weeks with a client. You work out details with their purchase, they come to your display house 20 times. Everything's all ready to go and BAM!!!! "Oh we have an agent." It's like going to the guitar shop, picking out exactly what you want and then saying thanks I'm going to Guitar Center to buy it. Not to mention I just had a 15 year old in here the other day, this house is a quarter million dollars and this punk was opening the fridge, opening my desk drawers. Finally had to ask him to leave.
 
As is evidenced in the rest of this post, there are good mom&pops and there are bad ones. Guitar Center is always Guitar Center so in that sense you will not be in for a surprise when you shop there.

A lot of mom&pops make their living on lessons and selling guitars is secondary to that. There used to be a local shop that actually charged list price for everything. $12 for a set of strings - in 1985!

When you find a good shop, you'll know it. I've been casually shopping for a Les Paul and was getting very frustrated with GC. Many of their guitars were setup horribly and some were even broken or missing strings. Unbelievable. I was beginning to think that there weren't any good Gibsons out there. GC almost has a monopoly on Gibsons these days, but not quite. I found a small store that had 20 or so Les Pauls and I was able to rifle through a bunch of them to compare. They were all set up well and in tune. That's just the way it should be.
 
Being from SW St. Louis County - I've been to most of the stores mentioned... Hey don't forget that one in Fenton! (Tower Grove or something?)

One thing I've notice about each shop is that they will have something that gives them a small edge over the next one.

Guitar Center is great for pricing, selection on guitars and clearance stuff for pro-audio.

Fazio's and Tower both have excellent parts selection.

Fazio's has an outstanding guitar collection. Their used room is overpriced. I think it's ultra cool that they have touring artist come in an give seminars and stuff... I don't think I've ever seen that anywhere else in St. Louis.

McMurray - Big place with not much selection.

Silver Strings - sort of fading away these days.

Guitar Exchange - overpriced and everything the original poster said.

Gravity - never been there. Heard it's nice.

Eddie's - never been there either. Used to be a partner in the Tower Grove dynasty when I was a kid in the 70's.

Monzingo's - The place to go for your marching band and orchestra needs. But I have bought a fair amount of music and a really nice used high-hat from them.

And then there's always the pawn shops!

How about other cities?
 
Learn how pricing works and you will know when you're encountering the real thing.

Just some thoughts about pricing; the customer service horror story speaks for itself.

Most small shops have a sticker price that is above the catalog prices, which are all pretty much the same between shops. It allows them to deal down to the catalog prices: the Minimum Advertised Price. MAP is the lowest price they can go with distributor permission. If an item is advertised at less than MAP price the distributor is likely to pull co-op ad budget (gratis advertising funds, or promotions paid for in part or whole by the distributor, relieving the retailer of a HUGE overhead item). Sometimes the distributor drops the retailer altogether, which is illegal but still happens.

So a small retailer will usually meet the catalog price - they can or ought to be able to make money selling at it - but almost never will they feel comfortable dropping below it. So you should be able to approach or match Musicians Friend pricing on factory stuff. The difference is tax and value added in the form of service and accessibility.

Now for why they can't (or shouldn't) drop below MAP as a practical matter. Question: If you have a staff of three and are running floorplan financing on $500,000 inventory, plus covering lease payments of $3,000 per month and God knows what all for heat and so forth, how many Gibsons will you have to sell every week just to keep the doors open? Answer: A whole bunch. A whole big bunch. It just doesn't happen. A small shop might sell one or two. That's a few hundred bucks at best.

So they will sell a few Gibsons and a truckload of Epiphones and Samicks. They make some markup on each, but the Samicks and whatever else they can move for $249.99 will provide volume and cash flow, without which they are dead and finished. The markup and most of the profit is going to be found in accessories like guitar picks, $49.99 tuners and all that. It's the mic cable and the $300 keyboard and the $400 mixer and the $99.99 stompbox sales volume - and the $249.99 guitar kit, complete with matching strap and pick - that will really keep the place in business. Hundreds of smaller transactions.

Where they can and often will deal is in used or traded in equipment like a guitar traded earlier in the day (no time invested in setup) or on a used amp (usually no financing or work to be done). Their markups can be as good or better on this stuff as on new equipment, but they have another tool - they can afford to bargain. They can invest in a customer and not get hurt at the end of the day.

I get stuff at ebay and through MF and all that, but not anything I can find at my local shop because if he does well, so will I. Many's the time I've borrowed a whole live sound rig for a church or school benefit - at no charge. When I wanted a set of speaker stands but couldn't spend the cash on the $160 Peavey set, he went to the catalog and found me a "me too" generic brand at half the price. When I bought a jazzbox, he threw in an upgraded TLK case at his cost, and so on. When I wanted a certain mixer, he actually took on the line - and I bought one; still have it. That "value added" component really means something to me. In return he knows that when I am ready to make a purchase, I look to him first. It becomes common sense.

He also has a strong internet business: www.guitarsam.com . I plug the place shamelessly; they're raising families from the cash flow there. That's one shop that matters.
 
Not all "mom & pop" stores are like that. This past weekend I was in Eugene, Oregon, a couple hours away from where I live, and found myself with some time to kill. I decided to see if they had any local music stores as I have been looking at higher end acoustic guitars lately. The first place I went to was called Mckenzie River Music. This was a small store which carried mostly guitars, amps and accessories (I didn't see any drums keyboards or pro audio gear, just guitar stuff). They had a great selection of acoustics, including a great selection of quality stuff in the $1000 plus range. The salesman I talked to was very helpful and friendly, and I spent some time playing several nice Taylors, a couple of Martins, and a few other brands. I left with some valuable insight into the sounds of different models and which ones I prefered.

After that I went to their local Guitar Center; I'd been to others but never the one in Eugene. I found it to be a typical GC - no salesman even bothered to ask if they could help, the selection was 80% low-end crap, and when I did try to play the couple of nice acoustics they had, I could barely even hear how the guitars sounded due to all the teenagers cranking crap through amps all over the store.

I do plan to actually buy a nice acoustic in the very near future, as soon as I decide upon the model I prefer. But if I can help it, it won't be from a Guitar Center, and although there are a lot of other stores near where I live that I still plan to check out, who knows, I may just find myself making the drive back down to Eugene for the final purchase :)
 
Sure......Goez instruments...located in Maplewood. A little out of the way but Skip IS the man!!! Don't have his number handy right now. He used to work at Silver Strings music on Olive. When I bought my s-470 from GC in Minneapolis, the ZR trem was all messed up. Guy told me it would never go out of tune, when in reality, it never WOULD tune. So I bring it back to him, he says, we've got the same guitar at out store down south (1/2 hour away). So I said...OK....you gona go get it??? He's like, ...well you can drive down there....they're holding it for you. I bought a new guitar plus a GT-6 at the same time....and he tells ME to go get it!!!!!!!!! Thats the last time I entered a GC......
 
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Most small shops have a sticker price that is above the catalog prices, which are all pretty much the same between shops. It allows them to deal down to the catalog prices: the Minimum Advertised Price. MAP is the lowest price they can go with distributor permission. If an item is advertised at less than MAP price the distributor is likely to pull co-op ad budget (gratis advertising funds, or promotions paid for in part or whole by the distributor, relieving the retailer of a HUGE overhead item). Sometimes the distributor drops the retailer altogether, which is illegal but still happens.
So a small retailer will usually meet the catalog price - they can or ought to be able to make money selling at it - but almost never will they feel comfortable dropping below it. So you should be able to approach or match Musicians Friend pricing on factory stuff. The difference is tax and value added in the form of service and accessibility.

I believe this all to be true, but there can also be a substantial difference between advertised price and what they're willing to sell it for on certain items. The small shop I referred to in my previous post offered me any one of a selection of new Gibson Les Paul Standards for much less than Musician's Friend, and I didn't even ask them to match. They claimed they were trying to make room for new models. My guess is that I could go to Guitar Center and negotiate the same deal, but I don't care to.

They're not paying anywhere near MAP for something like a Gibson so there is room for negotiation, both at GC and small shops. They do want to sell the stuff.

OTOH, I've also had small stores tell me that Musician's Friend sells some things for less than the small stores' dealer cost.

Bottom line is if you find a good small store, you should support it and tell all your friends. If they're idiots, don't go there and tell all your friends.
 
I would have certainly called them on it. Shit like that pisses me the fuck off. I would have told them what I thought and let them know that they just lost several thousand in sales. Dumb ****s.
 
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