Guitar Center closes very first store ever

[SanDiegoHarry]

Meh... GC is a dying beast.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

Sam Ash will still be around for me, but now I won't have any leverage on their prices, if GC is gone.

 

[james condino]

Guitar center sucks.Guitar Center has always sucked. Guitar Center will continue to suck until every last one of them goes out of business and some other corporate beast tried to pick up the remains. Good riddance!

 

[Killed_by_Death]

I'm going to buy GC stock, as soon as I find out how.

 

[rasicci]

Always sorry to hear someone has lost a job. Good luck on the job search.

As for Guitar Center. Sorry every store I have ever been in is poorly stocked and terribly run.
Hopefully since so many musicians here depend on their services they can turn it around, but they have a lot of work to do to earn my dollars.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

Hmm, maybe shorting GTRC is the way to go.

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[Matthew Fisher]

Maybe GC and Sam Ash need to have concession stands.

I could see that working if they start with the stores in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington.

 

[J Gold]

They couldn't sell enough $39 ukuleles to be profitable?

I'm very sorry about your job loss. When one door closes, another opens.

 

[ThunderV]

My Girlfriend has been in retail for the past 15 years. The corporate bigwigs would change the stores into vending machines if they could.

 

[BrentD]

Sorry you lost your job, bassguy. I hope you get a new and better one soon.

It seems like in the last few years the rent on commercial spaces have pushed a lot of businesses out. I've seen locations that do good business and are part of large chains get squeezed out of location because of the rent.

I've seen it too. Locally, there was a Barnes and Noble bookstore across the street from the Michigan State University campus. Almost 50,000 students across the street from a bookstore. B&N closed due to rent hikes.

 

[Topkat13]

It's very much dependent on location IMO. So I will not be surprised to see more close their doors. I was in the one in Nashville this week...newly remodeled...lots of pricey inventory and lots of folks inside...cash registers humming. I am guessing it's, for the time being, a cash cow. On the other hand a lot of these stores aren't located in a good market and have, like most of their stores, a lot of inventory. You have to sell a lot of cheap Chinese guitars, basses and other cheap imported crap to maintain more $ coming in than more $ going out. I'm just say'n.

 

[bassbrad]

Sorry to hear this and best wishes on a new day gig, I am in the same boat for different reasons (long illness, but I is all better now)

 

[Humbled]

Here's something nobody may have thought about, but a possible reality...

There's a Large (and aging) Mall in one of my former hometowns that's been there for 40 years.

All the stores and out-spaces are leased. Except one: The original "Anchor Store", a Belk Department Store.

Part of the original deal to get the place off the ground included the property owner selling the Belk-store property directly to Belk, outright, an acre and a half in the middle of forty. It's the only one, but Belk owns it, ...the property owner doesn't.

The still-Current and original owner (family) of the property (highly-valuable Interstate-side property) wants to bulldoze the whole place and re-develop it into a greater-draw.

Belk doesn't want to leave. So everybody else, in the leased spaces, are getting their leases "not-renewed".

The owners figure if they turn the place into a Ghost-town, Belk will finally "say-uncle" and leave, and the ownership apparently has the bucks to wait it out...


I'm not saying it's "right or fair"... A couple of High-School buddies of mine who ran retail-shops there are getting their life upended by this fiasco, and one is already out of business, one moved and borrowed a buttload of money to build a bigger store...

...But this could be what's going on...

 

[onlyclave]

So, Guitar Center closed its very first store ever today in Terre Haute, IN. I worked three and a half years at this location. The news came fast - they told us at 8a.m. that today would be our last day of business.

They explained that it's due to the landlords not compromising with executives about rent. Our lease was up in January and they've been in delegation since then. Obviously nothing came of it, so they closed our doors with no sign of relocation in the foreseeable future.

What happened to the Kirkland, Wa Guitar Center? It's been closed for a while so yours isn't the first and the method they closed it is how a company with high-value/high-shrink inventory shuts a location down.

Is this your first job or something?

 

[davec]

Op, sorry to hear.
GC has always been good to me but living in the Chicagoland area, you have lots of choices, sadly, GC has had me predicting their doom for the past three years, hoping this isn't it as It easy to imagine that they would take more than a few mfg's out with them and possibly a few retailers if it took them 3-6 months to liquidate not to mention what that would do to overall availability on the market...

Op -I've been getting a looks on linkd in, good luck

 

[MOTORHEADBANGER]

Guitar center sucks.Guitar Center has always sucked. Guitar Center will continue to suck until every last one of them goes out of business and some other corporate beast tried to pick up the remains. Good riddance!

Great way to look at several people losing their jobs without any notice

 

[Robroy]

Don't forget theft. An old SO worked retail at a women's clothing store and had endless stories of people stealing, and she was told not to do anything unless she saw them with her own eyes put something in a bag and could call mall security fast enough. Otherwise, just write it up as a loss. Obviously nobody ever reported any of it, because the burden of proof was so ridiculous. People would walk out with hundreds of dollars of merch. Daily.

I've often said it's very expensive to be poor in the United States. One example is the price of goods in poor neighborhoods vs. More affluent neighborhoods. The reason is to make up for local shrinkage. I had a friend who owns a string of grocery stores and all of his stores in poor neighborhoods had higher prices to compensate for all the shoplifting. In fact, in one neighborhood it was so bad that he had to close the store.

 

[LT131]

My local GC has pared their store inventory way way down over the last year and a half or so, I've been wondering if they were preparing to close.

Ours might as well be closed. They have not not had inventory in a year.

 

[fhm555]

Shoulda been around when the Russians folded. I was programming CNC for a DOD contractor and when the Soviet union went away things went from half a dozen shops within a few miles of each other running 3 shifts a day 7 days a week to all closed but one and it was down to two shifts, all in around a month. One closed so fast the machinists had to get the sheriff to get someone out to open the gate to get in and get their tools. They went home one night and found the shop shut down and padlocked the next morning.

Also, I helped out a friend who had a chain hobby shop located in a little set of strip malls anchored by a 16 screen cinema and an AllMart. They got moved in and made just enough to pay the bills for 3 years, then the landlord told them they were gonna have to cough up a 12% increase just to stay. They found a more affordable location but the stress of moving was too much for them and they wound up letting the business go.

 

[eukatheude]

Woah.
Italian law sucks, but at least we do get a one month advance warning.