looking for dealer

[OldCowboy]

We can also choose not to buy new guitars from this company (or other companies participating in similar practices. What Fender started doing in the last year or two is similar). At this point I'm not buying any more guitars for a long time but that's a totally different story (but when the time comes I'm only buying used). I know just one person not buying a new Gibson wont affect the company, but given their's (and other companies, not just Gibson's) greedy practices and horrible treatment of smaller dealers and the surplus of high quality, used guitars out there currently guitar players could put a nice dent in their loss of revenue.

Make that two people☺

[BigKahune]

... They {Gibson} had to upgrade their obsolete Kalamazoo plant, which resulted in moving to MT. ...

 

Uhmmm . . . . Gibson moved from Kalamazoo to Nashville, much like GM did with Saturn - to get away from unions. Then the Kalamazoo shop was closed in 1984. When Gibson couldn't get acoustics together they went to Bozeman in 1987 and bought Flatiron Mandolin and brought in Ren - they finally starting making acoustic guitars in Bozeman in 1989/90. Then they brought in a bean counter to run the place and things went to sh!t for a while.

 

... And, yes, they also had to drastically cut back on the number of dealers they allowed to serve as middle men in bringing their guitars to the market. This focus benefited everyone, including the customer. .... While the 'David and Goliath' scenario appeals to those who want to point the finger of blame at evil 'big' business s - it is laughable. In recent years, approximately 1.2 MILLION acoustic or a/e guitars were sold annually in the US. Their average selling price is probably around $350. So, obviously, how Bozeman prices and markets their paltry 12,000 did not put your local guitar store out of business. ...

 

Gibson didn't cut back dealers or drop these stores, or put 'em out of business - the local stores dropped Gibson. People/customers are upset that over the last coupla decades local shops have dropped Gibson in huge numbers. Gibson made/makes licensing/contract demands that very few can handle. The result has been that the number of local shops that sell Gibson has plummeted. It's now almost exclusively large dealers, which are few and far between - if you want to buy in person I hope you live in/near a large market or you'll be taking a long drive. Then, to make matters worse, in the late part of the last decade Gibson went after internet retailers/sales, forbidding online advertising of Gibson products except for just a few outlets - the penalty: your license/contract terminated. Fuller's is a very good example - a great 5 Star Gibson dealer in Texas - in the last decade they advertised their Gibson stock online and did a lot of internet business. NOW - they can't advertise their Gibson stock online. That's a pretty big kick to take even for a 5 Star dealer. And the really big stores - the Guitar Center conglomerate has been teetering on bankruptcy for the last coupla years due in large part to licensing/contract demands by companies like Gibson. A lot of people will be SOL on where to look at new Gibsons if a big box chain store goes down. I don't see how any of this benefits anyone except Gibson.

 

 

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[OldCowboy]

Uhmmm . . . . Gibson moved from Kalamazoo to Nashville, much like GM did with Saturn - to get away from unions. Then the Kalamazoo shop was closed in 1984. When Gibson couldn't get acoustics together they went to Bozeman in 1987 and bought Flatiron Mandolin and brought in Ren - then they finally starting making acoustic guitars in Bozeman in 1989/90. Then they brought in a bean counter to run the place and things went to sh!t for a while.

 

 

 

Gibson didn't cut back dealers or drop these stores - the local stores dropped Gibson. People/customers are upset that over the last coupla decades local shops have dropped Gibson in huge numbers. Gibson made/makes licensing/contract demands that very few can handle. The result has been that the number of local shops that sell Gibson has plummeted. It's now almost exclusively large dealers, which are few and far between - if you want to buy in person I hope you live in/near a large market or you'll be taking a long drive. Then, to make matters worse, in the late part of the last decade Gibson went after internet retailers/sales, forbidding online advertising of Gibson products except for just a few outlets - the penalty: your license/contract terminated. Fuller's is a very good example - a great 5 Star Gibson dealer in Texas - in the last decade they advertised their Gibson stock online and did a lot of internet business. NOW - they can't advertise their Gibson stock online. That's a pretty big kick to take even for a 5 Star dealer. And the really big stores - the Guitar Center conglomerate has been teetering on bankruptcy for the last coupla years due in large part to licensing/contract demands by companies like Gibson. A lot of people will be SOL on where to look at new Gibsons if a big box chain store goes down. I don't see how any of this benefits anyone except Gibson.

 

 

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You can't see something that isn't there unless there's a mental issue at work👍👍👍👍 ...and an extra 👍 for good measure!

[fortyearspickn]

1485187387[/url]' post='1829858']

No, the 12k acoustics didn't, the egregious requirements for the privilege of selling them did. There is more to selling Gibson acoustics than just getting a halfa dozen in for the cognoscenti. There's the 15 faded SGs and the three hundred Epiphones you have to pony up for, like it or not. It took a while, but I watched it happen to two of our best local stores.

 

rct

 

I've seen more Mom & Pops that never carried Gibson go under, than ones that did. Of course, in their final months, they will look to blame some one other than themselves. An evil capitalistic plot? You're on the internet right now. You can look at hundreds of different kinds of tuners, read the reviews, find the best one at a fair price and have it delivered in 2 days. You can finalize the purchase quicker than it would take you to get dressed and get in the car. You can shop 24x7 and returns are as easy, if not easier than they are with Mom & Pop. Same with capos and strings, even picks. Toasters too. Brave new World - started when Walmart started putting smaller retailers out of business. As long as people come here on the Internet and ask "where can I get a Gibson with a 40% discount" , Mom & Pops will continue to suffer. It got nothing to do with Gibson not setting up a major distributor in every city with a population over 1,000.

[sbpark]

 

Gibson didn't cut back dealers or drop these stores, or put 'em out of business - the local stores dropped Gibson.

 

 

.

 

Semantics, my friend. If Gibson tells a dealer that they have to buy x-amount of inventory upfront for the upcoming year or no dice, and the dealer cannot afford that amount and decide to pull out as a dealer, I guess TECHNICALLY you're right, the dealer decided to terminate that relationship. But when Gibson forces small shops to buy such large amounts of inventory as part of the agreement, they are in some way shooting themselves in the foot and giving the dealer no choice but to bail.

[BigKahune]

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Yes indeed.

 

<edit> I'll add that in order to get the 'big' dealers to commit to dangerous levels of capital investment in Gibson guitars, Gibson had to offer exclusive markets - which lead to the restrictions on internet advertising.

 

 

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[fortyearspickn]

1485214822[/url]' post='1829968']

Semantics, my friend. If Gibson tells a dealer that they have to buy x-amount of inventory upfront for the upcoming year or no dice, and the dealer cannot afford that amount and decide to pull out as a dealer, I guess TECHNICALLY you're right, the dealer decided to terminate that relationship. But when Gibson forces small shops to buy such large amounts of inventory as part of the agreement, they are in some way shooting themselves in the foot and giving the dealer no choice but to bail.

 

Did you not read the part where Gibson represents less than 1% of the guitar market? How can Gibson put a retailer out of business by making it hard or impossible to carry Gibsons? The store can still carry Martins, Taylor's, Breedlove, Córdoba, Fender, Yamaha and First Acts? And capos and stings and picks. And electrics. It's the Internet. It's Amazon. It's bad business decisions made by Mom & Pop. I give up.

 

[Buc McMaster]

Back in the mid-80's through the late 90s I managed a retail music store, a Mom & Pop single location that was established in 1972. I think it was in the mid-90s that Gibson started the nonsense. The guitars were placed in "families"........Les Paul family, semi-hollow family, etc. The rep was a young, California surfer looking guy who laid out the new program: you must buy X number of instruments from each family on an annual commitment basis. I certainly do not recall the numbers but for a shop such as that the demand was beyond ridiculous. There was zero room for negotiation.....take it or leave it. We left it. It seemed to us at the time a matter of Gibson dictating what our market place would support, which we of course knew better. This was also the era when Guitar Center first came to town, making such a decision even more financially perilous for a small store. We got along fine gathering up used Gibson product on trade-ins and from pawn shops.

 

The store is still there and still not a Gibson dealer.

[OldCowboy]

Did you not read the part where Gibson represents less than 1% of the guitar market? How can Gibson put a retailer out of business by making it hard or impossible to carry Gibsons? The store can still carry Martins, Taylor's, Breedlove, Córdoba, Fender, Yamaha and First Acts? And capos and stings and picks. And electrics. It's the Internet. It's Amazon. It's bad business decisions made by Mom & Pop. I give up.

Aren't we talking about two different things? A store can continue or go out for a great variety of reasons. The option to carry, or not, a particular line of instruments might or might not be a contributing factor. We can discuss/debate/argue that one forever and to no avail. The issue that seems to me to be more relevant to the thread has to do with Gibson's corporate policies as they impact the consumer, and whether or not those policies benefit anyone but the corporation. As I stated earlier in this thread, an opinion about that will be motivated by an individual's perspective on corporations, ethics, and such.

[sbpark]

Did you not read the part where Gibson represents less than 1% of the guitar market? How can Gibson put a retailer out of business by making it hard or impossible to carry Gibsons? The store can still carry Martins, Taylor's, Breedlove, Córdoba, Fender, Yamaha and First Acts? And capos and stings and picks. And electrics. It's the Internet. It's Amazon. It's bad business decisions made by Mom & Pop. I give up.

 

I never said Gibson is putting shops out of business. I said Gibson is shooting themselves in the foot by putting such huge inventory demands in smaller dealers/shops, resulting in the shops to not carry Gibson anymore. I didnt say that shops were going under from not carrying Gibson.

[rct]

Did you not read the part where Gibson represents less than 1% of the guitar market? How can Gibson put a retailer out of business by making it hard or impossible to carry Gibsons? The store can still carry Martins, Taylor's, Breedlove, Córdoba, Fender, Yamaha and First Acts? And capos and stings and picks. And electrics. It's the Internet. It's Amazon. It's bad business decisions made by Mom & Pop. I give up.

 

I don't think anybody is saying that Gibson themselves are putting people out of business. The big companies, including and especially Gibson have slowly, over the last two decades, put really onerous requirements on dealers. The only ones that can meet those requirements are big enterprise distributed retail companies that can shift inventory throughout their outlets. 50, 60 guitars is a lot to a small shop, it's especially a lot to be required to buy, because they don't sell on consignment you know. 5 or 6 thousand guitars is nothing to GC, Sam Ash, the internet sellers. When John at Music Central down the street from me simply could not put up another half a mil for a Gibson truckload because he still hadn't sold 5/8s of last year's half a mil truckload, what genius mom and pop business decision would you have suggested to him? Fire sale the Epiphones, you know, the ones they aren't buying at 299, surely they'll fly out of here at 249? The Epiphones he didn't want, couldn't sell, but had to have, those Epiphones, because that's what being a Gibson seller requires. Why do you think there are 37 Epis to one Gibson in the Acoustic saloon at GC, because everybody just can't wait to buy 6?

 

Gibson isn't alone, the majors are all slowly approaching either full volume sales to big retailers or some form of direct selling, if they could work out the pesky support and warranty type issues.

 

First Acts? How many of them do people really go out looking for? Do you remember Mars, The Musicians Planet? Proof positive that when your store is 80% Squire and Epiphone you will not last. Fender is getting just as bad as Gibson for volume. Martin and Taylor have their own supermarket shelf space fight going on, and they'll probably have to move to super high volume at some point too.

 

Capos, strings and picks? Really? That's like a car dealer not able to get the sexy hot ones that car drivers actually want, so he'll be fine selling tires and tree air fresheners.

 

rct