marcellis
Senior Member
adorshki said:HI Marc and Jazzman: I actually bought my D25 in the Guitar Center in San Jose CA back in '97. At that time there was (and still is) an outfit in town known as Guitar Showcase. When I went to Guitar Center they had more of a "for the working musician" ambience than Showcase. Showcase had more of a reputation of stocking the latest fad items for the wannabes. In any case, I was shopping for a Guild and GC had the line IN STOCK. Interestingly, a couple of years later GC had "lost the line" and Showcase had it. Showcase had at that time a much larger local warehousing capability building than GC. Wonder if that had something to do with it. It was also coincidental with the closing of Westerly and Showcase is where I actually bought both the F65 and D40. They had at least 15 different Guilds including electrics on display at that time and the atmospheres between the competitors had almost completely reversed.
So, a couple of weeks ago I stopped at Showcase for strings. They had one domestic Guild on display in the acoustic room. :shock: LOTS of Fender acoustics in the "second tier" area. Whassup with that? OR DID YOU stop there on a shopping spree and clean 'em out when you were in town, Marc? :lol: Or maybe they're waiting for Hartfords and ran out of Tacomas? Seems to point up the whole issue of how a dealer is supposed to divvy up their stocking dollars. The attempt to up the minimum stocking requirement may also have an intended collateral effect of lowering the competitor's presence, ie, more money spent on Fender means less money for Martin and Gibson. :twisted:
I know it's a large strategic factor in my business. 8) What really scares me is selling instruments in BEST BUY? Was that for real? Might as well be Walmart or Target. What the h--l are they gonna know about guitars?
Yeah. It makes you wonder. GC stocks Fender acoustics but not Guilds. It stocks Gretsch electrics too.
Corporations aren't rational all the time. But sometimes they are. Shutting down Tacoma & then the
move to New Hartford, then, the raising of the prices & cheapening the tuning machines, it
makes you wonder wassup w/ all dat.
But I suspect it's more a contractual thing than an intentional move by FMIC to dry up the Guild line.
After all, I think they could sell a hell of a lot of GAD's at GC, if GC only stocked them. So FMIC & GC
may be losing money by not stocking GADs.
I was in SJ last month. I wish I'd known of Guitar Showcase. I would have stopped in.
BTW, Fry's really ripped me off on a pair of SONY MD900HD headphones. I wanted a pair
of good monitoring headphones. Fry's had them stocked for $250.
I had not done any research on the prices. So I bought a pair. Now I learn they're flying out of EBay for $40.