People have been asking me to comment on Guitar Center’s Q4 2014 financial performance. Like any pro musician, I take requests! The following commentary involves Abraham Lincoln, Les Misérables, Guy Fieri, and earnings that have declined by 33% year over year. No basses were harmed in the making of this video.
Digital payments drive the retail revolution
Wondering why retail is in such creative turbulence of late? Just have a look at the trends in digital payments, particularly the speed with which innovations go from a fringe player to a major disruptor.
The Radical Future of Musical Instrument Retail
Some of my most popular material of late has been about musical instrument retail, though focused on a single company and its effect on the marketplace. Nearly a million readers later, I have been hoping to do a much more thorough job of showing just why MI retail is undergoing a revolution, one with ample shocks for all players. I …
The End of Guitar Center
This is an obituary for Guitar Center, a chain of big box musical instrument stores that was captured and infected by private equity during a national trend of greed and reckless expansionism in the late-1990s and early-2000s. The company started as a Los Angeles organ store, became a successful purveyor of guitars after the Beatles arrived in the United States, …
