Buy in on a guitar shop

[Luke Duke]

A tech/friend of mine is opening a used guitar store in North Little Rock in the historic district. The store will be small but will offer many services and have additional room that other guitars will be kept in. There will be a large board with a list of all the guitars, the price and whether it is in the store, storage, or in-transit. He wants to specialize in workingman's gear. Gibson Custom,historic, PRS, Fender, Heritage, Marshall, Boogie, Fender. But alot of stuff will be available.

Speaker reconing
amp mods and repairs
custom built cabinet
custom built boutique amps
guitar repairs
guitar setups/mods

There will also be a basketcase policy bring in your broken amps and we'll give you some dough towards a purchase. This will build up an amp graveyard and soon the amp tech will be able to fix up lots of stuff for just a little bit. Also he can put together two non-working amps and come out with one (say one amp has no good caps and the other has no good resistors) Same thing with guitars repairs and available previous basketcase guitars. The amp repair guy is his own entity but his store front is my friend. The amp and cab builders are separate guys so production will be fairly quick and very custom. The guitar repair guy is a separate entity too.

If any of you remember my posts from last winter I had talked about taking out a bidness loan and starting up a store and now this is happening. I've been talking to him about buying in. I'm really excited about the idea. There are no stores like this in Arkansas, to my knowledge. The rent is dirt cheap, and best of all the trolley line runs right in front of it. He's hoping to pick up some folks who are on the trolley riding toward the Clinton Memorial Library.

Anyways what thinkest thou??

[Ken]

Re: Buy in on a guitar shop

That sounds like a great idea with a ton of potential.

But having been employed by a small guitar shop, do yourself and keep the books tight. Write down everything and file it. Make sure all employees observe the proper filing system. The majority of your work will be by word of mouth and one filing error can mean 10 lost customers.

Best of luck to you, offering such vast services is a GREAT way to fill your niche. Just be aware that the real money is in your service and that the big ticket sales can come and go.

[Luke Duke]

Re: Buy in on a guitar shop

Thanks for the encouragement Ken! He wants Argenta Guitars to be a place where people WANT to do business not HAVE to do business (like some feel about GC). He is a top notch guitar guy and his setups are great and I think that will be the clencher. Employees will be few...him at the guitar shop maybe me later on, the amp guy is a one man operation as is the rest of the special services. As long as we keep the incoming outgoing (repair)files clean and up to date I see folks liking the store. Something different everytime you go in, an ebay store to help move slow sellers, and an ever changing website should be pros for floor traffic.

Luke

[Ken]

Re: Buy in on a guitar shop

Oh man, the eBay store, in conjunction with his own webstore is a TERRIFIC move. THAT is how most smaller dealers stay in business, in my limited experience. I was really sad the shop I worked at never made that move and steadily progressed to lower level instruments for students...it was great for getting kids started but then we had nothing for them when they were ready for the next step.

[Luke Duke]

Re: Buy in on a guitar shop

Jim is a real believer in the internet and that's how he expects people from out of town to hear of the store and since you can find many more buyers for ANYTHING online the ebay and webstore just seem natural. From what I can gather he's going to put the inventory online but you'll have to call to buy because it's too small of a store to be messing with checking to see if something online sold. But from what I can tell most stores are too small to having shopping carts. I'm really expecting the repairs, reconing, and setups (all services) to be big selling points because in AR you just can't get that kind of stuff done. As far as small custom amps and cabs those should sell themselves because there is no middleman. It goes from the builder to the store. Savings get passed on to everyone.

Luke