Some indie shops not trying hard enough?

It's a long-raging debate about supporting indie music stores, and I'm all for sending my business their way. I seek them wherever I travel, although ironically, in L.A., there are precious few left. It's popular to suggest that Guitar Center and the internet have taken their toll, and the economy has certainly been harmful to everyone. But many indie stores can and do survive and thrive, even in markets where a box store is right down the street.

The indie stores that try harder seem to do well. But I recently had an experience where I wondered what they're thinking. In Omaha, JD Drums is apparently a reputable shop, and was supposed to be open at 11am the day I was there. In fact, I arrived at 11:30, and they were closed. Now, I can't say for sure that there wasn't an emergency that prevented someone from opening, but my first thought standing there was, somebody just doesn't care enough about their business to show up on time.*

Another indie shop in another town didn't open until noon. I won't pretend that everyone should open their doors at 9 or 10, but noon? I stopped by at 11, fully expecting them to be open, and almost turned around. Instead, I took, a detour for lunch, and returned at 5 after noon, and they were open. Found hi-hat pair #154 as it happens.

But my point is, shouldn't independent shops be making it easier to get our business? If Guitar Center opens at 10 - and both of these cities also had Guitar Centers - wouldn't the mom & pops be smart to also open at 10?

If I ran a store, I'd make sure none of the other stores in town scooped me on shopping hours.

Bermuda

* If anyone has info about the store and there was a legit problem on Thursday, July 25, I hereby apologize and wish them well. But if this is a chronic problem, shame on them. They will reap what they sow.

There were a couple of shops just like that in CA back in the late 70s and early 80s, before the Guitar Center boom, and the atmosphere was very much "whatever" and of course, it led to their demise. It's a shame. But there are stores that do try hard and they are still in business. I would also think indy shops would do better to compete with the big box stores in their area.

There's a mom 'n pop here in Houston I used to spend a lot of money with. The owner is a nice enough guy, but over time I began to realize how incredibly stingy the guy is. I know smaller outfits often have to rely on higher margins, but I was repeatedly getting totally gouged. I could only justify it for so long before I just couldn't keep lining this guys pockets in exchange for the idea that I was supporting the underdog. Most of my purchases are done online, and I try to spread it around to as many indie outfits as possible.

I know how it works. I'm a small business owner(industrial sales), and I'm aware that I can't always sell items at the same price point as some of my bigger competitors and be profitable. So I compensate for it by going out of my way to provide the most prompt, friendly service and I expect my crew to do the same. And most of my customers have stayed with me for that very reason. They are fully aware that the larger industrial suppliers sell the same items for 15% less, but dealing with the wait time and attitude isn't worth the marginal savings.

There are some small general music stores and guitar shops near me that clearly don't even try, period. The stores are merely a location to give lessons from. Sales are an after thought.

But outside of maybe some drum sticks, these places don't sell drum gear.

I've worked for indie shops that had good intentions, but really could not keep up with changing times. Mail order, internet, whatever, they struggled to cope with change.
Funny enough, outside of GC, every shop owner I worked for had other income from real estate. So running the shop may have taken up all their time, but it wasn't necessarily their "priority."

I definitely have ran into a handful of indie shops that were a total lame fest, and really, it's quite unfortunate. But I live only three blocks away from a shop called DiCenso's Drum Shop (it was founded by Dave DiCenso's dad!) and let me tell you, this shop has inspired me. Great selection that's out of the ordinary, continuos clinics with drummers who are demanding in the scene, young employees and teachers who are making a name for themselves, and they keep up very well with technology aging.

Now that doesn't mean they don't hustle their butts off, because they sure do, and the business runs dang slow a lot of days. But one thing i've gotten from living so close to this shop is that even if a fantastic indie shop wont win the music retail race, they sure inspire musicians to change the music scene or get really involved in it.

http://www.southshoremusic.com/

I'd also like to add that I don't think the indie shops are in trouble of disappearing. As long as there are the Mega Marts, there will always be a market for cleaning up their messes. I don't think you can have one without the other. Of course there will always be a part of the population that thinks of nothing other than getting the cheapest crap for the lowest price. But there's also a large chunk of the population that doesn't feel as though the bargain is worth the hassle.

The storefronts might be changing, but indie shops aren't disappearing any time soon, IMO.

tshaban24 said:

Now that doesn't mean they don't hustle their butts off, because they sure do,

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Evidently so mate.

Would I be wrong to take a guess that you're actually a little closer than three blocks away?

Living in Asia has taught me many lessons, and the art of bargaining is one of them. There are NO music box stores over here at all, but with nearly every Taiwanese kid learning either piano, violin, flute, or ukulele (suddenly became huge over here!), there are small music shops everywhere you look. Pretty much every one of them has a little bit of everything, crammed full of guitars, pianos, brass, percussion, flutes, drums, etc etc etc. If they don't have it, they'll try and get it for you. They want your business more than anything. And so the game goes something like this:

I walk into store A. They have the product I want. I ask questions about it. I ask the price. I politely thank them, and walk out the door and over to store B. Or store C. Or store D. etc. I find one that has a lower price for the same product (there's always one), and then go back to store A and report my findings. Sometimes they just shrug their shoulders and politely repeat the first price. But I would guess 99% of the time they will drop their price to either match or beat the price you find. I'm pretty sure they know the competition's prices, so to get your business, they will often beat it.

I've gotten some amazing deals on stuff this way, that above and beyond beats prices I can find on the internet....

Here in Norway I'd have to say that the internet has prety much taken over everything.

Because we're such a small country it's alwys ben hard to run a music store here, though. They have survived because it took a while for people to trust using their credit cards on the internet, especially ordering things from abroad. My parents' generation is pretty much still like that.

Most stores today belong to the chain 4Sound, which actually has a pretty good selection of stuff. I'd probably never buy something high end there as it's so much cheaper to order outside the country. These days I also buy mostly custom stuff, but even regular stuff like a regular Ludwig snare is pointless. The price difference is enormous, and that fct is that though Norwegians still make more than most, the difference is getting smaller and smaller all time.

A little extra for transportation and taxes is OK, but when things are 3 times more and sometimes, like with sticks and strings 7-10 times more, it gets silly.

On certain items the prices are off course good. Asian production drums like my 6 pc Catalina kit for approx $1000 is quite cheap.

There are offcourse stores that make things work and that comes down to finding their niche and their service. I have a friend who runs a drum store. He was the first to introduce Spaun to Norwegians, he has high end cymbals and all sorts of accessories on hand. If someone is in town and has trouble he'll open the store for them or he'll even come to the gig if he's closed. He also gives good deals to friends which helps spread the word.

Offcourse music stores are an important part of the community, and I think the loss of so many, and that they aren't really the place to hang anymore is part of the cause for the sad attitude I see in most young drummers in my area. They don't have a place to go and meet the guys that are doing it. They do everything on the internet, which I understand, because I do that to. Neither me nor them have much of a choice. With all we have is the f'd up attitude of school band parents and the like, now is not a really good time for music or small music stores in my country.

Things go up and down though, so hopefully things will get a little better. I love what the modern age has brought to us. It is however not complete replacement. We have some great new tools of communicating and do business, but at the same time, many things have been lost. Some things are nice to be rid of while some things would be a shame if they didn't return.

I deal mainly with an indie shop in the south suburbs of Indy. He has been around since about '87 and I have dropped well over $60,000 in his store. The GC is only 5 minutes from his store but he has always had a loyal following which I have continued. He offers fantastic service that GC would envy and his lessons for all types of music is the best in the Indy area. He always was a big Gibson/Marshall dealer but also sells other very notable guitar gear. And he has a nice drum selection as well. He normally won't carry in store the high end kits but will order it no problem. Of course there is other times I have had to use Musicians Friend or Sweetwater music since what I wanted my buddy can't get which we all have been there.

BTW...he will match all prices offered by GC, MF or Sweetwater of course.

I have a few indie shops in my town with only one of them being a drive that I would consider convenient enough to make.

They provide outstanding service and for the most part, their prices are in-line with any place else, including the online stores. I go to them for all of my maintenance items such as heads, parts, sticks and brushes. I have also purchased a couple bigger ticket items from them over the years but in no way have I spent enough to keep them in business.

They don't stock the drums I play and it really doesn't matter to me as I'm not their target customer in this area. After almost 25 years of being in business, I'm confident they know their market and stock accordingly. I'm glad they do since they are there when I need them.

Their website lacks in every way as well. It's obvious they don't rely on this either for their business.

bermuda said:

It's a long-raging debate about supporting indie music stores, and I'm all for sending my business their way. I seek them wherever I travel, although ironically, in L.A., there are precious few left. It's popular to suggest that Guitar Center and the internet have taken their toll, and the economy has certainly been harmful to everyone. But many indie stores can and do survive and thrive, even in markets where a box store is right down the street.

The indie stores that try harder seem to do well. But I recently had an experience where I wondered what they're thinking. In Omaha, JD Drums is apparently a reputable shop, and was supposed to be open at 11am the day I was there. In fact, I arrived at 11:30, and they were closed. Now, I can't say for sure that there wasn't an emergency that prevented someone from opening, but my first thought standing there was, somebody just doesn't care enough about their business to show up on time.*

Another indie shop in another town didn't open until noon. I won't pretend that everyone should open their doors at 9 or 10, but noon? I stopped by at 11, fully expecting them to be open, and almost turned around. Instead, I took, a detour for lunch, and returned at 5 after noon, and they were open. Found hi-hat pair #154 as it happens.

But my point is, shouldn't independent shops be making it easier to get our business? If Guitar Center opens at 10 - and both of these cities also had Guitar Centers - wouldn't the mom & pops be smart to also open at 10?

If I ran a store, I'd make sure none of the other stores in town scooped me on shopping hours.

Bermuda

* If anyone has info about the store and there was a legit problem on Thursday, July 25, I hereby apologize and wish them well. But if this is a chronic problem, shame on them. They will reap what they sow.

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I live across town from this shop. I've alluded to them "not trying hard enough" in the past without dropping their name.

While I can't speak for the exact circumstance on the day you were there, (I wish I would have hung out at the shop now...issues came up and I missed the show that night.) this seems to be the genreral attitude of the shop now. I haven't seen the owner in there for a while. I think he may have sold it to the younger guys that work there. At any rate, it seems the place is now more of a consignment shop. It looks like a really ghetto pawn shop in there. There may be the occasional find in there, but it's rare.

I'm all for supporting local shops when possible, but the small shops in my town have such pitiful selections of everything, that it's just not worth the trip to me when I can go to Guitar Center and find exactly what I'm looking for. At some point, "We can order that for you." just isn't enough. At some point, you have to show that you know good quality products and fair prices. All that my local shops seem to know is that they can jack up the price on a set of ZBTs and sell them to a beginner, because if you're new to drumming, you probably don't know what they're really worth.

A couple of years ago, I took an old amp I had into a local guitar shop, to get it biased, and to get all of the tubes replaced, as it still had a lot of the original tubes from the 90s. It was a 6L6 amp, but it was biased for EL34s. I asked that it be biased for 6L6 tubes. I told him I wanted to replace every one of the tubes, and told him which tubes I wanted to replace them with. Thirteen tubes, total. He said he would order the tubes and take care of it. I finally got the call that it was finished, so I went to pick it up. He replaced the power tubes with new EL34s. That's it. When I asked about the preamp tubes, he said he didn't think they needed replacing, because they still worked. I was immediately angry, but I bit my tongue. Whether or not he felt they needed to be replaced, I specifically told him that I wanted every single tube replaced. When I asked why there were EL34s in it, he said there must have been a reason that the previous owner had it biased for EL34s. Yes, because that's the sound they wanted. That's not the sound I wanted. Either way, I took the amp home, got overcharged, and never did business there again.

Later, I took it to a different local shop, because I blew a tube at a gig. I told the guy to bias it for 6L6 tubes, and replace the power tubes with ones that I had provided for him. Well, he did it, but when he put the new tubes in, one was flawed. As soon as he turned the amp on to test it, one of the tubes shorted and blew. Luckily, Guitar Center gave me my money back for the tubes, because he wrote a note explaining that they were bad out of the box. The guy ended up putting some old tubes he had pulled out of an organ or something into my amp. They weren't 6L6, but he said they were interchangable. I wasn't very happy about that. Then he charged me an extra $40 for some tubes I didn't want, that sounded absolutely awful.

Now, I never take my amp in for biasing or tube replacement. You know the saying: "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." It always works out when I do the work myself, and if it doesn't, I have nobody to blame but myself. Whenever I take a guitar in to get some wiring done, almost every time, a connection comes lose after a short while. When I wire my guitars at home, I never have a problem with them.

Some places just show no respect for their customers; especially their younger customers. They assume that because I'm 22 that I don't know what I'm talking about, or that I don't know what I really want. Their job is to listen to the customer and do their best to make the customer happy. That's what it boils down to. Some will go out of their way to do so, but some will fall short.. Sometimes very short.

TColumbia37 said:

I'm all for supporting local shops when possible, but the small shops in my town have such pitiful selections of everything, that it's just not worth the trip to me when I can go to Guitar Center and find exactly what I'm looking for. At some point, "We can order that for you." just isn't enough. At some point, you have to show that you know good quality products and fair prices. All that my local shops seem to know is that they can jack up the price on a set of ZBTs and sell them to a beginner, because if you're new to drumming, you probably don't know what they're really worth.

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There's another shop in my town that does something like this. Actually there are 2. One of them will sell you a pair of drum sticks for around $15, and a snare drum head for $35. The other one pretty much only stocks ZBT, ZHT, etc. They may have a couple A's or K's, but nothing I'm usually looking for.

My real issue with the one store is that I tried to order a Gibraltar cymbal stand from them a while back--nothing special, just a regular flat-base cymbal stand--and they quoted me $130 for the one stand. Just ridiculous!

So...do I support my local shop and spend 3 times the amount of money I should or do I go to GC? This is why most of my drum purchases are online but at least from a mom and pop drum store. Or in person when I go to Minneapolis.

brady said:

My real issue with the one store is that I tried to order a Gibraltar cymbal stand from them a while back--nothing special, just a regular flat-base cymbal stand--and they quoted me $130 for the one stand. Just ridiculous!

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That's insane! I recently got a pretty heavy duty Gibraltar boom stand for like $70 brand new from Guitar Center. I understand wanting to support the little guys, but when the price differences are that vast, I just can't do it. I can't afford $130 just for a cymbal stand. I stick to Gibraltar hardware because the prices are so great for what you get. Pricing it that high defeats the purpose.

I have two local shops and then at least a 150-mile drive to get to a big box store (or, thankfully, western Washington's only five-star shop). The two shops are night and day. One is owned and operated by musicians. They have a good selection of gear, love to order in stuff for you, and whenever possible meet or beat prices. If they can't, they will say so. They carry Zildjian, Gibraltar, Vic Firth, Evans -- my preferred brands -- but primarily Pearl (not at all my preferred brand). So mostly I buy parts, heads, and sticks from them; every now and again something bigger (I did end up buying a Pearl Sensitone Elite black-over-brass snare from them earlier this year, more economical than a Black Beauty).

The other store in the area is a gouge palace, run by guys I don't know (they have never tried to talk to me at the store) stocking a very poor selection of gear with MSRP prices. They would like $1200 for a five-piece wrapped Tama Silverstar (I could buy one online for half that plus shipping). They claim "35% off marked price" on their cymbals, which still makes them overpriced by about 35%. Most of their drum stuff is for marching band, and even that is hideously overpriced. I think I have bought a couple of guitar picks from them; otherwise I stay away.

My big ticket items, I would either see what the better local shop could do to stock and order for me, or I would drive to Seattle. And there, I'd probably rather buy it from Donn Bennett's unless I knew I could get it on blowout from GC.

I live in a small town (not Lawrence anymore... need to change that) with two "music stores" that do have decent stuff but the prices are insanely high. $13 for a pair of sticks? $25 for a 12" tom head? Seriously.

I'd love to support small town stores but my budget doesn't allow it. I HAVE to drive to Wichita and go to Guitar Center for these tools, sadly. Even with the gas figured in for a 45 minute drive one way, I still save money buying from the Mitt Romney franchise. I hate it... don't like it but that's the economic reality. If you can't buy enough backstock to get the discount on bulk orders, you cannot offer good deals to the customer and I understand that in Hutchinson, Kansas, you're not going to get the volume of sales needed to have a huge backstock. Liquor stores? Sure there are drunk in every town. Beer prices are beer prices... but I don't drink and I digress. Indie shops can do well however and when I lived in KC, I always went to Explorers because they not only had great prices but they have fabulous service. When I picked out my double pedal, they let me have an empty lesson studio for an hour to test out ALL of the high-end models they had so I could make a truly informed decision. No way could you do that at Guitar Center... and especially the little "shhhh, don't make any noise" mom and pop (literally) store here in town.

TColumbia37 said:

That's insane! I recently got a pretty heavy duty Gibraltar boom stand for like $70 brand new from Guitar Center. I understand wanting to support the little guys, but when the price differences are that vast, I just can't do it. I can't afford $130 just for a cymbal stand. I stick to Gibraltar hardware because the prices are so great for what you get. Pricing it that high defeats the purpose.

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Oh yeah.

The guy was shocked and almost offended that I didn't want it at the price. He asked where I had seen it cheaper. Umm...everywhere?

alparrott said:

The other store in the area is a gouge palace, run by guys I don't know (they have never tried to talk to me at the store) stocking a very poor selection of gear with MSRP prices. They would like $1200 for a five-piece wrapped Tama Silverstar (I could buy one online for half that plus shipping). They claim "35% off marked price" on their cymbals, which still makes them overpriced by about 35%. Most of their drum stuff is for marching band, and even that is hideously overpriced. I think I have bought a couple of guitar picks from them; otherwise I stay away.

My big ticket items, I would either see what the better local shop could do to stock and order for me, or I would drive to Seattle. And there, I'd probably rather buy it from Donn Bennett's unless I knew I could get it on blowout from GC.

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I was just recently at a music store in Gadsden, AL that had the same issue (And down there, the lack of selection in music stores is downright abysmal). They seem to do band instrument rental as part of the business, and sell their own stuff as well. However, their drum selection and related things was INCREDIBLE!!! Pretty much any type of heads I wanted they had there... They even had some of the Pearl Philarmonic snares for sale. Drooled a lot. Until I saw the prices. Drum heads were at LEAST $20 for the small size drums. I wanted to get a marching snare head for my Pearl FFX (which shamefully uses a Ludwig weatherking right now...), and they wanted $100. For a head??? Sure enough, all their heads were overpriced ridiculously. And no, I wasn't using Amazon as a comparison, but the likes of Best Buy or Guitar Center. I ended up just getting the things for my daughter's horn and paid. Turns out they have a 30% discount on most everything, it seems. Seriously? Discounts are great, but when the prices are SO high to begin with, you aren't getting anything really.

So, as much as I wanted to support the store, financially, I can't. And in this case, it wasn't due to online competition. It was due to them being ridiculously overpriced, and expecting to make up for it in unmarked discounts. I am not about to pay the same for one drumhead for my toms as I would for a 3 pack of the same head elsewhere. In this case, the local to me drum store won (less selection, but FAR better pricing), or online for the fancier things.

Oh, and in this store, you can't play the drum stuff, either.

brady said:

Oh yeah.

The guy was shocked and almost offended that I didn't want it at the price. He asked where I had seen it cheaper. Umm...everywhere?

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Yeah, I usually have a couple of websites like Amazon or Musician's Friend open on my iPhone so that I can compare prices. My favorite local shop actually has a couple of iPads that the staff walk around with and they'll let me use them to compare online prices and (after a quick talk with the owner) will often drop their prices to match the online prices. Not always, but sometimes they'll even beat the online prices.

It's business like that that keeps me coming back...