The guitar world is well and truly in the midst of a digital market boom, and as the online space becomes a more important battleground for retailers, traditional brick-and-mortar stores are struggling to survive.
Over the past few years, several physical guitar stores have closed down. Retail giant Sam Ash, for example, officially closed all of its stores in March 2024, a mere two months after it attempted to weather the storm by closing 18 of its 44 locations across the US.
The general view is that existing physical guitar stores need to adapt their strategies in order to remain competitive – and that is exactly what Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto is attempting to do.
In a comprehensive new interview with YouTuber Phillip McKnight, Dalporto discusses the ongoing changes he’s made to Guitar Center’s strategy as he attempts to retain its foothold in the market and combat growing competition from Amazon.
The key battle lies in high-end electric guitars, acoustic guitars and other premium gear. As McKnight notes, “Amazon is ineffective in every way at selling high-end guitars… because no one’s buying an $1,800 guitar on Amazon.” This is a shortfall that Guitar Center intends to capitalize on.
“On Amazon – when you think about what we can uniquely provide for the musician – low-end, cheap, toy-like instruments… that’s not where we’re gonna win, right? The premium product is where people are gonna take the time and care, and want to experience it, and that’s why that’s important to us.
“We are leaning into that really high-quality, premium product where experience matters. That’s where we can win against Amazon. It’s not in the low-end cheap stuff, right? We’ll have entry level [gear], but we’re just not going to compete with the factory direct-from-China stuff. It’s not a winnable space.”
Dalporto recognizes this shift will take time to have an effect, but if successful, it would safeguard Guitar Center’s physical future and encourage players to visit the stores in order to connect with high-end instruments.
In other words, people need to visit the stores, so Guitar Center is aiming to give them a reason to do so.
“People want to come into the stores,” Dalporto continues, reflecting on when he first joined the company. “What did that mean for us? Practically, we needed to have much better product in our stores.
“We have spent the last year and several months driving relentlessly to get better product in the stores. We had way over index on the beginner [tier], and we had way under index on the mid and premium tier. We’ve changed that, and for many of our categories that transformation is done.
“We are far from perfect,” he goes on. “We’re working really hard to get better every day. Every single day, we’ve just got to wake up and say, ‘How do we get a little bit better? And how do we really focus on our customer and [make] our customers happy?’
“Because you do that, you win. If you thrill your customers, over time, they’re going to reward you with their loyalty. It's going to take time for us to earn that trust.”
Guitar Center’s new-found emphasis on premium products is a strategic change that’s been in the pipeline for a few months now. In April 2024, Dalporto made headlines when he said the chain needed to “evolve and execute better” in order to remain open and reconnect with its customers.
“Somewhere along the way, we forgot who our core customer was,” Dalporto stated at the time. “Over the years, we've evolved significantly into serving the beginner and entry-level customer – which is great – but if you walk through a GC store, you're going to see an awful lot of $300 guitars.
“So, if I'm a serious musician and I walk into a Guitar Center, it doesn't feel like the right place for me anymore.”
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