Walking Into A Brick & Mortar High End Audio Store

The reason to have a brick and mortar store is to draw customers into your store. Browsing is part of the experience of a conventional store. I'm sure we all experienced walking into a store not really intending to buy anything but wound up purchasing something. Works the other way too.

Personally, if I'm walking into a store and I'm just browsing, that's what I say- just browsing. If that makes me a time waster, shame on the merchant. Is it really any wonder b&m stores are dying and e-sales are where the action is?

It's only disdain for the consumer that demands every walk in customer lay down cash on every visit. I'm sorry, but generally, I owe a retailer, who is more than happy to earn a 40 point markup, nothing at all. In order to earn my hard earned cash, a retailer must distinguish himself and bring some value added. Viewing me as a time waster if I'm just looking does not equal any value added.

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Guitar Center may be on to something. My 17 year-old son goes to their Hollywood, CA store at least once or twice a month. When my son walks in, they give him a guitar pick and he goes and picks out an axe and plays it. He says sometimes he's there for an hour or two. He says lots of other teenage musicians are there doing the same thing. He says it's mostly adult customers are there playing the instruments. Over the years he's bought pedals, microphones, strings and lots of accessories ...but never a major purchase. He has his eye on a $3k-$4k Gretsch guitar, and he's been saving his money for it. He says he's gone and picked out a $5k axe, plug it into an amp and start playing. He says they have about 30 amps on the floor for customers to use to plug into and play. If you've ever known any guitarists, none of them ever own just one guitar, most of them own several. I believe Guitar Center is building a huge base of future loyal customers.
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+1 Zavato
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Funny, I own 12+guitars, not sure exactly cause I buy and sell those too, as well as 4-5 systems worth of equipment. I buy guitars more easily because I have multiple local stores and can play the guitars. I am encouraged to do so when I vwalk in. I have dropped $1500 unplanned because of that as it made me get a guitar I had to have even though I didn't know that when I arrived. The 2 local audio stores don't really operate that way. One guy has always acted like he was doing me a favor to talk to me! I tried to buy Gallo Ref3.1s from him for 6 months but he always tried to get me to buy something else...Totem or Dali. Eventually, I gave up and went direct only to be told by the manufacturer I had to go to the dealer.I got Ohms instead. If the audio guys were like the guitar guys I would have more new audio!

Maybe the high-end audio salons should hire grease balls with tats from head to toe and let people off the street play Metallica records.