Having recently discussed how he plans to restructure the Guitar Center business model to compete with the burgeoning online gear market, the retailer’s CEO Gabe Dalporto has now made his feelings known regarding new brand-backed retail rivals in the form Fender and Gibson.
Over the past few years, Guitar Center has had to cope against the backdrop of an online retailer boom, with digital giants and direct-from-factory producers such as Amazon all posing new competition to physical brick-and-mortar stores.
Not only that, Guitar Center is now also being forced to compete in the physical store space against the likes of Fender, Gibson, Yamaha and other big-name brands, all of whom have launched flagship stores in huge cities across the globe.
There are now Gibson Garages in Nashville and London, and Fender even launched a futuristic location in Japan. Speaking exclusively to Guitar World in a new interview, Dalporto has now offered his own thoughts on such brands entering Guitar Center’s ring.
“This is a competitive market. It always has been. We welcome it,” he says. “I think if we give an amazing experience, we win.”
In his response, Dalporto also draws similarities between Fender and Gibson’s strategic moves to those seen in the sports market – moves that weren’t especially successful.
“Nike tried to go direct and tried to pull back from retailers,” he explains, “and Nike got crushed. It’s important, if you are a brand, to have those relationships with your vendors, but bring the competition on. I just think we have a much larger, more integrated experience. You can experience all the products, not just one.”
That mindset explains Dalporto’s decision to pivot towards “high-quality, premium product where experience matters”, while firms like Amazon establish a stronghold on the budget end of the scale. He accepts Guitar Center needs to cede ground in one place to make gains in another.
Having said that, the increased retail space competition from Gibson and Fender hasn’t stopped Guitar Center’s collaborations with the two American guitar-building heavyweights.
In recent months, it’s dropped exclusive Gretsch Streamliner builds, a lunar-inspired finish for Fender favorites, and brought a highly illusive Gibson colorway to the Widow Les Paul. That’s helped cement its relationship with the firms, even if they are rivals elsewhere.
“These Epiphone Widows are the hottest thing ever,” Dalporto continues, “and they are only at Guitar Center. Hats off to our team and the team over at Gibson for coming up with something really unique. That’s absolutely part of our strategy: only at Guitar Center.”
Elsewhere in his Guitar World interview, Dalporto also reveals Guitar Center has identified another new priority for 2025: lessons.
“One of our priorities is lessons,” he reveals. “I talk a lot about ‘the serious musician’ and that's our opportunity to create the next generation of serious musicians.
“One of the biggest challenges we have as an industry is, if someone picks up a guitar for the first time, for every 10 people who start playing guitar, a year later, one person is playing, and nine are not.
“What can we do to change that ratio? How do we connect with people early in their music career and really get them deeply embedded so they're going to be in it for the long term.”
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