In this little world of ours, Guitar Center looms incredibly large.
It’s the biggest in-person guitar retail location by a country mile; the only guitar store with enough name recognition to be the punchline of a viral bit by one of America’s biggest comedians (it stung a little, we won’t lie).
But it hasn’t just been a punching bag for Bill Burr. I mean, I don’t have to get into it, do I? If you or a guitarist in your life has been to a Guitar Center in the past, odds are there was something for you or them to complain about. Lack of premium and mid-tier instruments, messy, disorganized stores, staff without the right knowledge...
Now, we didn’t pull those three points off of vibes and memory: they were the issues the company’s own CEO, Gabe Dalporto, identified as being the chain’s biggest problems when he was placed in the captain’s chair in 2023.
The man’s been admirably honest about what he thinks went wrong, recently telling Modern Retail, that in the past, “We made a lot of decisions that, maybe, in isolation made sense – cut a little cost here, cut a little cost there – [but] in aggregate, really pissed off our customers.”
Since he took the reins, Dalporto has been on a mission to, in his words, “re-establish trust with musicians.”
And he’s got some success to point to, to be fair. According to Modern Retail, foot traffic in the company’s stores is up for the first time in a decade, and time spent in them is up 16 percent year over year. A decade into America’s retail apocalypse, that’s no small feat, regardless of what you think of the store.
But, what do you think of modern-day Guitar Center? Have you been to one in the last year or two? If so, how was your experience compared to past visits? Has the company delivered on its CEO’s promises of improvement? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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