On guitar shops and douchebags.
Australian music retail giant Allans & Billy Hyde has entered receivership. It wasn’t a huge surprise. Retail everywhere has been going downhill and business didn’t pick up after the company’s 2010 merger, despite significant cash injections from offshore investors.
They were fighting a losing battle on overheads alone. Unlike online retailers in the US or Asia, Allans and Billy Hyde have to pay rent for a shopfront, wages and superannuation for their staff, GST and shipping and customs fees for the stock they import. When you lay it out like that, it’s easy to see how a US$800 Fender Strat can turn into a AUD$1499 Fender Strat.
I feel bad for ABH’s 500 staff, and for the people who put down deposits or paid for gift vouchers which won’t be honoured.
Like Red Group before them, Allans and Billy Hyde made the mistake of assuming customers would buy from them instead of the internet because they value customer service.
When I was a teenager in Rockhampton, I spent hours at Green Brothers’ music store. The staff were helpful and patient, and in turn I spent a shitload of money there. Everything was bigger and better in Brisbane, and I assumed this would be the case with music stores when I moved there at the age of 17.
17 year old me being a srs guitarist.
Once I went into Allan’s Brisbane City store and picked a Taylor acoustic off the rack. I managed around 5 minutes worth of noodling when a salesman took it off me.
“Oh honey, you don’t want that. I’ll show you what you might like.”
He put the Taylor back on the rack and returned with a flower-shaped Daisy Rock guitar. Daisy Rock make guitars especially for women, because having a vagina obviously means we can’t play a Les Paul or a Mastersound. Apparently our vaginas also make us oblivious to the fact that Daisy Rocks are shoddily made, sound terrible and are ugly as sin.
"Hey girl, let's start a band."
I was outraged, and spluttered something back along the lines of owning a telecaster and a Vox AC30, ACTUALLY. He was clearly a moron – the Taylor was more expensive than the Daisy Rock and would’ve landed him a better commission.
This wasn’t a one-off incident. My on-off boyfriend at the time was a drummer and every time we entered an Allans or Billy Hyde store, the sales guys would go straight to him and ignore me. Drummer boy would tell them that I wanted to ask them guitar-related questions and they’d either double take or bust out some mad condescension.
I can play chords and picking, I'll have you know.
Things got weirder when I started to pick up visible tattoos. Music store bro-dudes couldn’t serve me fast enough. By paying someone a lot of money to inject ink under my skin, I’d gone from dumb girl to rebellious rock chick. I knew that getting tattoos meant people might treat me differently, but this was not what I was expecting at all. It was creepy and weird.
I ditched Allans and Billy Hyde for good in 2008 when I discovered Brisbane’s Tym Guitars. I’d already started buying effects pedals off the internet, because I simply could not stand dealing with a pack of sexist mouth breathers* every time I needed a packet of guitar strings. Back then Tim ran the shop and his workshop from underneath his house in Stones Corner. You could wander in and play around with guitars in the shop space for as long as you wanted. Tim would help if you needed it, but was otherwise busy doing guitar set-ups and repairs in the workshop. The shop’s much more conventional these days, but it’s still a good place to spend your time and money.
My bass rig pedal board, featuring 3 Tym Guitars pedals
I don’t think the world is a better place without musical instrument shops and it will be sad to see Allans go. But it goes to show there’s more to customer service than paying someone to stand in your shop and use the EFTPOS machine. Woolies self-serve put paid to that.
*No, I’m sure your brother/boyfriend/mate who works at Allans or Billy Hyde isn’t a sexist mouth breather. Of course I wasn’t talking about them.
i know exactly what you mean, and it isn’t limited to AllansBillyHyde. I started shopping there for a fender jaguar. The first thing they told me was that’s not what i wanted. i Own a telecaster, and i want to rock out nirvana style… a Jaguar was EXACTLY what i wanted. Unfortunately Tym doesnt sell brand new, and while absolutely EXQUISITE… i can’t afford his amazing used pieces. I went to The Guitar Shop in milton… they at least said “no problem” and got every Jaguar they had, put it in a room and asked wjhat amp(s) i wanted. I bought a Blacktop Jaguar (as it felt as good as the more expensive ones, and i was going to rip all the electronics out anyway). Part of the appeal was the free “prefessional” setup. Unfortunately “free” was the value, not just the price. I don’t play for powder finger (spew) and i was clearly not that important to them. the guitar didnt intonate properly…. i did a pretty good job myself. I went and saw tim@tym’s… who is always happy to shoot the shit to this loungeroom warrior. He’s booked me in to put in all my new electronics in, and rebuild my tele. from what many people tell me, the job will be done as well as if i WAS the lead guitarist from metallica. I deserve a good instrument too…. and Tym deserves my money.
Unfortunately you can’t actually import a Fender or Gibson from any US retailer. If the manufacturer finds out that a US based retailer has broken the country distributorship rights then the retailer is at risk of losing the ability to stock that brand. A one off sale by Musicians Friend to anyone in Australia is a risk to big to take so they’ll refuse. But when it comes to pedals, strings and the like you’re home free. I can get Elixirs for a third of the price from Minnesota.
On the subject of sales people determining what you want – I wanted a 1972 Strat Copy, alder with maple neck. Utterly awesome look, 7.25 inch radius fretboard. I tried 2 shops who said they wouldn’t even order one in for me because it wouldn’t suit me (this was a phone conversation!). It’s a $2800 guitar and I have an unlimited budget – I could have been a pro, or what I really am, struggling. I eventually found a shop online (though a bricks and mortar Australian shop) who would just do as they were asked without value judgement.
That is just bizarre! Just out of interest, what was his recommendation?
He just wanted to sell me a regular american deluxe, which is nothing to be sneezed at, I have an am delux tele. I said that I particularly wanted the look, the sound of the old pups but, importantly, the 7.25 neck. After an injury I can barely barre anything with 12 inches or up. I recently sold a Maton BB1200 custom for just that reason.
Oddly enough at my local Billy Hyde, where I know the salesman pretty well, I went looking for a Blackstar artisan 15 or a Vox AC30. He knows my abilty, and he knows my budget but he still tried to steer me onto a bog standard Marshall for half the price – these are not interchangable amps. Sure, you sell what’s in stock but he could have signed me up for three grand but I walked instead.
I came through a link on Crikey if you’re wondering
Thanks for letting me know! I was wondering what prompted the spike in traffic. I had a similar experience when I was shopping for an AC30 a few years ago. I ended up walking too.
My Allans epic:
Christmas Eve shopping, 2011. I went into Allans Adelaide to buy a Roland electronic kick drum. Knowing they probably wouldn’t stock it individually, I was happy to have it ordered. Knowing it was Christmas time, I wasn’t put out when they told me it wouldn’t even reach the distributor’s notice until mid-January. So, about a three-week wait, with the promise of a ‘phone call when it came in.
Four weeks later, having received no ‘phone call, rang the store to see what was going on. They told me they hadn’t heard back from the distributor about the product’s immediate availability, but would investigate and let me know within two weeks.
Two weeks later, with no word of reply, I chased them up. This time, the guy still didn’t know where the distributor was at with it, could not give me an estimation of when they would get an answer from the distributor, and basically was not willing to give me any information about whether the product could actually be obtained at all and in what time frame, since he didn’t have any concrete info himself, nor any guarentee that he would get any concrete info. He essentially, I reasoned, was saying that he would not commit to taking my money in exchange for a particular good/service rendered. So I cancelled the order.
I then placed an order for the same Roland electronic kick drum with another Adelaide retailer – Billy Hyde (not realizing they were the same outfit as Allans! Stupid me) and proceeded to go through much the same rigmarole.
Eventually, I was hand-balled back to the same Allans guy I’d first dealt with on Christmas Eve, who was so embarrassed by the whole ordeal that he went ahead and got a friend working at a rival Adelaide retailer (who I orginally didn’t want to deal with because of similar run-arounds in the past) to place an order with Roland and take the commission instead. About a month later (it was now March 2012 or something), I got my Roland E-drum. The guy at the rival shop, who used to work at Allans, filled me in on the bullshit: Allans-Billy Hyde was so far in debt to Roland that Roland was refusing to send them any new gear no matter what. Keeping quiet about that to customers, it seemed, would have been the modus operandi that would have seen the staff at Allans-BH stringing me along forever without an answer as to why they wouldn’t take my money, until somebody decided to break the circuit on the side. Fascinating.
I hate buying things on the internet using my credit card. I like personalized service. I don’t mind having to wait a few weeks, and don’t really mind the bricks-and-mortar mark-up. So if they can’t even satisify people like me, what hope did they ever have?
Wow! I heard similar stories from people trying to buy Roland keyboards around that time. It would suck if you worked at Allans and were forced to do that to your customers.
With the exception of my current bass guitar, I’ve bought nearly all my gear from music shops. I like being able to try it out.
Certainly, playing instruments is vital when it’s acoustic or electric; which is why bricks-and-mortar showrooms will always have a place somewhere (I hope). With electronic instruments, however, very often you can get an idea of their capabilities simply by downloading the manual. Alot of what I buy in electonica or effects pedals is just a version of what I already own with more memory or inputs – even the sounds within one brand are identical, not just across models but even across different classes of instrument.
I think what’s interesting about my gripe when you look at it laterally – is that since the product wasn’t in the shop at the time I turned up there, all I was paying these guys to do was use the internet for me.
I could share another rant about the comical lack of technical knowledge many music shop staff have concerning the electronic products they sell (you particularly notice this when you work as an audio engineer – “So why are the mic preamps on this new Pro Tools interface better?” “Because they’re better.” – real life quote), but you probably get the gist already.
Isn’t it funny how these stories come out when someone goes under? The exact same theme surfaced when Rocking Horse was in dire straits. You’d think it’d be a wake-up call to retail owners to check their customer service through surveys or mystery shoppers or even just standing in their store listening to what their staff say!
Hi- I’m another drop-in via Crikey. I think that Graham’s point about distributor rights is valid. I suspect the killer issue is that while the stores may continue to sell big name-brand items, their sales of lower priced non-restricted items have probably have gone through the floor due to internet sales.
What value of effects pedals and strings would a store expect to sell in a month, compared to the value of high-end instruments? And when people aren’t going into a store to buy these items, they’re not being tantalised by hands-on displays of expensive instruments.
My non-music but gender related story is going into a bait and tackle store in country Victoria with my fishing girlfriend. She asked a series of questions of the bloke in the shop who would only reply to me who had no interest in fishing whatsoever- so we ended up in this awkward conversational triangle- it was very odd. On a trip through country SA with the same gf we ordered cheese and salad sandwiches at a shop and when we got them back one had M written on it and one had F. We laughed that it must be ‘male’ and ‘female’ and when we opened them on the beach mine was cut in two and hers was cut in four- very funny.
Interesting to see that this is yet another case where the store’s arrogance and poor customer service, rather than necessarily the increased competition, led to its downfall. I was working in the Internet industry in 2000 and OneTel’s collapse the following year came as no surprise to me, for very similar reasons. Similarly, Borders last year. (And yes, I found this via Crikey too.
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Don’t know which to comment on gender bias or retail.
Gender bias, my sister used to sell pro photographic equipment in a retail store, sales around the 2 million a year mark, the main brand she sold ask if you she wanted a job, you would think a bit of headhunting to get a gifted salesperson as one of their reps. No they offered her a job as a promo girl, look pretty and dust the shelves, only men sell stuff.
The state of retail – a good example JB HiFi, ditched the Australian Canon distributor and sourced direct from overseas as the local distributor could not offer a competitive price. Last I check online prices from Canon Aust. where higher than JB’s
That is the crux of the problem big retail has been slow to react to price competition.
Distribution arrangements are often where costs are built in, are you shipping from country of manufacture or country of distribution ? Big savings if the product travels less.
Is the wholesaler required to buy from say an American distributor as opposed to one in Eastern Europe can be a 15-20% difference in wholesale cost.
A complex issue.
I need a Mackie Profx 12 mixer I can get for as low as $229 in USA
Why do shops here want to bloody charge me $599
Secondly, mechanics and tradesmen get their “tools of trade” at wholesale/trade prices.
Why do full time professional musicians have to pay the same price as people who walk in off the street?
I suspect the specialist shops – beloved by musicians – will largely continue to keep their heads (just) above water, and the large-footprint any-old-junk inflated-margins chains will continue to be found wanting. At least that’s kinda the way I hope it plays out, in the absence of an everyone-survives scenario.
But yeah, my memories start with the Allans (in Collins St, Melbourne) sheet-music basement. Don’t know if it’s just my own nostalgia, but there seemed something intrinsically *right* with the sheet music being the thing that everything else was built on top of. It was like “we have the secret blueprints in the cellar”. Songwriting as the foundation for performance or something like that.
My sister worked in that department for a few months (a year or two, even?) once upon a time. Recently, though, she was eyeing off a beautiful Les Paul – looked instore – looked online – looked at shipping costs and insurance – and realised it was just as cheap for her TO FLY TO LOS ANGELES AND BRING IT BACK AS CARRY-ON as any of the other options. So she did. Any big-store retailers bemoaning the disappearance of their customer base should think on that awhile.
All that said, it’s unquestionably a sad turn of events. If you love music, the sheer variety of sounds available in a large music store is inspirational.
Found this by Crikey also, reading up on ABH’s demise now the latest news is out, that no buyer(s) have been found & receivers have now been appointed.
Echoing views above. The story of Cantankerist’s GF flying abroad for a ‘cheaper’ guitar is familiar. I imported a
Rickenbacker 360 ‘Fireglo’ from Detroit. But the seller was an online guitar shop who shipped the guitar via Fedex. The shop dealt solely in pristine 2nd-hand so no probs with distributor rights when they sold international; it meant I could get a now-’vintage’ specimen (hand-fashioned headstock, not machine-cut as Rics have been since approx 2007) for a much lower price than a new one. And no waiting. Yes I was dubious to buy an instrument before playing it but I had already sampled a few Rics & knew it was the type of guitar I wanted. It took less than a week to arrive and it was *better* than I had imagined it would be. So all in all was an excellent purchase. There was the matter of having o pay 10% GST on an imported item >$1,000 as well as the 5% customs duty on an electric guitar (acoustics are duty-free) not to mention Fedex’s freight & forwarding costs. But even with these added costs it was still a bargain compared to the shops around here, many of which don’t stock (some have never stocked) Rics. Those that do stock the odd similar Ric seem to have no variety, and have exorbitant pricetags.
Previous to the Ric, I once bought a Fender Jag ‘online’ from an Australian guitar shop in Victoria. Found it online (on eBay) but went personally into the shop. A shop I might not have found otherwise. The guitar was cheap at their listed price, even cheaper once they deducted the now-redundant freight plus a further discount for cash. It was 2nd-hand also but “as-new”, there was no difference once I saw it, not a mark on it, a US-made vintage re-issue not currently in production anyway. So at least one music retailer in Victoria is embracing the online revolution and running a bricks-n-mortar shop as well.
Suffice to say I *never* have bought an instrument from Allan’s. And I own 8 guitars and a banjo.
Aside from strings, about all I ever got from Allan’s was a hardcase for a bass: by chance they had it right there in the shop, they seemed to want to clear out these old cases so I offered half the ticketed price, “oh, ok” the guy said. But getting ‘emergency’ strings on a Sunday from them was painful. Don’t have what I need, or don’t know what I mean, or say they have what I want but produce something else after ten minutes of rummaging around. I guess I dont resemble the stereotype guitar shredder either: I went bald young. With a black indie rock tshirt on maybe the attitude would not surface; it was whenever I’ve gone to Allan’s in work attire that I got that ‘yeah-right’ look of condescension. Okay to have a walk around their Pitt St, Sydney shop at lunchtime, but not for serious purchase, just to grab a Drum Media.
Cheers for a great read!
I agree to most of the comments.
I walked into the store a lot of times and whenever I go i see the staff ignoring people and indulging in their own chit chats, you need to go and request their time for assistance.
They are very arrogant and they just don’t deserve working in a store meant to assist people.