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Guitar Center; another credit downgrade & $1 billion in debt

CastaMario

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Jul 25, 2019
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People are chasing money, not for the sound quality. I also sell musical instruments and to be honest I took a loan for my business. I use such a credit company (this one credit-10.com<style type="text/css"><!--td {border: 1px solid #ccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}</style>) that I have a small interest rate on the loan and I can make payments on time. And they have huge debts, but I believe they got into them because they wanted to meet the needs of their customers, but something went wrong..But how they will repay them is unknown, I hope they will not do it at the expense of customers.
 
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Big Al

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Apr 24, 2002
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14,537
People are chasing money, not for the sound quality. I also sell musical instruments and to be honest I took a loan for my business. I use such a credit company (this one credit-10.com<style type="text/css"><!--td {border: 1px solid #ccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}</style>) that I have a small interest rate on the loan and I can make payments on time. And they have huge debts, but I believe they got into them because they wanted to meet the needs of their customers, but something went wrong..But how they will repay them is unknown, I hope they will not do it at the expense of customers.

No, they are nothing like you, brother. I know. This was self inflicted, greed and hubris. F### 'em!
 

AA00475Bassman

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Apr 26, 2016
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A lot of really bad business decisions, there is no way they can even service the debts.
 

wmachine

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Mar 17, 2016
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What I'd say to George vis vis being hard pressed to name any new bands...look and work harder, they're there.

And to Mr Concotilli - which is it, rock is dead and there's no-one to look up to anymore..or...the young uns don't want to put the time in to learn, and want instant gratification? There's no-one left to make the young uns want to learn? why have all the back catalogues of the greats from Charlie Christian onwards suddenly ceased to exist?

Puts me in mind of what Jackie McClean once told one of his students "....you don't know what's new, until you know what's old..."

I understand the shrinkage in the market, but lets not get all baby with the bath water soundbitey about it...

Plus, as a guitar player, I've always distrusted retailers views of the game...they are after all in a completely different game altogether.

Rock is dead...?? is it buggery...:ha

Exactly. Once again we have judgement passed on something using an narrow scope of measure. Sure less new guitars are being sold. But it is laughably ignorant to conclude Rock is dead. "Cars are a thing of the past. Nobody drives any more. New car sales are down, proving that is true".
Present day media is so desperately skewed. Anything that shows any sign of declining is instantly declared dead. Frankly, I'm bored to death with the Chicken Littles.
 

bayslarry

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Jan 22, 2020
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Yep, thanks all for sharing your opinion. I must say the thread really has it all information. But I think myself after going through whole thread that debts will take it all from us. People do chase money so I decided to share on the Guitar Center Return Policy. At Guitar Center the return time frame to return an item is 45 days while the vintage instrument needs to be returned within 3 days of purchase. There are certain musical instruments and item need to be returned within 14 days of purchase. In order to return at Guitar and get more information call 1-866-498-7882.
 

jrgtr42

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Mar 24, 2005
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2,308
Yep, thanks all for sharing your opinion. I must say the thread really has it all information. But I think myself after going through whole thread that debts will take it all from us. People do chase money so I decided to share on the Guitar Center Return Policy. At Guitar Center the return time frame to return an item is 45 days while the vintage instrument needs to be returned within 3 days of purchase. There are certain musical instruments and item need to be returned within 14 days of purchase. In order to return at Guitar and get more information call 1-866-498-7882.

I don't really understand why you shared this. GC isn't going anywhere in the immediate future, and last I checked, they tell you all about the return policy when you make a purchase.
If they do have to call it quits, more likely they won't just close up one night, they'd liquidate as much as possible and close stores gradually, hoping to keep some of them.
Also, likely they;d sell one of their properties, Musician's Friend, etc.
Finally, they'd give enough notice (or enough notice would be deduced) that is someone is still on the fence about something, they'd have time.
 

sonar

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Jan 10, 2003
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GC has proven to be resilient.

I've been in a GC a few times in the past 18 months. It was mostly out of need and even then rarely purchased anything, unless I didn't have a better option.

Most guitar stock is kinda low grade crap that could easily be liquidated, or worst case pulled back and restocked for their associate interwebz business sites.

The mid to high-end guitars and amps are a very small part of stock and as far as I could tell, insignificant.

Vintage might potentially be a clusterf##k if they close physical doors, so there's that.

Since a keyboard is a keyboard and... non-guitar related gear is mostly still in boxes and ready for a warehouse if the web based POS transition happens.


They seem to be prepared for what this thread thought was the inevitable (at least the brick and mortar stores in Chicago) yet here they are a couple years later.
 

Campbche

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Nov 5, 2020
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<style type="text/css"><!--td {border: 1px solid #ccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}</style>It is commendable you handle your credit so well, and I know that there are good debts that are necessary for an efficient business. My case is absolutely different. When I was younger I decided to take credit and to but my dream car. I bought it, I enjoyed it for a few days, and then later I realized I have no money to pay the debt. Of course, that was my failure, and the only person I can blame is me. In a few months of not paying the debt, I started receiving calls from a debt collecting company. I agree that it was my failure but guys the debt collecting company called unstoppable. That was a wind of harassment. Thankfully I found a company that helped me to defend my rights. By the way, the company I am talking about is https://www.lemberglaw.com/national-credit-systems-inc-collections-complaints-calls. Stay safe and have a wonderful day!<style type="text/css"><!--td {border: 1px solid #ccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}</style>
 
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jrgtr42

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Mar 24, 2005
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Spam posting notwithstanding (how do you report spam?)

I read yesterday that GC is filing Chapter 11. So they aren't at the point going out of business or forced to liquidate,
but vendors are OOL for the time being.
Wonder how mucg reorganizxation they will be doing, and if they'll close down underperforming stores.,
 

bern1

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Nov 23, 2004
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1,275
And so it goes down the line.

This cannot be a good thing for Fender or Gibson.
 

corpse

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Jun 9, 2007
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4,876
There are a multitude of medium sized companies too- think Rapco, D'Addario, Reverend...
But I don't have much sympathy for Gibson's front office- effers- put the boots to all those medium sized retailers (Mid Town Guitar for one in Atl- everybody here know one) because they wouldn't take whatever Gibson sent them to the tune of a $750K commitment.
My Dad said he'd always rather have ten $100K customers than one $1,000,000 customer.
That was a long time ago...
 

bern1

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Nov 23, 2004
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1,275
I totally agree. I knew that the bean counters were here with the new posse. Watering down the line, starving the arch tops... For all of his faults, Henry had respect for the brand and its traditions and with him the company produced some fine instruments. Yes he made some bad decisions and when he had his back to the wall he started firing people. I think it will be ironic if Henry's reign comes to be seen as the high point of Gibson's post Kalamazoo endeavors. I think there's a good chance of that happening.

I couldn't even begin to think of buying a new Gibson today. Fortunately, there are many good used examples out there.
 

Marie Diaz

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Mar 8, 2022
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Debt refinancing and restructuring over $ 1 billion is a very complicated procedure that takes a long time. Even if it is a well-known company with a good profit, their debts of over 1 billion already mean something negative. I hope that the demographic changes will help them get rid of this debt as soon as possible. I recently got a mortgage from Mortgage Broker Leicester. I'm afraid I won't have the money to pay for it. I don't want to have any debts. I'm looking for a job to avoid debt. And that's what we all have to do!
 
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El Gringo

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I totally agree. I knew that the bean counters were here with the new posse. Watering down the line, starving the arch tops... For all of his faults, Henry had respect for the brand and its traditions and with him the company produced some fine instruments. Yes he made some bad decisions and when he had his back to the wall he started firing people. I think it will be ironic if Henry's reign comes to be seen as the high point of Gibson's post Kalamazoo endeavors. I think there's a good chance of that happening.

I couldn't even begin to think of buying a new Gibson today. Fortunately, there are many good used examples out there.
Since the new leadership team headed by JC Curleigh took over Gibson is better than ever and has left the HJ era in the dustbin of history .Good riddance as well .
 

Pat Boyack

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Oct 19, 2011
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I totally agree. I knew that the bean counters were here with the new posse. Watering down the line, starving the arch tops... For all of his faults, Henry had respect for the brand and its traditions and with him the company produced some fine instruments. Yes he made some bad decisions and when he had his back to the wall he started firing people. I think it will be ironic if Henry's reign comes to be seen as the high point of Gibson's post Kalamazoo endeavors. I think there's a good chance of that happening.

I couldn't even begin to think of buying a new Gibson today. Fortunately, there are many good used examples out there.
I sold Gibsons while Henry ran the company and now with JC. The difference is night and day in JC's favor. Hands down.
 

hendersonross

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Aug 16, 2022
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Electric guitar deals have fallen by a third over the most recent decade, with the goal that now acoustic guitars are beating electric models. Significant producers and retailers are falling into obligation and cutting costs, and developments like Gibson's self-tuning guitars haven't done a lot to slow the fall. I was chasing sound quality and rarity. I found a guitar on the Internet that I fell in love with at first sight and, to be honest, took out a loan. This is not the first time I use such a loan https://northnloans.ca/nova-scotia-payday-loans.php company. The main thing is to make payments on time and everything will be fine.
 
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Oiputtn.jpg
Kids lucky he didn't smash that guitar.. or maybe would have been luckier if he had.
 

wahise6

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Aug 18, 2022
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I agree with the articLe. Guitar is just about dead. And it’s not coming back. Too easy to auto tune some voice and put an electric beat and call it music. None of those today are artists.
vidmate mobdro
 
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Pat Boyack

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I agree with the articke. Guitar is just about dead. And it’s not coming back. Too easy to auto tune some shit voice and put an electric beat and call it music. None of those fuckers today are artists.
From my experience the last two years I would say that isn't necessarily true.
 

goldtop0

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Aug 19, 2003
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From my experience the last two years I would say that isn't necessarily true.
I think it's probably guys like me who are baby boomers born in the '50s and '60s, die hard rockers and love the things that are keeping the flame alive.
It'll be interesting in say 10 years time to see what's happening.
What's your experience Pat, which demographic are buying all the gibsons?
 
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