Come to Guitar Center for PRICES TOO LOW TO PRINT!!!!
That is the ONLY true statement you will EVER see in their advertising. I'm not kidding, so listen and learn.
There's a little nugget in their franchise agreement that states they will honor the Minimum Advertised Price.
Violate the MAP agreement and you can lose your franchise - some brands are much more picky than others.
Some brands don't give you much room between MAP and Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) or "List."
With them dictating your price ranges you can advertise, you are limited in options if you need to move merchandise.
So a dealer can sell it to you for whatever they want once you come into the store and talk to them, and there's no public acknowledgement of a deal that would undercut all competitors. They can blow it out for twenty bucks if they want, but they won't even write that price on a business card. You buy it and walk out.
Say Gibson has a Les Paul model called the X for example.
The list price they publish on their website is $3000.
In my experience, you can buy most Gibsons, Fenders and such for a third off list. That's a street price of $2000.
Look at GC and any other store ads, then look at online warehouse Musician's Friend (owned by GC by the way).
I will hereby refer to Musician's Friend as the MFers, because they are a bunch of, well, people with a business model I don't like very much. They are KILLING the guitar business along with Guitar Center by driving out every dealer they can.
Sweetwater, Music123, any other online retailers are in the same game.
Anyway, notice the exact same guitar will have the exact same price in every one 90% of the time?
They are stuck with that price.
So the ad goes something like this;
GIBSON LP-X List $2,999.99
Blah, blah, blah w/factory hardcase....
Limited time offer, while they last!
Get one before they are ALL GONE! Our price - ONLY $1,999.99
NOBODY can advertise a price lower than that.
Gibson doesn't want a desperate retailer selling it for $1,000 for a number of reasons too complex for this example.
Suffice it to say, it would kill the other dealers and cheapen the perceived value of the Gibson brand.
Now, I walk into my favorite guitar shop and ask them why they don't advertise more.
They have nothing to advertise.
Why spend big bucks to advertise the exact same price as GC?
All you can say is "We sell for the exact same price, but we're cooler than GC" or some baloney like that.
Not much help.
So they treat people right for 32 years and word of mouth brings in the customers. Save the advertising money.
Now, my dealer beats online warehouses on price every day, except I have to pay sales tax.
So they sell me the guitar far enough below MAP to make up the difference in the tax. Same price as MF out the door....
They ALWAYS beat GC on price by about 10% because GC can't eat the sales tax and won't come down that far.
Rare occasions people do okay there, but it is NOT the norm. Disagree with me all you want, but GC will fleece you.
That's a FACT.
My dealer, and many other independents will sell a little below MAP, make a decent profit for themselves, and stay open.
If you can get a better deal than MAP at an online store, it's because it's a close-out and will no longer be stocked.
Until they place another order with Gibson for another batch of the same damned guitar....
That's why people always ask in the forums "Is it true Gibson quit building the SG 61 or Les Paul Standard?"
No, that's the last of them from that ORDER!
GC/MF will then decide if they want to sell them again, get a price from Gibson on a few hundred of them, and then agree to buy a certain number of them over the next two years or something like that.
The lies and bullsh!t in their advertisements starts all over again.
Guitar Center HAS BEEN the Wal-mart of Guitar stores for 15 years!!!
Okay, you teenagers don't know any different.
What kills me is when I see people who have been playing for 15 years and still think GC is THE place to buy a guitar.
Nice Peter has a very articulate way of saying that Guitar Center is less than he expects, and he does it in a song.
Caution: Profanity mixed with humor in this link. http://youtube.com/watch?v=m-0s3V4xAsA
And because this is my website I can put pics of my OWN guitars up. Check it out, here's what I've added so far.
http://flickr.com/photos/11455727@N08/