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The Know youw Gear Podcast. Today's episode of the Know youw Gear Podcast is brought to you by Patreon Members Channel members and viewers who like and subscribe, thank you for making this possible.
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I am here today what looks like at a guitar center. This is not technically a guitar center. And this is the CEO of Guitar Center, Gabe.
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A
Hello.
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B
And this guitar center that we're in is in the corporate headquarters in California. And. And it's a. Can I say, mock store?
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A
Yes.
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B
Yeah. So it's a mock basically full size. I think you call your stores like a, B and C. Like size.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So this would be a C in my mind, the smaller.
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A
Yeah. C or a B is about 13,000 square foot.
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B
Yeah, yeah. So I. In your Albuquerque store, I would say that store felt actually maybe this size or smaller. So. And so we're going to talk to Gabe about everything, but first I want to talk about this store because this is obviously one of your ideas coming in fresh. You've been here just over a year, so if you could walk us through this idea.
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A
Yeah. So I wanted to accomplish a couple of things. I wanted us to get way more connected to our stores and out into our stores much more often as a leadership team so we can talk to our customers, our associates, because the truth is in the stores. And then I wanted to have a space where we could take a typical store, which is what this is. We built an entire store in our warehouse and experiment with it. And to walk through the store as a customer or a different, different types of customers. So, you know, if I am an entry level customer, how can I walk through this store? And what's, you know, what's in it for me? What is the product? Or if I'm a like high end collector, let me walk the store with that mindset and say, what is my experience? And so it all comes together in. We call it the beacon, you know, so it's like, you know, it's the light ahead that you're moving towards. But this is our ability to experiment, change, iterate, and improve the customer experience in a way that doesn't disrupt 300 stores, you know, every week.
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B
Yeah. Rolling out an idea and then duplicating that 300 times is really hard. Even in today's day and age where, you know, you could zoom, call or you can send out video content or whatever. But to, you know, it's. It's nice before you just pick a store and say, test this idea, you can physically and, and you can actually see it. And as someone who's running the show. That's a lot different than, in my opinion, than getting a report back of how it went. You can physically see it reminds me of the concept of clay molding a car or something, you know. You know, instead of, you know, because we all know you can now you just do it on digital, right? And you're looking at a screen, you go, this is what it's going to look like. But there's something tactile about touch, you know, and, you know, and smell. The funny part about walking in this smells like a guitar store. Isn't that funny? Like, it's weird. But if you're, you know, you're a guitar freak, you know, when you walk into music store, it has a smell. Vintage stores have a vintage smell, right? Newer stores have a new smell because you could smell all the instruments, the poly, the nitro, the wood, you know, and that to me, like I said, it's part of the experience.
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A
Yeah, completely. And if you think about how you envision an experience, if you're sitting in front of a computer monitor, like something may seem rational or, you know, this might seem like a good idea when you put it into the real world, which is this is a facsimile of the real world, you realize, oh, that didn't work at all, right? And you want to get those kinks ironed out before you. I mean, to do anything times 300 is an enormous amount of work and pressure on our local store employees. You want to make sure when you're doing that, like, you get it perfect, right? And it's actually kind of an interesting story. If you look behind us and you see all these pieces of paper on these guitars, these guitars are the actual guitars that are in all of our stores in the under $500 price point. And we've attached the actual sales dollars for every single unit and really tried to understand how do they each one, each individual guitar here, what consumer need do they satisfy? And we're trying to find like duplication where it just doesn't make sense to have a whole bunch of very, very similar things and really focus in on the products that have the right breadth, that also really are the best product. So this is just real world example of how we use this to work. You need to go beyond just the numbers. There needs to be like variety in colors, in quality, in brand, in use. And so you're trying to factor all of that in. It's not just the sales metrics. It's really, you capture all of the passions and needs and wants of the customer.
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B
I know that you've been out there and you've been talking, and I know you're. You're. You're trying to refocus the brand a little bit. You know, the Guitar center brand, at least that's how it looks to me. I mean, at this point, Guitar center is in the United States. You're the biggest chain of guitar stores, music stores, with really no close second. Now, in the digital landscape, that's a different landscape. Well, probably talk about that too. But in the physical brick and mortar landscape, you know, I remember, you know, it was always, like, it was always this mom and pop versus the Goliath kind of logic. But now you're in that. You're in that group because. Because of the digital landscape, right? That's really the Goliath now, the whole digital landscape, right? Guitar center was just this evil Goliath thing, you know, it was. You understand what I'm saying? Right? We all went to Guitar Center. We all like Guitar Center. But there was this, like, the underdog, the mom, pop, you know, Now. Now you see Guitar center as, man, this needs to stay. Because if it goes, there's nothing following it. There will be no chain store after this. This. It will just be a click on my phone, and that's the experience I'm left with. And so that's why I think people are specifically now with you intent and listening to what you're saying, because you unfortunately, are at the helm at probably the most critical time to make this succeed. Right. Even more so. Does it make sense?
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A
Yeah. I think all of this really comes down to, like, how do you serve your customer? What does your customer want? And how do you serve your customer? To the extent that we've made missteps in the past, they've almost inevitably just been forgetting who your customer is and forgetting how to, like, really deliver an amazing experience for your customer. When we talk to customers, it's so interesting. There's so many, like, they'll say the same things over and over again. And when I ask them, why do you come into a physical guitar store and. Or music store? And they generally say one of three things. They'll say, I just need to, like, touch it and feel it and hear it. And you can take two identical $20,000 Les Pauls, and they weigh different, the grain is different, they feel a little different, they sound a little different, right? Like, you can read all the reviews online, and what you do is amazing. You still need to touch it and feel it, right? And so People want to come into the stores. What did that mean for us? Practically we needed to have much better product in our stores. And we've spent the last year and several months driving relentlessly to get better product in the stores. And we had way over index on the beginner and we had way under index on the mid and premium tier and the really drool worthy products. And we've changed that. And you know, for many of our categories that transformation is done. For others it's coming. But we have a much better assortment and we still have a beginner product, but we have much better mid tier, much better premium tier product in our stores. The second thing is they say things like sometimes I just need to go to Disneyland. And that's their words, Disneyland, right? Or sometimes they call it the Candy Store. But like we're the candy Store to them, like we're Space Mountain to them. And they want to come in and have fun and experience and be around other like minded people and really be part of the music scene, but also just have fun. And what did that mean for us? You know, practically it meant. Well, let's just be honest. Our stores were kind of disorganized and a little dirty. But more importantly, like all of our best product was locked up. You know, our best guitars were on the top row. Locked.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And it wasn't fun. You couldn't go in and just grab something and play.
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B
Now I just want to take a second and say that I was really enjoying Gabe explaining this stuff when I was sitting there with him. Because if you've seen prior podcasts, I had said the same things. The Guitar Center. The problem is like half the time you need an employee because everything's locked up. It started with the top row of crap locked up. The other thing that drives me crazy is again, you're locking up all the pedals. Now you're locking up everything. Everything is just locked down. And now they're putting the locks on the lower rows. Now I understand they have theft and all these problems, but it's hard to spend money in your store.
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A
And so we've really, we've unlocked all of our guitars and I can walk in and grab, you know, a really nice guitar off the wall, plug it in to these brand new massive pedal tables where we'll take 50 pedals at a time, chain them all together and just start to explore sound. Right? And our playing time, actual time spent in our stores is up 25% because of that. So people are just spending more time playing, having fun. And then the Third thing they say is sometimes you just need to talk to somebody. And you're helping with that because you're providing all these really deep, like, rip instruments apart reviews. But sometimes, like, you know, like, you got a complicated problem and you need someone's advice, and you need someone who has really deep knowledge, and, you know, so what does that mean for us? It means we need to invest in our product training with our sales force. And when you walk into a guitar center, you need someone who just knows their stuff, and whatever problem you got, we can help you out. And that's a work in progress, but we're leaning heavily into that. So those. That, to me, is why it's important that brick and mortar exists and why specifically it's important that guitar center exists. Because without us, you're just gonna be ordering all kinds of stuff online. And you may not like it. You may not look, you know, as.
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B
Someone who makes a living taking them apart and sharing that information, it is funny to me. I can pick up a guitar in a store and in 30 seconds know if I hate it. Like, it's a harder thing. Like, I don't know if I like it, but I can tell right away you don't like something. You just pick it up physically. To learn that I don't like something online, I find it takes me hours of watching something. Everybody agrees. We all know the perfect world is we would just physically go into stores. The problem is, is that there's this huge availability online, and there's something really nice about every color is available, every option. With your desire, which you've voiced now and definitely demonstrated with the stores, this more premium aspect of guitars. Now, you need a more trained staff, because I've seen you on other podcasts and you mentioned that they were not doing Guitar center was not doing training. They pretty much ceased most training in 2018. And you've kind of really brought it back.
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A
That's correct.
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I'm saying that because I'm very aware that training is important to you. That's why. So I know that's not a question. One of the things I did a couple years back is I went to Sweetwater, and while I was there, I asked if I could take their sales test. So I took.
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It was amazing.
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It was brutal. But they let me film it and put it out. It was brutal. Have you guys thought about not only training, but in giving an incentive to employees to learn? So, in other words, creating tests that you want to see the results on? Like, so, like, this is a test about whatever Subject, maybe it's vintage guitars, maybe it's, you know, intonation, maybe, whatever. A test, a category. Keyboards, right? Dj, whatever. I don't think we're really at risk of a guitar employee or, you know, a lighting DJ employee going out there and learning on his own. As long as you've created and cultivated, test the results and say, hey, if the employee takes this test and pass, there's an incentive then maybe financial, maybe, you know, down the road.
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A
I love this, I love this suggestion. It's something we've, we've, we've talked about a fair amount internally. In my dream of the future, you walk into a guitar center and it's a little corny, but you know how boy scouts, they've all got badges all over, right? Like, I'd like for us to be certifying our associates in different categories and different tiers of different categories. And you could maybe have like a platinum drum specialist or something where it's just, you know, there's this constant evolution and striving to achieve more knowledge.
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B
Right.
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A
And then finding ways to reward them for that. Right. And that's going to help our customers a lot. It's going to help our associates, let's be honest. Like, if you are super knowledgeable, you're going to sell a lot more. And if you talk to a drummer, they're like, I don't want to talk to anyone in a store who's not a drummer. Like, they really want to. Like, they want someone who just really deeply knows drums. And the more we can get people trained up and very fluent in these categories at different kind of achievement levels, I think the better for our customers, the better for our associates, better for the company, and we got to find a way to reward them for that.
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B
When I first reacted to the first article of your changes, I reacted publicly, of course, because that's the.
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A
I think it was why it's not going to work.
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B
Yeah, it's actually the title. Look, you got to love clickbait, right? By the way, I think chatgpt re changed it to fail. I think it said not work. And then you asked me, you know, you asked. I've said a lot of crazy things on my show. It's a Friday water cooler show, right? We're just guitar nerds talking guitar stuff. And I've had all kinds of reactions to it, you know, so, you know, when you guys reacted to me, my wife's like, oh, we get a cease and desist letter. And I'm like, no, they want me to come and Talk to him, you know, so look, that in itself, that's what I said in this conversation. Obviously, I have an admiration for you guys because seen in my, let's say, decade of being on the Internet, I have, I have criticized a lot of things in. Not in a hateful way, obviously, just in a. Like, okay, this is my thought. Like every average Joe, I got a thought about something and the reaction was not okay, you're right. It's just, okay, let me, let me explain to you my logic.
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A
You know, when I first started on, you know, developing the guitar center strategy, it really was like, you know, define a target customer. And we called that customer the serious musician. And I got crap from all kinds of people, including Tom Morello, which was amazing because 10 million people read that article because of him. I'm like, thank you very much, Tom Morello. I wasn't saying I just want to sell people expensive guitars. A serious musician to me is just someone where music's an important piece of your life. It's. I might be a touring musician, I might be a producer. I might be someone like myself who has a day job, but every night I go home and play music. Or I could be that, you know, kid who's 12 years old, practicing two hours a day to be the next Eddie Van Halen and want a $200 guitar. That's fine with me. Right, right. But we want to focus on people who are, like, in it, passionate. And that, to me, is a serious musician. When I meet with our vendors who are the, you know, the Fenders and the Gibsons and the prss and the Yamahas and the Rolands and everybody else, right. They all say we need to create the next generation musicians. And this is, you know, our effort to do that, to take people who are. Who like, really want to be passionate about music and to help create that next generation. Right, right. Because you got to start somewhere and it's hard to pick up an instrument. It's hard.
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B
Yeah.
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And you need someone to help you. And. And we can do that now. We can do that in a, you know, in a convenient location that's like clean, that has cameras, so someone's watching your kid. Like, there's a lot of stuff we can do that maybe, you know, the average person, you know, you dropping your kid off at someone's apartment or whatever is not awesome. Right. But really it's a mission driven thing. Like, we want to engage with and help train the next generation of musicians.
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B
When visiting the stores, what caught me was there was kids in stores Waiting for lessons or coming out of lessons. And they were interacting with product, you know, which is what you expect. You know, I was sitting there going, you know, I get. Like I said, what I wasn't seeing at the time was we already know music stores. Doesn't matter how big or small you are. The kid demographic is hard to get right now. And the female demographic are just the absolute hardest two demographics to get. And they're big, but they would go to lessons.
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A
Yeah.
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And now they're in the store. Right. So it is a draw. And I, so I reversed my. Which, you know, I'm telling you right now, I've reversed my opinion on that for sure. On your used product, which is where I champion you guys. I think that's where you excel. I know the number one feedback. And I know, you know, this is like, could you get better pictures?
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A
I noticed this too, right when I first joined the company and I talked to our associates and they're like, oh my goodness, it is such a nightmare to take photos and get them into our system. I'm like, okay, great. So I went to our technology team and said, hey, can we rebuild them an app just to make this whole process way easier. And they did some things I wasn't even thinking about, which is now it's all on an iPhone that all of our associates have to ingest it. They just take a picture. AI removes all the background.
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B
That's why it's white in the background now.
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A
Yeah, right.
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B
I noticed that recently.
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A
So now it's so much easier to get so many more good quality photos and it's easy to upload. So I think about half of our used product now has the. Has been onboarded with the new system and they all have much better photos. So that's. That's kind of. That's piece one. The other thing is that, you know, we, I think probably by far have more used product than anyone else in the world. And when you ask a customer or you actually ask the store manager, what's the most traffic path in your store, they will say, from the front door to the used wall. Because it's just all this crazy newness. Like you walk into the store and you never know what you're going to find. And there's some just wild, like vintage or unique product that walks through our store every day and it's a treasure hunt. So to us, it's really important. We're trying to really lean into the used and vintage category because it's what people demand and they really want and it's something that we can uniquely do that you can't do. And really an online provider in any meaningful way.
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B
You literally, and this is my critique when I was critiquing the other stuff on that same show episode, you literally dominate this space. There's no question there. When I. What I mean by that is any gear addict, right? Like I always say, I'm loyal to my addictions, right. I'd buy a guitar at a gas station if they sold guitar, right? Like, it's just wherever there's an opportunity that I find something I love. This is what happens when your passion is something like this. Literally the market out there for used gear, whether it's the in person market, which is your, you know, whatever, your Craigslist or your Facebook. Facebook, whatever, and then your ebay reverb, whatever, those platforms, they're riddled with all kinds of hellscapes now that have progressively gotten worse over the years, not better.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And trading, Trading gear. I did a video where I. One of the things that was great was when you guys reached out to me, I said, hey, after all these years, I've been begging you guys to film one of your stores. Can I. You know, I didn't ask for anything. We didn't do a sponsored video. That was literally just me going in and trading some guitars and just sharing that experience.
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A
Because I saw that video is amazing.
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B
Thank you. Thank you. Well, the whole point was that, that my point was in that video is your trade system is effective. It was easy. It's pleasant. For the most part. As pleasant as an experience of trading things can be. You have a huge inventory of used gear. Right. Your return policy is good. These are the things that you do well. That's what I said. That's the stuff that not only you do well, but in my opinion, whatever it's worth, your competitors not only don't do it, when they do do it, it's not very good. They can't figure it out. Right. At least on the large scale like that. You guys did like you said. I would argue reverb ebay platforms or swap me platforms. That's not a seller, that's sellers doing a platform. I can't imagine there's a larger single seller of used gear in the country right now than you guys.
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A
Yeah, we're in.
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B
Yeah. You, you've locked that mark down. And you're right. I not only do. When I walk in a store, do I go right to the used section. If I'm in a town, the first thing I do is look on your. Your stores used sections to see which store I should hit first. And I'm not looking for specific gear. I'm looking for types of gear. Demographically different regions have different types of gear. Right. Like Nashville is a good place to get used gear.
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A
Absolutely right.
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B
And you have a great store there for that that you got dialed in. This last one, this one's a weird one. I ordered four items from you guys and four items from Sweetwater. They can get me stuff in a day. You take five days. That's because they nuzzled up next to California. They put a warehouse, as you know, in Arizona because it's cheaper in Arizona by far for warehouse space ver California. They wanted to nuzzle up to the single largest market in the country, which is California and be able to deliver to them in 24 hours that center is there. So they can get product into California within 24 to 48 hours. That's exactly why that center is there. Nobody's waiting five days with strings. Trust me, when I ordered, I literally am not joking. I bought a speaker from you guys and a speaker from them to put in my 212. It was agonizing. Waiting four extra days for the same speaker so I could do. But I wanted to do this so we could have this conversation. Right. Because I was curious. Here's what's interesting. There's five guitar centers within 40 minutes of my house. But I still waited a week to get a product from you guys. And my guess is not because you don't have a warehouse in Arizona. My guess is because your outdated as 400 systems, you can't integrate your stores correctly. Because there was. I've seen. I've seen in modern of technology. Right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
If the speaker is at that store, which it was. It could have came from that store to my house. Satisfied me in 24 hours versus making me wait for. I think it came from Missouri.
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A
Yeah. So there's. There's real puts and takes in that.
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B
Okay.
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A
It actually is not a systems limitation.
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B
Okay.
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A
When we ship product from stores, you know, sometimes it's been held or you know, played.
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B
Sure. But we're not. But yeah, but just to make sure, I'm not talking about guitars. I've seen that. Because look, before your. Before you took over here, there was a lot more complaints out there. I see very few now in the Internet about ordering new things from guitar Center. But getting shipped things that were used in stores. Right. Or touched. That's a complaint I haven't heard in a long time. So whether it's happening or not.
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A
It's not. We were actively trying to minimize that.
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B
But what I'm talking about specifically is Sweetwater specifically is targeting quick. There's a strategy there they haven't told me. I'm just, you could see it. Strings like items that people click and expect that they can get from Amazon in hours to get in a day or two. And I, and why it's interesting to me is not because you're a competitor that's on the other side of the country. It's interesting me because you're a California based company yet if I was in California, I can't get a product from you. Delivered.
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A
Yeah.
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B
In a quick timeline and there's physical stores and I know you could say we just go to the store, but also I could just do this with my phone. Right.
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A
So, so let me thank you for that feedback. I'm. I'm sad it took four to five days to get to you. Well, yeah, the typically it's more like two to three days and when we have kind of measured that and we do that periodically over time, it's typically, you know, two to three days to get product from us. The, the thing you can do, as you mentioned is you can walk in and get it this second right at your local guitar center. And 60 of people live within 10 miles of a guitar center. So most people can just walk in the store and grab it. I'll give you like the business answer and then, then I'll tell you like you bring up a really good point and I actually want to think about this more and maybe we can do something about it. You know the business answer is play your game, don't play someone else's game. And if you're going to like where we, we can win, we want to be like a really fierce competitor. In digital where we are differentiated is the ability to buy online, pick up in store, to deliver incredible retail experiences, to be able to try and experience the product to be Disneyland. Right. Like an online competitor can't be Disneyland. It just is impossible.
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B
Right.
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A
And that's like that's where we win. You don't want to try and match every single thing a competitor does. Now there's real value in getting that to you in the next day. I appreciate that. And so what I'm going to take back is, you know, for things like strings that you know you're not going to have used, are there opportunities for us to have shipper or faster shipping from stores? Right. In a way that's kind of logical. So I'll take that back. I think it's good feedback. We want to have really fast delivery and there might be some actual simple ways we could do that, shipping from store or otherwise. So it's a fair piece of feedback. But if you want it right now.
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B
I don't actually say no. None of this is about giving me the answer right now. It's more about, look, you just took over this thing in the last year, right? I don't think any sane person's like, why isn't it perfect yet? Or why isn't it this? You've made gains. I, we've talked about those games. They're tangible gains that guitar players have seen. I'm not the only one, right? You've heard it. I've listened to podcasts where you're talking to other podcasters. They've said, hey, I went in the store. There's differences that have been executed. Those particular podcasters, which are friends of mine too, are in different states. So it's not like I was just happened to be in California, Arizona, and it's just happening here. They're in different states. So obviously you've pushed it across the chain. Like I said, those are the gains. And when we started this conversation, it started with we're rooting for Guitar center as a whole. Right. Because as guitar players, we want this place to go to. We want a place to anything. And the digital landscape is by far the most aggressive and scary platform to compete against. Right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
And, and so that's why I bring it up. Because like I said, it's not so much that you take longer. I could argue that Sweetwater took longer than Amazon. I could have got strings faster. I could have got them that afternoon from Amazon. I mean, there's. The argument is, I just thought it was strange in the idea that you're a California based company and this is the single largest market. I'm wondering if there's like in your mind, are you looking at that as like, wow, we should probably, as a, you know, not let them take. They're literally on the other side of the country. It would be strange if they took. I understand they can't take physical market. They have no interest to take the physical market. We're talking about digital market. And the reason I say that is Richard Ashe. When they closed, Sam Ash sent me a really nice letter. And in the letter, what he said, 25% of the market is owned by Guitar Center, 25 by Sweetwater, 25 by Amazon. And we were struggling with the last 25% with all the other mom and pops and everybody out there. And it's just got too hard. And more important to that statement, which I thought was insightful, was who takes what of the lion's share. Amazon is ineffective in every way at selling high end guitars. Fender used to try to sell a high end guitar since we were sorry on Amazon. They don't even do that anymore because no one's buying an 1800 guitar on Amazon. Right?
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A
Yeah. So on Amazon, by the way, like when you think about what we can uniquely provide for the musician, like low end, cheap toy like instruments, like that's not where we're gonna win. Right, Right. It's. It really is. The premium product is where people are going to take the time and care a lot and want to experience it. And that's why that's important to us. Like we are leaning into that like really high quality premium product where experience matters. That's where we can win against Amazon. It's not in the low end cheap stuff. Right, Right. And we'll have entry level, but we're just not going to compete with the, you know, factory direct from China stuff.
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B
Right.
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A
It's not, it's not a winnable space. And then it just comes down to like the other competitors and you know, the online competitors are fierce and the mom and pops, like I have a lot of sympathy for them.
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B
Right.
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A
You know, these are business owners and good people and everything else and you know, they have to lean into where they can have relationships and things like that. And you know, we're going to try and do the same thing.
- [30:02]
B
Yeah. Well, okay. Well obviously like I said, I think where you could gain ground, you've gained ground and you've definitely implemented that stuff. Right. Like I said, this is, this is, it's fun to critique somebody on the smallest details because I'm sitting, I'm picking the bones. Like it's. My criticisms, they're not that great. You guys have really where it counts. You've moved the needle the most. Right. I know. I'm, I found myself back shopping at guitar centers more in the last say five, six months.
- [30:38]
A
Thank you. And I'll say, look, we need to be humble and, and we are far from perfect. We're working really hard to get better every day. And this is a journey. And you know, I appreciate you taking notice. And you know, every single day we just got to wake up and say, how do we get a little bit better and how do we really focus on our customer and making our customers happy? Because you do that you win. Like, if you, if you thrill your customers over time, they're going to reward you with their loyalty. And so that's going to take time. It's going to take time for us to earn that trust.
- [31:19]
B
Before we even set up this podcast, the announcement was you closed two stores, one in West LA and the other one in somewhere around there.
- [31:27]
A
Yeah, I mean, by and large, like, our stores perform really well. Like the, the West LA as an example, it was, wasn't in a great location, the rent was absurdly high, the warehouse was across the street. So there's just a lot of difficulty running that store. And it just like, just didn't make sense. And you know, we had other stores in the vicinity that if someone needed to go to a guitar center, they could go to them. Right. Like Hollywood, in my opinion, is best music store in the world. So we felt like we could serve our customer. And those stores just had a couple of really specific challenges that, that made them just not work. But, but by and large, like, our stores are, you know, all of our stores are other. Maybe those two are profitable and, and doing well.
- [32:26]
B
Yeah, I didn't get any negative sense of it. Like I said, unfortunately, I got a bow to the Internet a little bit too.
- [32:31]
A
Yeah.
- [32:31]
B
So that's why I thought I'd bring it up. But that leads me to the last thing and that's what I want to end up with. So, interesting enough, you mentioned before we started this that you have a gig after this.
- [32:39]
A
I do.
- [32:39]
B
How important do you think that is to your role here is that you're a guitar player.
- [32:43]
A
I think it's really important that the person in my seat is a musician and, you know, Guitar center, when we, when we've messed up, it's because we just didn't have the deep understanding of our target customer and empathy for the target customer. And so I grew up in rural West Virginia. My dad was a musician. He had put together a makeshift recording studio in our living room and people would come from all over the state and play until 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. And I decided that that was going to be my room. So I moved out of my room and I lived in the living room with all these crazy people playing music. Right. And then I, then he taught me guitar and I played my whole life. And so I think like, that passion, that level of just connection to musicians is very helpful in developing, like, a vision for how to serve them. And as long as we can stay really close to that customer, we are going to do great. And if any. So I have a gig tonight. It's up in the Bay Area in Woodside. I've got a band that I've had for over a decade. I just love playing. We started to write our own original, you know, songs.
- [34:00]
B
They must love you, right? I mean, come on. Like, you're like, hey, can I get a discount? Yeah, right?
- [34:07]
A
They're like, hey, can I get the friends and family discount? Yeah. Yeah. I think they might appreciate that. Yeah. But they're also just a good group of people, and we have so much fun together. And it's really just. That's my creative release. This is the thing that brings me joy in my life other than my work and my family. And I think all musicians just feel this emotional, visceral connection, know, to music and playing. And I. I like playing in front of people. Every time I get a little nervous before I go on, but then I calm down. It's, you know, it's this whole thing. But, yeah, it's a lot of fun.
- [34:45]
B
Not only do I want to thank you for your time, the fact that you even listen is a. Not only a positive, but it really shows something.
- [34:55]
A
I really enjoyed speaking with you, and I. I love watching your videos. You have such a great channel. And, you know, this has been a real pleasure. And look, I mean, we are nothing if we don't listen. And the first, I think day three, when I joined the company, I just went out and worked in the stores and I checked people out. I worked in the warehouse, like, talked to our associates, and I'm constantly just asking questions. And I actually asked three questions. I said, what are we great at so we can keep going that. What do we suck at so we can fix it or stop it? And then what should we do totally differently? And how do we innovate? Right? I asked everybody, our customers, our associates, everybody. And that's the strategy we're on now is the answers to those questions just boiled up in a real consistent theme. And here we are. And it just began with listening.
- [35:50]
B
I want to thank Gabe for joining the podcast today. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. What's nice is you can tell he welcomes feedback. So if you want to leave feedback, I appreciate if you guys keep it constructive. As always, the Internet gets weird, but for the most part, you guys are amazing. Keep it productive because you can see it does seem to get to the right ears. It does have effect. And he does listen.
- [36:14]
A
Definitely. We'll be watching the comments and we'll take all that in. Thank you very much.
- [36:19]
B
Alright, guys, thank you for your time. Know your gear. Thank you so much.
- [36:22]
A
Hey, that was awesome.