Sound Control I think are or rather were the biggest UK MI chain. They crashed pretty heavily yesterday, w/about staff at about half of the stores turning up yesterday to find the locks changed.
Apparently the remaining stores are running for the next 90 days, with the administrators hoping to find a buyer. Frankly, I wouldn't be hopeful if I was one of the remaining employees, I can't help but feel that there is some oversupply in the MI market in the UK at least - for example as well as SC in Newcastle, there's a branch of Guitar-Guitar, Windows (a local place), Sounds Live, a great little guitar boutique place in high bridge, and in the nearby shopping mall, there's a branch of Dolphin's that's just opened. I don't doubt it's the same in other cities and big towns across the country.
I was in the little guitar place the other week and the guy who runs it was complaining that most of his business is in trade-ins these days, he reckoned that the thing with people buying multiple guitars ,which does get pushed pretty heavily by the guitar rags ("Got a telecaster! Got a strat and a les paul? An SG is what you need next!" etc etc) is not terribly viable anymore, and there are a load of people at the moment trying to shift some pretty big collections, and failing. It made me think about all those shops that have one of each Ibanez model, one of each Dean, one of each Schecter etc a bunch of high-end LPs and PRSes hanging on the wall etc, and who needs all that really? I mean there's not really a great deal of variety when it actually comes down to it.
I spoke to a guy I know pretty well who works in SC, well, probablky it's worked in SC by now, and as I'm in retail myself, we were doing shop talk, as we do, he said that trade has basically stunk in 2008 (it has for me as well). I came home thinking that one of these big chains was probably not going to make it this year. Pity it was SC, I like the guys who work in the Newcastle branch loads. (tinfoil hat stuff about how 2008=1927 deleted for brevity)
Anyway, there's probably not much to talk about here, but I thought it was worth mentioning as it's a pretty big deal, that's probably going to have a load of fall-out over the coming months, EG, SC/Turnkey were major advertisers in a lot of UK musician magazines.
― Pashmina, Thursday, 1 May 2008 10:56 (seventeen years ago)
Sad to hear about Sound Control. As you say, they were heavy advertisers in all the mags in the UK - I'll miss 'em if they go.
On a personal note, I live in Newport which isn't the biggest city or anything, but used to have three different and thriving music shops - Speed Music, Gamlins and GM Music. In the last year Gamlins closed its store and moved its main base to Cardiff, then Speed Music closed its Cardiff AND Newport stores, keeping the Swansea store open and maintaining a presence on the net, leaving GM Music as the only music store in Newport - unless you count Cash Exchanger. It's very sad that all these stores are going down, I think it's more to do with the net taking business than anything, but competition never hurt anyone. I loved the guys in all these stores, having purchased from them for many years now, and sometimes you can't beat personal service like a recommendation for a pedal from someone you trust in a shop. After all, all the mp3s and demos on a website can't compete with holding a pedal and turning the controls on it to see what it does, or seeing how a guitar's neck feels in your hand. These things are important.
― Rob M v2, Thursday, 1 May 2008 13:50 (seventeen years ago)
Gamlins in Cardiff is fantastic! I so, so nearly bought a 1968 Mustang the last time I was in there - should've pulled the trigger. Cranes is surprisingly good too.
Soundcontrol in Charing Cross Road had fairly crap stock, but had it's place in that it they would match prices with the likes of Pete Cook and Andertons for standard items, rather than trying to hold to Denmark Street prices.
― Dr.C, Friday, 2 May 2008 15:00 (seventeen years ago)