Comments on: Would you work at Guitar Center?

By: Atomic Shadow

Atomic Shadow — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 21:46:39 +0000

I worked at GC about 11 years ago. I hated it. They pushed everyone to make those sales goals and kept raising the goals when you made them. GC is the Evil Empire in MI retail. I am certain that you will find some good people here and there, but they mainly like to take advantage of the youth who think that $30,000 a year is a lot of money (see above).

$50,000 isn’t a lot of money these days. Certainly not worth selling your soul.

They also own Musician’s friend. I won’t buy from either now.

By: JerLew

JerLew — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 10:18:15 +0000

I would not be surprised to see Guitar Center out of business within 5 years. The inetory of good guitars there is now almost a joke, and the local Gibson dealer here has better prices on Gibsons than GC does. And he includes the setup with the price. Also GC now charges $25.00 for a string change, No kidding! You used to be abl to get some good deals, but not any more.

By: JerLew

JerLew — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 10:11:50 +0000

I’ve never worked at GC, but I do stop in and shop there mostly for strings and cabes, etc. I’ve bought quite a few used guitars from the store where I live. I’ve never really met anyone there I could honestly calla salesman. I worked in sales and sales management for over 10 years and was a trainer for a large insurance company. The staff is nice, patient and polite, and helpful but actual sales ability is not there in anyone I have bought from. I think that a person who knew how to actually sell could do ok there, but let’ be honest, when I sold Property and Casualty insurance a bad week was making $1,200 a week. I you want to work in any sales position then go out and get yourself a bookby Zig Ziger or look up the term “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.” Sales is really all about fulfilling need and making people feel good about what they buy. Last guitar I bought at GC a newer salesman who I had never seen before said “Oh, chicks love those guitars.” It may have sounded corny, but the truth was if I were 20 and not 50, I would have bought the guitar just after hearing that. GC sales people hit thier emotions, and if the say no, ask ONE question. “What is it about this guitar that you don’t like?” Have them tell you what they are opposed to listen and use thier answer to sell them what they want. Do you realize how many people walk into a car dealer with a limit of 20K and buy something for 25K? Happens all the time. EMOTIONS play a strong part in when we buy!

By: Theghost

Theghost — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 06:51:07 +0000

Mitt Romney is a hack.

By: kats meOWww

kats meOWww — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:17:51 +0000

GC has always been a misogynistic chauvinistic place to work, regardless of who owns it. There management is outdated, lazy and couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag for the most part. Just stick some pretty dimwit door greeter up front so all the moronic sales people can hangout and chat with her all day – in the guise of getting gum balls and/or smoking. Their logo has a coke spoon for crissake! And really?!?!?! , . . ” . . . . in order to get good sales you have to be able to give good ‘phone’ . . ” . . ?!?!? really?!?!?

Everyone is high or getting high in their cars. How serious can you take the friggin place anymore? And all the “don’t I sound cool” slang, bro, dude, etc . . . . what ever. The pay sucks so I guess you get what you pay for. Drunks. Druggies and losers.

By: douglas

douglas — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:00:13 +0000

BN;

Try to spread the word about what you described above amongst anybody you know who is inclined to vote for republicans. What happened at GC , with BAIN, is exactly what republicans think is fantastic.

Best wishes to you.

Douglas

By: BN

BN — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 04:27:16 +0000

Since my last post i have left Guitar Center. Guitar CEnter after the Bain buy out is completly different than it was before. Now, they force you to sell extended warranties on items with lifetime warranties and threaten you with termination if dont comply with deceiving people, they send out coupons that come directly out of the salesmans commisions, pay salespeople substantially less than before, and on the first day of the Bain buyout FIRED 84 homeoffice workers that had been there for multiple years. I had many profitable good years with GC, but the entire culture of the company has changed into something I disagree with and wanted no part of. I still have friends that work there and still go in there sometimes. But i will never make a large purchase there and try to stear people clear! Just my 2 cents

By: douglas

douglas — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 03:37:20 +0000

commentary: I’m not really a musician (but I would love to learn to play synth’s-hardware version). I’ve been in the Edina MN GC a few times. There is also a new one in Maple Grove Minnesota, but I have not visited it yet, probably will soon. I’m not particularly interested in working in a sales job, of any kind -I think I’d be a HORRIBLE sales guy. I’m too honest. One question from above-what is the “GAIN” program that was mentioned? Some kind of super salesperson competition program? Or some kind of “rewards” program? Or discount buying for employees?
My main comment though; I was surprised to learn that Bain Capital bought GC. Bain Capital is the place where Mitt Romney was a partner. Mitt Romney has a personal fortune of $250 million. Bain Capital is what is currently called a “private equity” operation, but that is just a different name for what used to be called (back in the 1980′s) a “Leveraged Buyout” operation. LBO got such a bad rep that they had to start calling it something different. What an LBO place does is to buy a company or corporation, and they use the “assets”, or “worth” of a company to “leverage” (hence the name) the entire company. In simpler terms, what they do, is they “buy” a company, but to finance the “purchase” they BORROW as much money as they possibly can against the value of the company. Why would they do this? Simple. There is a POTENTIAL to make a MASSIVE AMOUNT OF MONEY on the deal. There are a lot of very complex economic and finance aspects I could describe, which would just bore everybody. But the essence of the whole dynamic is, that they rarely put very much of their OWN money in to the deal. It is mostly a paper exercise of determining what a company is “worth”, say 100 million dollars. That’s just an example number, I have no idea how much the whole Guitar Center company was worth before they were sold. Then, the LBO company goes to a huge bank or other finance company-J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, etc, and they BORROW $95 million, and they put up $5 million of their own money. That’s another part of where the word “leverage” comes from. They are “controlling” a $100 million company but they are only putting up 5 mil of their own money to do so. So that is “Leverage”. Then, and THIS IS WHERE IT GETS REALLY INTERESTING, is that once an LBO has control (ownership) of a company, they start dissecting every single number within the company and they try to figure out every single thing they can do to cut costs and expenses, to improve the monthly cash flow. They also examine a company to see if they can “break it into pieces” and sell off some of the parts, for a profit. You can see descriptions of this in the first Wall Street movie (Gordon Gecko), and also in the movie Pretty Woman (Richard Gere). So, the underlying dynamic is that an LBO company ALWAYS enters a transaction with the ultimate goal of SELLING IT later, for more than they paid. Very often, the “changes” they start making are changes that CAN NOT LAST for more than a few years, because the changes usually result in the business “going down hill”, because money is not being INVESTED in the company any more. You can make any company look better if you stop doing things like Marketing, taking care of the physical store building, firing a bunch of employees, etc. There is no shortage of things you can do on a temporary basis to make the books look better, but most of those can not go on forever. So the strategy for an LBO company is to make things look good enough that they can find some sucker to buy the company a few years after they buy it. But AFTER they sell it, sometimes one or two or three years later, only THEN does the buyer realize they have bought something that only LOOKED good, because there was no re-investment. Then THEY have to start doing the things that weren’t done, like fixing up the buildings, or adding inventory, or doing real Marketing, or improving pay to get higher quality more professional salespeople, etc. Think of it this way: You can buy a good condition used car, like a car that has been leased for three years. You can drive the car without ever changing the oil or the spark plugs or the tires. Never get it aligned, don’t wax it, etc. So you can save all those costs for a couple years, and you can have a worksheet that shows how you’ve been able to drive the car for two years without spending anything and it looks like a very economical car, right? But you can only do that for so long, because eventually the implication of not changing the oil becomes clear (the engine wears out), etc etc. THAT is what LBO companies do. Then they sell the car and let the sucker who buys it worry about the fact the oil hasn’t been changed for three years.
So quite often, in fact almost always, one of the things they do very early is they start eliminating employees (firings, sometimes mass firings). Another thing they do is to look at every single penny that is spent, to see what they can “eliminate”. And sometimes this comes down to absurd things. At one of the companies I worked at that was taken over, they removed the change machine from the lunchroom. What can they save by that, maybe $10 a month? The other thing, and one of the things they do that is really destructive, which is why they are really a barnacle on society, is that they don’t really care about GROWING the company, and they rarely intend to invest very much into it. This is really despicable. LBO company’s often, ALMOST ALWAYS look for companies that are going through “weak” periods, in terms of financial results. That is why they can buy them for very low prices. You’ll almost never see an LBO operator trying to buy a real healthy company. They look for the very weakest. Then they put in their own management, who they think are smarter (or at least more ruthless and less moral) than the current management. So, as I said, I don’t really know anything about the history of the Guitar Center company, who started them, how long they have been in business, what their financial results were like before Bain swallowed them, or anything else about them. All I really know is that when I went to visit our local store a few years ago is that they had a LOT of guitars (and drums and lots of other stuff). I was not the least bit impressed by any of the employees. So, there are a lot of posters above who who have commented on what it is like to work there. But it would not surprise me at all to find that working there after Bain got them is probably a lot worse than working there before that happened. For any of you who are old enough to have been adults during the 1980′s (probably very few of you, Guitar Center people and musician types in general probably tend to be younger, in their 20′s and 30′s), but if you were adults in the 80′s you might remember hearing about the scandals on Wall Street about people like Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts, Dennis Levine, and many many others. These guys were all Leveraged Buyout guys. They pretty much invented this whole genre of financial shenanigans. MANY of those guys ended up in prison. The morality (or more accurately the LACK of morality) that leads people into that kind of life also tends to mean they don’t mind doing very illegal things, like Insider Trading, which is GROSSLY illegal and which is what most of them actually went to prison for.
Another thing about the
Leveraging” of the business they buy, is that the company is then LOADED TO THE GILLS WITH DEBT, which has to be paid every month, from the operations of the company. The LBO people might be willing to pay the debt every month for a short time, but they almost always PLAN that they will cut expenses so deep that they will have enough money from operations (sales) to be able to pay the debt. BUT, a lot of times they don’t which is why you hear of a lot of these companies going bankrupt. But it is THE COMPANY that goes bankrupt, NOT the LBO people who took them over. THEY loose very little, it anything, when their victim company goes bankrupt. They just do the same thing with another company. And THAT, ladies and Gentlemen, is how Mitt Romney ended up with 250 million dollars. What a swell guy.
So, overall, I’m sorry to hear that working at GC is such a drag, but it doesn’t surprise me. Here in the Minneapolis MN area we are fortunate enough to have a LOT of great musical instrument shops, many of which are independent and owned by people who actually care about music and instruments. We also have a very lively music scene in every way, more bands per square foot than probably anyplace but New York and Nashville. We have recording studios, labels, recording engineering schools, lots of independent record/cd stores,and lots of other places where people who love music can work. We even have a few people who build guitars. If anybody reading this is in the Twin Cities MN area (Minneapolis-St. Paul), or you anticipate moving here, I would strongly encourage doing a LOT of homework, exploring everything this town has to offer to those who are really into music. There are a huge number of opportunities (although I suppose there are a lot of difficulties breaking into some of them), but there is no shortage of jobs that can be found working in and around music. Even being a waiter/waitress in a cool night club can lead to meeting other good music people, and getting leads, ideas, etc. This is a good place to live (if you don’t mind cold winters).
Best of Luck to everybody. If you wish to comment, or if you are on the “inside” and would like to provide me with any more details, feel free to email me at “macintoshsavant@gmail.com”.
Douglas in Minneapolis March 1 – 2012

By: Plumbers Edinburgh

Plumbers Edinburgh — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:03:40 +0000

As theghost mentions above, the importance of management standing behind the employee is essential in creating a positive environment within which both the company and the employee stand to benefit.

By: Oliver Chesler

Oliver Chesler — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:37:50 +0000

NIce positive perspective. Thanks for sharing.