http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003832264
' Hoping to cater to everyone from the garage guitarist to a recording musician, Best Buy Co. Inc. is announcing a massive new initiative that sets aside store space for an array of musical instruments and gear in dozens of sites nationwide.
The nation's largest consumer electronics retailer will announce Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 85 of the music centers inside its stores by the end of the year and could add even more locations in the future, executives told The Associated Press.
Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include roughly 1,000 different products with well-known brand names such as Fender, Gibson, Drum Workshop and Roland. '
[video of the layout]
[current locations]
http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/2006/03/best-buy-guitars-no-threat-to-guitar.html
' I was intrigued to hear Guitar Center management mention a Best Buy experiment in musical instruments on their earnings call recently. (March 2006)
Other than the fact that the Best Buy store was in Riverside California, Guitar Center claimed to know little about how it was going or what it might mean except that it would no doubt "expand the category" by encouraging many more consumers to pursue their inner Joey Ramone, as it were.
("Expand the category" is what every retailer in existence has said whenever a bigger, better-run player has moved into their category. I wasn't there at the time, but I imagine that when smallpox-infested whites began settling the Eastern Seaboard, the more optimistic Native Americans were telling their friends the pasty-skinned intruders would "expand the category." ) '
' Hoping to cater to everyone from the garage guitarist to a recording musician, Best Buy Co. Inc. is announcing a massive new initiative that sets aside store space for an array of musical instruments and gear in dozens of sites nationwide.
The nation's largest consumer electronics retailer will announce Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 85 of the music centers inside its stores by the end of the year and could add even more locations in the future, executives told The Associated Press.
Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include roughly 1,000 different products with well-known brand names such as Fender, Gibson, Drum Workshop and Roland. '
[video of the layout]
[current locations]
http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/2006/03/best-buy-guitars-no-threat-to-guitar.html
' I was intrigued to hear Guitar Center management mention a Best Buy experiment in musical instruments on their earnings call recently. (March 2006)
Other than the fact that the Best Buy store was in Riverside California, Guitar Center claimed to know little about how it was going or what it might mean except that it would no doubt "expand the category" by encouraging many more consumers to pursue their inner Joey Ramone, as it were.
("Expand the category" is what every retailer in existence has said whenever a bigger, better-run player has moved into their category. I wasn't there at the time, but I imagine that when smallpox-infested whites began settling the Eastern Seaboard, the more optimistic Native Americans were telling their friends the pasty-skinned intruders would "expand the category." ) '
