"The company has entered insolvency and appointed insolvency practitioners. Certain assets, including some stock, branding, and websites, have been sold to Gear4music Limited. The original company, however, still legally exists and remains responsible for its liabilities, but may not have funds to meet them.
Gear4music has purchased certain stock, together with certain intangible assets including websites and trademarks from the Administrators of PMT.
For clarity, Gear4music is not acquiring any part of PMT’s trading business, nor any other assets or liabilities, and has no current plans to use the PMT trading name."
3 of my guitars are from PMT. Their shop in Leeds was the best place for many miles around to see a good selection of guitars. It’s a real shame and I feel bad for the employees.
I watched KDH’s video on YouTube about it. If he’s correct then it’s the terrible margins on guitars that have been a big factor, especially when you consider they had 11 physical stores to pay for. If you match online prices then you don’t make much money as you have physical stores to run, and if you don’t match online then people shop online, which is a lose-lose situation
We are running out of places to try gear. I feel lucky to have GuitarGuitar just down the road and Andertons about 30mins drive away. I hope we collectively put enough money the way of physical stores to keep them going.
I get the impression it’s maybe not so much about the amount of money as what we are buying. If we buy a guitar from them but subsequently buy all of our strings from Amazon because the delivery is cheap and convenient then we’re not helping. It’s not that PMT weren’t selling a lot of stuff, mainly there was little to no margin on a lot of it. And I’m guilty on that front for sure
There have been a couple significant closures of local music shops in my area. I’m not sure how much of a factor online competition was for those. I know that publicly, the reason given was mostly that the owners wanted to retire. Both were small shops.
I really feel like most retail shops need to start getting creative to emphasize how they are or can be different from the online shops. This has been happening in some retail segments, and less so for others. Music shops could probably do better in this regard.
@mattswain that’s interesting. I always try to buy my consumables from both the above mentioned stores. Granted I wouldn’t drive to Andertons for a set of strings. I will go to GG though for string, picks etc.
There is no inconvenience factor for me with GG (I appreciate this isn’t the case for everyone). It’s an opportunity to window shop the guitars and basses, or occassionally try a bit of kit. Also to chat to the staff - in the main they are local musos. A few of them go to the same Jam night as I do - one of them has covered for us when our guitar player had to drop out. I have picked up depping opportunities from the jam night. Generally I think dropping into the shop is part of being in the local muso community (so maybe the other side of the same coin as @Mustela ‘s point)
sure does. finding ways to build a community of people who will regularly return to your business is a recipe for success.
for a music shop? finding some way to be heavily involved in sponsoring jam nights is a great one. especially if you have space in your shop where you can host it.
I know the jam groups I’m involved with locally sometimes struggle to find space. especially space where folks can play and sing. one ukulele group I jam with meets at a coffee shop. the coffee shop is mostly cool with it, but they can get grumpy if the music is loud enough that they have a difficult time hearing customers place their orders. and that tends to happen when lots of people show up to jam.
the guitar group I play with does, too…they wind up paying to rent out a church’s activity space. which means that we have annual dues. they use a library’s activity space for their monthly blues jam, but that creates another set of challenges. parking being one big one. when they started the blues jam, they bounced around to a lot of different spaces before they found one with the fewest challenges.
I’m unhappy when any brick and mortar store goes out.
This is just more bad news of the way society is going now a days imho.
Besides, it’s way more fun to go play/feel some new guitars, or turn some knobs and play some new amps than just looking at them on the www. The real thing is way better than a pic and some propaganda words trying to get you to buy something ya don’t want.
Support your local retailers. It’s good for ‘your’ community!
Sad news, but a worldwide trend unfortunately in shopfront retail.
Our local guitar shop, an iconic and central part of our towns musical scene for over 30 years, has just this last month closed down its retail stock business this year completely.
Rob, the owner, has downsized and reconfigured his business to offer his luthier services only; PLEKing, refrets, repairs etc.
Ironically, its his online presence and reputation that has increasing grown these luthier services; and its the same online environment that would have increasing shrunk his guitar sales and diminished his sale margins.
Our regional area, with around 100,000 population, now has zero guitar retail stores.
yeah, there’s about 250k in my county and it’s a strange scene since those 2 local shops closed.
there’s an acoustic-specific independent shop that’s open in one of the outlying towns. there’s a crazy high end shop that does a mix of used museum grade guitars and new tip top end stuff (many luthier-made). There’s a guy who specializes in rehabbing and reselling old cheap guitars like Kays and stuff (which are oddly popular and command strangely high prices). There’s a shop that sells mostly pedals and whatnot but carries a few nice used electrics.
then there’s guitar center.
and there’s a seemingly endless number of luthiers. I’m aware of more luthiers where you can blow a chunk of your retirement savings than shops that’ll carry a sub-$1,000 guitar.
Hehe, for a moment I thought Justin’s practical music theory course was being put on ice
Did it stand for Professional Music Technology or Play Music Today?
I bought a Katana bass amp from them last Christmas, but that was through their online service, so really part of the problem…
There’ll always be the demand for physical stores (for most commodities), it’s just a question of density and content. There’s never been as easy access to musical instruments and accessories as we have today, in the UK anyway.
Good luck to the staff that have lost their jobs
Being in a big city doesn’t change the sorry picture @sclay Shane. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, a metro area of nearly 3 million people. There now are exactly 2 guitar shops here - both Guitar Centers, and 1 shop selling vintage guitars and basses that is only open by appointment. The Guitar Centers keep every instrument priced over about $500 on locked racks, and you have to give your drivers license to a store clerk (if you can find one) to have them unlock one guitar at a time to try. I buy my guitars from Sweetwater and my strings from D’Addario direct because I would rather not help Jeff Bezos get richer.
Thanks for posting that. Very informative video, especially regarding the slim margins.
It’s worrying how the industry is becoming more of monopoly.
We’ve bought quite a bit of equipment big and small from PMT Oxford in the past few years, buying picks and strings in person as we thought it important to be a regular face in the store, as well as bigger items, an e-kit and some pa stuff.
One other thought I’ve had about PMT and the Leeds store is that while the store was in the city centre, it was off to one side in a part of the city that gets no passing people at all. Basically if you went there, you were going there deliberately. I suspect the average person in Leeds on a given day wouldn’t have been able to tell you that there was a large music store within a mile of where they were.
This is double edged. On one hand I’m sure the rent/bills were lower just out of the main shopping area but as I say there was no chance of any impulse purchases. It might be that the maths wouldn’t work out, the increased exposure might not equal enough extra sales to cover (presumably) higher property prices. That said even right in the city centre there’s still empty buildings so it’s not like property there is under massive demand
I don’t know if the Leeds store is typical of their locations. As I say this is just an observation rather than any great wisdom
I don’t think the industry is becoming a monopoly, I think he is wrong in that aspect. When the margins are that thin, it is inevitable that some businesses will start failing. The margins will increase and you will see new players enter the market. So long there are no barriers to entry, especially for online business, there will be no monopoly. However, small/medium physical shops might not be able to compete, which is similar to other retail industries. Further more, no monopoly could be established when there is the whole Europe competing. I ordered my Yamaha amp from Poland (big sale) and got it in 4 days, I got my tuner from Andertons in 5 days. As a consumer, I see a little difference between the two.
Dagan has put a video on his YouTube channel today. To set expectations, it’s about 35 minutes long and there’s no big revelations about PMT. He talks mostly about how he started with the videos around 10 years ago and shares some memories of cool things over the years. If anyone is interested…
Bezos get richer.