Ignorance is Bliss?

No picture today except possibly a word picture of a conversation that I was a part of this afternoon.

First, a little background:
Over the last year we have slowly developed our little retail space. A "music store" I guess. We've sold pro music gear for years but didn't have a store front where people could actually come in and see the product before they bought it. We stock speakers, amplifiers, microphones and accessories, cables and so much more. Everything we bring in, we pay for. We don't have a line of credit or a rich investor at our disposal; we just bring stuff in, pay for it and hope that someone comes in and buys it.

Slowly but surely our retail sales are picking up. Just this week, we sold a mixer, a feedback eliminator, two rack mountable CD players and a hardware bag. Doesn't seem like much but it builds hope that we are growing and might eventually be able to make an easier living than working our behinds off setting up stages all summer.

But this is where that conversation comes in that I mentioned earlier. I'm always trying to cultivate people connections. I talk to people that we work with on events, get in touch with them on Facebook and then let social networking do the rest. I've made many new friends this way as well as kept in closer touch with old friends. Anyway.... At some point in the past year, I made "friends" with someone on Facebook who has since become a "customer". Mostly that means he has come into the store a few times and we recognize each other at events and say hello.

He came into the store today to buy a custom cable that Kurt built for him and we had a very interesting conversation (finally getting to my point!)

Turns out he owned a popular mom-and-pop music store in downtown Boise that recently went out of business. There have been several stores that have followed suit during this bad economy but it was interesting hearing the history of pro retail music stores from someone who lived it.

He opened his store in the early 80's. Before the Internet. Before on-line shopping. Before free freight with no sales tax. Before big box stores. Back when a healthy profit margin was actually attainable. When online sales became all the rage, he knew it would not bode well for the local economy. He began to hear people complain about paying sales tax. When you order from out of state, no sales tax. He made a great point that eventually not putting that sales tax back into the local economy will come back around and cost more in the long run. I believe that has been a factor in what we are experiencing today. The other problem online sales caused him was that online retailers could buy very large quantities of an item, for example guitar strings, and then sell them for just slightly higher than the local stores could buy them for.

The online competition along with a poor economy finally forced him to close his doors. You could tell he enjoyed what he did and that he had poured time, energy and money into his business for over 25 years. And now he has nothing to show for it.

He wasn't telling us these things to discourage us and I believe he's very hopeful that we will succeed but it really shed light on many of the road blocks we face as we forge ahead with pro audio sales. If people would understand the importance of shopping local, myself included, maybe we would be more willing to pay a bit more so that we can all benefit in the long run.

It was a good conversation even if it was a bit sobering...