In conversations with Rolling Stone, instrument sellers Sweetwater, Guitar Center, and Reverb reported a bang-up year for online sales. In 2020, online-only store Sweetwater surpassed $1 billion in revenue for the first time in the company’s 42-year history. It also served over 1.5 million customers in 2020, up from a million in 2019. CEO Chuck Surack says shipping out 15,000 to 20,000 orders a day was normal for most of the year, resulting in about a 40 percent increase from the previous year. And when “Black Friday stuff picked up” the numbers increased to 22,000 to 24,000 orders a day, peaking at about 30,000.
Even Guitar Center — the only one of these three with brick-and-mortar locations — saw an uptick, despite filing for bankruptcy to reorganize debt. While Guitar Center doesn’t share exact revenue figures, its chief marketing and communications officer Jeannine Davis D’Addario says Guitar Center’s online business has “been booming as consumers visit significantly more frequently, with sales up substantially in most categories compared to 2019.” According to Guitar Center, online sales more than doubled in 2020 when compared to 2019. (...)
Guitars gone wild
All three retailers report that the guitar was the most popular product they sold in quarantine. “Based on what we saw in 2020, one thing is certain: The guitar is thriving,” says Reverb’s Mandelbrot. “Orders and searches for guitars have been up significantly — including an increase in searches for popular guitar brands like Fender, Gibson, and Taylor — as well as searches for music gear that you pair with your guitar, like amps, guitar straps, effects pedals, and more.” Both searches for acoustic guitars and acoustic guitar amps were up by 50 percent year over year.
He adds that living-room-friendly acoustic guitars like the Taylor GS-Mini have been undeniably popular, but Reverb “continued to sell some really rare vintage guitars — like a beautiful 1965 Fender Stratocaster that Brian Setzer sold through his Reverb Shop.” Limited edition, boutique pedals also did particularly well. Mandelbrot says the selling price of classic and rare effects pedals from vintage brands like Klon and Mu-Tron went up “significantly” in 2020. And drops of limited-edition pedals on Reverb sold out within minutes and, in one case, in less than a minute.
“We’re now selling a thousand guitars every day,” adds Sweetwater’s Surack. “It blows me away.” In 2019, Sweetwater had days where it would peak at 800 or 825 guitars, but one thousand has since become the daily average.
Fender’s EVP of Sales for the Americas and EMEA Tammy Van Donk describes 2020 as a “roller coaster ride” for the guitar industry. “Demand evaporated in March, rebounded in April and exploded from May on,” she explains. “2020 ended up being the best year in [Fender’s] history with record sales of over $700 million, up 17% from 2019.” Gibson CEO James ‘JC’ Curleigh agrees, making a Dickensian reference to 2020: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” he says. “April, May, and June were a challenging three months. But since then, we’ve been more than making up for it.” Gibson’s fiscal year ends in March, so annual numbers aren’t final yet but Curleigh says Gibson has seen a “steady increase in sales and growth” since August.
About a year ago, roughly a third of guitars were being sold online, according to Curleigh. And at that time, Curleigh says he predicted it would be about five years before it became a 50/50 dynamic between brick-and-mortar and virtual sales. “What we’re seeing now is that is that the five-year prediction of 50/50 is happening now,” he tells Rolling Stone. “Even in a post-Covid world, I think the guitar and music industry will settle into a 50/50 balance of online to in-store… People talk about necessity being the mother of invention. Well, necessity was the mother of access and acceleration for guitars.”
All three retailers report that the guitar was the most popular product they sold in quarantine. “Based on what we saw in 2020, one thing is certain: The guitar is thriving,” says Reverb’s Mandelbrot. “Orders and searches for guitars have been up significantly — including an increase in searches for popular guitar brands like Fender, Gibson, and Taylor — as well as searches for music gear that you pair with your guitar, like amps, guitar straps, effects pedals, and more.” Both searches for acoustic guitars and acoustic guitar amps were up by 50 percent year over year.
He adds that living-room-friendly acoustic guitars like the Taylor GS-Mini have been undeniably popular, but Reverb “continued to sell some really rare vintage guitars — like a beautiful 1965 Fender Stratocaster that Brian Setzer sold through his Reverb Shop.” Limited edition, boutique pedals also did particularly well. Mandelbrot says the selling price of classic and rare effects pedals from vintage brands like Klon and Mu-Tron went up “significantly” in 2020. And drops of limited-edition pedals on Reverb sold out within minutes and, in one case, in less than a minute.
“We’re now selling a thousand guitars every day,” adds Sweetwater’s Surack. “It blows me away.” In 2019, Sweetwater had days where it would peak at 800 or 825 guitars, but one thousand has since become the daily average.
Fender’s EVP of Sales for the Americas and EMEA Tammy Van Donk describes 2020 as a “roller coaster ride” for the guitar industry. “Demand evaporated in March, rebounded in April and exploded from May on,” she explains. “2020 ended up being the best year in [Fender’s] history with record sales of over $700 million, up 17% from 2019.” Gibson CEO James ‘JC’ Curleigh agrees, making a Dickensian reference to 2020: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” he says. “April, May, and June were a challenging three months. But since then, we’ve been more than making up for it.” Gibson’s fiscal year ends in March, so annual numbers aren’t final yet but Curleigh says Gibson has seen a “steady increase in sales and growth” since August.
About a year ago, roughly a third of guitars were being sold online, according to Curleigh. And at that time, Curleigh says he predicted it would be about five years before it became a 50/50 dynamic between brick-and-mortar and virtual sales. “What we’re seeing now is that is that the five-year prediction of 50/50 is happening now,” he tells Rolling Stone. “Even in a post-Covid world, I think the guitar and music industry will settle into a 50/50 balance of online to in-store… People talk about necessity being the mother of invention. Well, necessity was the mother of access and acceleration for guitars.”
In with the new
Retailers also noticed an uptick specifically in new customers and beginner musicians that continued through 2020, meaning that their reach is now wider than it was at the start of last year.
Guitar Center’s D’Addario says that while guitar sales continue to increase, that’s especially clear with “beginner instruments at entry price points, particularly our Guitar Center Exclusive instruments, which have been selling out given their high quality to value.” She adds that the company has seen an increase in purchases among women and younger players. “With 40+-year-old players, we saw increased interest in learning to play an instrument,” D’Addario continues. “Additionally, we continued to see increases in our lessons students in both the 11-to-15 age range and over-40-year-old during shelter-in-place.”
Reverb’s Mandelbrot points out that people buying recording equipment — either for podcasting or DIY music-making — was a big trend, but the increase in beginners was even bigger. Based on conversations he’s had with customers, he’s found that needs for stress relief and breaks from looking at screens all day inspired a lot of newcomers. “We talked to a freelancer in Brooklyn who was having trouble finding work at the onset of the pandemic, so he found a mandolin on Reverb to help him occupy his mind and his time,” says Mandelbrot, who adds that basic instruments can act as a gateway drug to a seemingly endless world of gear. “People who bought music gear on Reverb for the first time in Q2 and Q3 continue to return to Reverb to browse for and buy music gear,” he says. (...)
“A lot of people said, ‘Hey, I’ve always wanted to play guitar,” says Gibson’s Curleigh. “So, guess what? All of a sudden, beginners came into to it. Intermediate players who had sort of gotten to a certain level, picked their guitar up again and started playing. And advanced and expert players were like, ‘Oh, my god, I have a wish list for this guitar. Life’s too short not to have my dream guitar. I’m going to buy it.’ The whole spectrum started taking action around that July, August time… I fundamentally believe, in the last year, more guitarists have been created and engaged than in the previous 10 years combined. If we manage this dynamic as an industry, we’ve got a whole new generation of guitarists for the next 10, 20, 30 years.”
by Samantha Hissong, Rolling Stone | Read more:
Image: Reverb
[ed. Except... where are all the great guitar songs these days?]
