Music stores like Guitar Center and Sam Ash are struggling financially, but one Syracuse guitar store has found a way to thrive.
Walking into Ish Guitars in downtown Syracuse, you wouldn’t know the music store industry is treading water. Customers pace around the showroom, admiring the walls covered with instruments from floor to ceiling. Potential buyers try out equipment, drowning out discussions of sales. But music stores have lost nearly $900 million over the last ten years, according to market researcher IBISWorld, accounting for 30 percent of the industry’s earnings. Ish Guitars owner Jesse Wilson discovered how to buck this business trend ten years ago. After selling his car at 16 years old to buy the store’s first inventory, he ordered a bass from a company called Spector.
“Since they’re hand-made by about five guys,” Wilson said, “they start around $3,500. So I waited for them to build the bass; it took about ten months. I got it, and put it for sale, and it sold, like, instantly. Like the next day. So I did another build, and same thing. I got the bass ten months later, and it sold really quick. So that’s when I went ‘Hm, there might be something to this.'”
Wilson had stumbled upon the luxury guitar industry. Wilson regularly sells guitars for $10,000, $15,000, and even $20,000. The average electric guitar costs around $500, but the average guitar in Wilson’s store is $1,500. He gets those sales by ordering custom-built models from several manufacturers. The store gets to choose unique combinations of color and equipment for their stock, so the instruments they sell are unique to the store. The individuality attracts customers, Wilson said, benefitting both the store and the manufacturer.
“I would poke and prod to get them to try to do things that they’ve never done before,” he said, “and every time we would do that, they would sell very well. And that’s what really started to take the business off and really kinda make us more well known, was those builds.”
Retailers aren’t the only part of the instrument business courting high-end buyers. One of the companies Wilson deals with is PRS Guitars, the country’s third-largest guitar manufacturer. Their custom-built models (which they call Private Stock) bring in more money, according to northeast sales rep Peter Schuelzky.
“I think that a Private Stock would probably be the most profitable guitar that we sell,” he said. “Our import least-expensive guitars would be the least profitable guitars that we sell.”
Wilson’s store couldn’t exist without its brick-and-mortar location. Most manufacturers won’t give a store more expensive models to sell unless they have physical space, he said. He opened his store in Armory Square five years ago; it’s gone from a one-man operation to a six-person organization, and they sell around 50 guitars every month. In fact, judges from the National Association of Music Merchants, the trade association for music products, named it 2018’s “Best Emerging Dealer” for being the country’s fastest-growing dealer under five years old. Wilson considered it vindication.
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Ish Guitars owner Jesse Wilson polishes a Jackson Roswell Rhoads, an extremely rare UFO-themed guitar. Only about 100 were made in the mid 1990’s, Wilson said; a mint-condition example can command up to $9,000.
© 2019 Sam Gelfand -
Customers browse the Ish Guitars storefront in downtown Syracuse. Although the store’s success has come from selling high-end products, owner Jesse Wilson said, he is now looking to stock slightly less expensive instruments to grow his consumer base.
© 2019 Sam Gelfand
“That was, honestly, really unexpected,” he said. “It was very, very cool to be recognized for the 80-hour work weeks that I’ve been putting in, and now that we’ve hired several people, that all of our team puts in. It was really awesome to get that award, and we’ve gotten a lot of attention from that.”
So who is buying these extremely expensive guitars? Famous musicians actually make up a very small portion of Wilson’s target audience. It is true that legendary guitarists like Joe Bonamassa and Zakk Wylde have come by the store, but Wilson said their regular clientele is a little less exciting.
“The public thinks that we’re either selling them to rock stars or to doctors and lawyers,” he said. “That’s partially true. But believe it or not, we actually sell a lot of instruments to people that are just real musicians. They might be a schoolteacher, or they might be a call center manager or something. They’re not poor, they make okay money. But they love guitar; that’s their passion.”
It’s the same case with PRS buyers, according to Schuelzky. He said he comes across many blue-collar buyers that own as many as ten high-end guitars. It’s about the emotional connection formed between musicians and their instruments.
“It’s someone who’s fairly successful,” he said when asked about the average Private Stock buyer. “Or it might be someone who’s saved every penny and has dreamed about it for the longest time until they could finally afford one. You could say, well, there’s a lot of doctors and lawyers who buy these, and yeah, there are, but there are people that work harder and save longer and eventually have enough money to buy one.”
PRS Guitars has increased their sales by $18 million over the last three years, Schuelzky said, in part due to offering more expensive models. Wilson hopes to open a second location in the next few years; he said he’s very fortunate to do what he loves.
“I love interacting with people, and I love finding people the right instrument, and learning about them, and making friends with them,” he said. “Musicians are just so unique. I think musicians as a people are artists, and they’re kinda weirdos, and I’m a total weirdo, and I love that.”
