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Comment by totalZero | Hacker News Reader

It seems like COVID-19 has been a killing blow for many companies.

One thing I would do if I were running a brick-and-mortar retailer is to figure out how to manage same-day deliveries, using the retail locations as distributors.

Buy a used UPS/FedEx truck for every retail location, and send a guy out in the morning to make onsite deliveries.

People can come back to the store for returns, and they can order large items that would otherwise be undeliverable or heavily delayed from the likes of Amazon.

The idea of blended warehouse/retail locations could make the logistics simpler and speed up delivery, even if you use a shipping carrier to do the delivery and/or serve areas that are not within ~100mi of a retail store.

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> It seems like COVID-19 has been a killing blow for many companies.

Yes, but it is worth pointing out that COVID is killing already-sick businesses. Guitar Center was doomed from the moment that Bain Capital bought it in the early-2000s and started raiding it.

COVID will be listed as the immediate cause-of-death for many, many businesses, but what made them susceptible to a shock is the private equity vampire.

> Yes, but it is worth pointing out that COVID is killing already-sick businesses.

100% agreed. I should have written that COVID-19 has been a killing blow for many already-sick companies.

Still, if you're running a distressed company, your attitude must be, "we are not dead until we're dead." Channel your inner Dylan Thomas and rage against the dying of the light.

I have a mid-60s relative who teaches music privately, via Zoom. Her business is more active now than it was when she was teaching in person, due to fewer costs for transportation and less downtime between lessons. I'm not sure how sustainable that surge in activity will prove to be, but she has at times asked me to help her buy musical instruments online for new students. It's anecdotal evidence that suggests music education isn't going away just because brick-and-mortar retail is under pressure.

School closures aside: if someone is going to sell guitars and drum kits, why can't it be Guitar Center?

Amazon has put retailers in the position where they have to compete on price, information, ease of returns, and shipping speed. A dedicated retailer (music store vs general store) should be better at competing on price and information. A local store should be better at competing on ease of returns and shipping speed.

> if someone is going to sell guitars and drum kits, why can't it be Guitar Center?

why would it be guitar center? I don't see anything that would give them a competitive advantage. I only ever go there to try guitars. if I really like one, I'm probably just going to go home and order a pristine example online. there's no way I'm gonna drop $800+ on a guitar that's been sitting in the open air and manhandled by customers for an unknown length of time. it's not a local business, so I don't even feel bad about it.

as I see it, a brick-and-mortar retailer has three possible functions: an inventory, a showroom, and a service center. it's hard even for a large physical store to beat an online retailer on inventory. guitar center in particular does not seem to be trusted as a service center. musicians I know would only take their guitars there for repairs/setups if there was literally no other option. this basically makes it just a showroom. it's hard to make money showing other people's products that can be bought cheaper elsewhere.

it seems to me that the only way forward for third party brick-and-mortars is to somehow monetize the showroom role. maybe they could get paid directly by the manufacturer to show their products or have some sort of referral system. integrate it with a service center and let the customers play with the display guitars while you fix theirs.

If Guitar Center hadn't tarnished their service reputation those retail stores would at least have maintained that stream of revenue. Hobbies of all kinds seem to be booming with an influx of beginners who actually need these services.

Small counterpoint: many people who buy instruments want to buy the actual instrument they try out. Quality in guitars (and other instruments) is wide enough that one might play well, while another of the same model plays like a worse, cheaper instrument. Buying a guitar untested/online (even the same model you tried in store) has a large amount of risk that decreases with the instrument price, but not always and not as quickly as you might expect.

I placed an curbside order at Guitar Center for some in stock items. When they told me it was 3 days before I could pick it up, I canceled and ordered on Amazon. Talk about a fail.

Curious to note it has the same effect in humans as it does business.

Yes! I was having trouble getting an analogy to fit into my comment, but it's analogous to HIV in humans or bark beetles killing off forests.

I don’t want to stand up for PE too much but if their whole thing is explicitly targeting weak or underperforming businesses, they’re just another symptom. It’s like saying “people who recently spoke to a doctor are more likely to die” (without mentioning that sick people tend to go to hospitals and talk to doctors).

> It seems like COVID-19 has been a killing blow for many companies.

It's been really good business for guitar stores. I talked to someone at one and this has been the best year in a decade, and this was a small, independent store that also has a web presence. Guitar Center must have been pretty mismanaged leading up to this. It's also been a rough decade for rock music--there just isn't as much guitar music as there used to be.

You can't buy a used UPS truck, they get crushed when they wear out.

FedEx just uses standard Sprinters or box trucks so you could find a used one of those anywhere.

This is exactly the model that Target adopted a few years ago, and well, look at their stock lately. It's worked out extremely well for them.

Vertical integration can be a wonderful thing.

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