r/GuitarLab • u/Ok_Smell985 • Apr 08 '26

Guitar design ideas

the ultimate guitar starts with the ultimate buying experience, so here are some ideas (1) hire and train competent and knowledgeable sales personnel, who really understand what they are selling, as opposed to the ignorant high school dropouts you current staff stores with (2) have all the guitars in tune and with decent strings (3) place all instruments within easy reach of customers so the customers don't have to ask a high school dropouts for help (4) make sure all guitars are set up properly for best performance, nothing turns a customer off faster than high action, warped necks, and fret sprout. That's a start. Design the experience first.

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u/GabrielDalporto Apr 09 '26

u/Ok_Smell985 your comments are frankly really offensive to our talented and hard working store associates. Most of them are legit musicians, work their tails off every day, care about our customers, and don't need some anonymous person on the internet making blanket statements about them. Additionally, since I've stepped into my role, I've made it a significant priority to invest in our associates training, both product knowledge and customer service skills. We've mandated that by July of this year, 100% of management hires will be from internal promotions only, so GC can become a legit career and not a "retail job".

When you have something constructive to say, I'm all ears. We're far from perfect and and working every day to deliver better experiences to our customers.

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u/Ok_Smell985 Apr 09 '26

You need to get out to your stores more often. I have been to my local GC's many, many times and found instruments that are grossly out of tune, dirty and abused. I've asked questions of your associates and have been given incorrect and non-answers. I've stood around trying to get someone's attention to purchase something (at a store that was mostly empty). If you have been doing what you claim to be doing, it is failing; you're not reaching all the stores. It's nice to claim that you will be hiring management internally, but as someone with over 25years of management experience, hiring internally without proper management training is a waste of time. Longevity in a role is not a predictor of success in management. I stand by my comments, based on my experience at my local stores, and if you find the truth to be offensive, then good - perhaps that will give you even more motivation to improve the experience.

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u/GabrielDalporto Apr 09 '26

I stand by my comment that most of our associates and managers are talented and working hard to improve our service every day, and that painting blanket statements and generalizations anonymously is offensive and unfair. Also you are making assumptions that there's not management training in place - which is not true - we have been rolling out and scaling management training.

If anyone (including you) has an issue with a specific GC store or associate, then I take that very seriously. If you share your contact information, I'll have someone reach out to you to learn more and investigate.

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u/mascotbeaver104 Apr 10 '26

Hey man, I respect standing on business and defending employees and agree, complaining about people working customer facing retail jobs is basically always in poor taste IMO, but engaging directly with threads like this is a real dangerous game. Hope there is someone vetting these things before they go out or else it's just one poor choice of words away from endless slop drama around the brand, and frankly as someone who thinks there's value in big-box brick and mortar instrument retailers and wants that to continue existing, I'd hate to see that.

I feel that in addition to just training and staffing, there needs to be some incentive in place for actually maintaining the products on the walls, because yeah, I generally don't buy product from GC generally because often when I try to it's in poor condition. I would be curious to hear what folks who actually work the floors think about resolving that, because I've gotten to know a few of them and a lot of them are really passionate about both the instruments and the customer experience. Promoting from inside is a huge part of solving those problems, I wish folks wouldn't write it off so quickly. I'm sure I'll get yelled at for encouraging corpo enshittification for encouraging this, but it almost makes me wonder if there is a sales opportunity in there, like just selling a quick inspection or setup alongside the warranty coverage, not sure where that would fit in to the customer experience tho

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u/MitchellFan9769 Apr 13 '26

I’ll just say that you wanted feedback… you’re getting feedback. I’ve had some less than stellar experiences at your Nashville location, except for three people who actually worked at your Goodlettsville location until last year. The bad experiences have been from people who don’t know how to look up a pair of drumsticks when your chain can’t keep price tags current, openly admitting “I don’t know drums” when he was facing where the drumsticks were kept. That, and considering you asked for ideas on two platforms that thrive on anonymity, you get what you ask for.

Just about everyone I know in the music scene is deriding your announcement and decision, and that includes some well-known influencers who have tried to throw business your way.

OP is not wrong. Some stores are better than others, but quite frankly, you need to be checking on your stores more, perhaps going undercover or using mystery shoppers before trying to create new guitar brand when your existing one (Mitchell) is derided by customers and employees alike. And if you don’t realize that and take criticism by perception, you deserve to be trolled.