Eric Garland has been a harsh critic of the policies and management of Guitar Center, Inc. for some time. He posted this presumptive story about the possibility of the end of the world's largest musical instrument retailer, and shortly thereafter his story and site went down. You can be assured that nothing has happened at Guitar Center that would indicate its death - these are only Eric's opinions and speculations, but they make for a fascinating read. This is the copy from Eric Garland's web site (Eric's site is now back up and running - www.ericgarland.co):
THE END OF GUITAR CENTER
This is an obituary for Guitar Center, a chain of big box musical instrument stores that was captured and infected by private equity during a national trend of greed and reckless expansionism in the late-1990s and early-2000s. The company started as a Los Angeles organ store, became a successful purveyor of guitars after the Beatles arrived in the United States, evolved into a national competitor over a period of decades, and shall finish, with sad poetry, as the symbol of everything dysfunctional about American corporate finance, management, and retail in the modern age. Its demise is really the end of a generation of business managers, illustrating how they lost their moral compass as well as any ability to lead individual companies or national economies into a stable, rational, prosperous future. This story will focus on the final days of this one company, but it is really about our painful transition to an economic system that obeys objective reality and serves people in a durable, holistic manner.
