What to look for in an equipment retailer
Posted: 27/01/08
After doing a bit of shopping this past holiday season, I wanted to write a bit about what to look for in a music equipment retailer. I’ve been to many stores over the past few years, spent lots of my hard earned money in them, so of course I tend to gravitate towards certain ones over others. Here are some things that i’ve observed over the years as to what makes a good spot to buy gear.
Are the sales reps friendly?
I’m not going to implicate any stores here, but there are sometimes shops or individual locations of a chain where the staff are purely vile. They give you the cold looks, bad tone to their voice, and it’s simply like pulling teeth trying to get any useful information out of them. And i’ll admit that on the whole service in this side of the retail industry is particularly worse than other industries, but if the entire fleet of sales reps acts like this, do not continue to shop there. On the other hand I have other sales reps who are smart enough to learn my name and shake my hand when i come into the store. I’ll shop at the stores that don’t make me feel like a nerd in the schoolyard.
Are the sales reps knowledgeable?
It’s good to be friendly, but if they don’t know what they’re talking about it’s all for nothing. Alongside knowledge is integrity, which means not trying to sell you one product over the other simply cause it’s priced higher or they have a special relationship with the supplier. You want to be shopping where the staff know their stuff and you feel like you get good results from their recommendations. Everything is subjective in this business though so make sure you do plenty of research in magazines and online if you are unsure about a purchase. It would be very silly to make a purchase based on one sales rep’s advice. On the other hand though i’ve met sales reps in the past who are well respected in the music community as composers or sound engineers, and customers are lucky to get their opinions whether they know it or not.
Are the prices good?
Obviously probably the thing most people care about but shop around a bit using the phone and find out if the price is out of whack. If the price is a bit higher than a competing store in the same city you might have to evaluate some of the other factors in this article to decide if it’s worth the extra money. A good example is the store that specializes in a certain type of equipment, like location sound gear for films. People in that type of industry will want to make sure they support those stores cause they’re there for them in a pinch, and as such will pay the higher prices if they charge them.
Return policy?
Some stores have a very poor return policy on certain items, and sometimes this return policy is simply printed on the receipt and not even mentioned to you at the time of purchase. Cause if they do mention it they might lose the sale right there. So the onus is on you to ask before you purchase. Fourteen days should be a reasonable amount of time to figure out if your purchase was really bad, but if you can get a longer return deadline that’s even better. For example: a store with a good return policy that charges a bit higher than a store that has no return policy could be a better place to shop.
Fresh gear?
You want to make sure that the store isn’t always selling you stuff that’s been returned or display models etc. It’s often hard to tell but nowadays there’s some well sealed wrapping on the equipment which i’d like to see more of. You get the vibe though if all your gear seems to come in beat-up boxes and nothing is properly wrapped, and there’s ketchup on the Resonance knob.
Online Vs. Bricks?
Nowadays there are lots of online retailers where you can buy all types of gear from. I’d say online is good if you’re living in an area where there are no good stores, or the stores are unwilling to order things for you. It’s also good if you know what you want and you can locate a really good price with free shipping. Online is bad however if you’ve never tried out the piece of equipment before and you’re unsure about it, you’ll have to go through a bit more work to return it. And if you’re ordering from a store in another country you could be hit with a large bill from customs making the return less attractive. I don’t want to put down the online stores too hard but I think there’s nothing better than being face to face with the sales reps for advice or getting to try out new gizmos right there in the store. If the trends move towards only online then it will be much harder for all of us to pick out new toys, but also have the instant service when you really need it the most. And we all know what’s happening the CD retailers, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen to this side of the industry.
At the end of the day you shop at the stores that are most convenient for you. Maybe the store happens to be around the corner? Or the prices are 30% lower than everywhere else you look? But there are other factors that you might not have considered, and hopefully this article has helped you identified some of those. Really though, do me a favour and boycott the stores with the nasty clerks! I think it’s a travesty that some of these stores are still in business. And for the Canadians reading this, those stores are damn lucky I have enough respect not to write them all up on here. Jerks.