RetailCraft 50 - "Bring Joy" - in conversation with Mark McKenzie, Technical Director at GuitarGuitar

Show Notes

Welcome to a special episode featuring Mark from Guitar Guitar, who joins us to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary. Hosted by Ian Jindal, Editor-in-Chief of Internet Retailing, and Georgia from Adobe, this episode dives deep into the evolution of Guitar Guitar and its unique approach to music retail.

Mark shares the history of Guitar Guitar, from its humble beginnings to becoming a significant player in the music retail industry. He discusses the company's commitment to providing a personalized customer experience, both online and in-store, and the challenges and triumphs they've faced over the years.

The conversation touches on the innovative ways Guitar Guitar has integrated technology to enhance customer interaction, the importance of maintaining a physical store presence, and the company's recent transition to an employee-owned business model. Mark also highlights their efforts in music education and community engagement, reflecting on how these initiatives align with their core values.

Join us for an insightful discussion about the past, present, and future of Guitar Guitar, and learn how they continue to make music more accessible and enjoyable for everyone.

 

--  Run time: 33 minutes

INFORMATION:

[ 🖥️ ]

Guitar Guitar - https://www.guitarguitar.co.uk/  and https://www.linkedin.com/company/guitar-guitar-limited/ 

[ 👨‍👧 ]

Mark McKenzie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mckenzie-uk/ 

Georgia Scott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiajones1/  

Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ and www.twitter.com/ianjindal 

 

[ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal

Creators and Guests

Host

Ian Jindal

Founder of RetailX and CustomerX

What is RetailCraft - digital retail, ecommerce and brands - Retail Podcast?

Multichannel retail, ecommerce and digital business - interviews, analysis and discussion with Ian Jindal and InternetRetailing

Mark is the most tolerant, helpful, flexible person when it comes to planning.

Is what you're really saying here that you've messed Mark around a lot?

That's exactly what I'm saying.

I've messed Mark around and he's still here. And he's still here. I have no comment.

That's a yes, he has messed me around. I'll make it for you.

Thank you very much. You're welcome.

Hello, welcome back to the studio. I'm here, Ian Jindal, Editor-in-Chief of

Internet Retailing with Georgia.

Hi, I'm Georgia and I head up marketing at Adobe.

But mostly importantly, joining us over the internet wires is Mark from Guitar Guitar.

So Mark, I've said half the intro there, so tell us about you,

tell us about Guitar Guitar and welcome to the studio.

You firstly thank you for for having us yeah it's

a big year for guitar guitar this year that's our 20th anniversary

so we get an opportunity to look

back at the last 20 years and celebrate making music better for everybody involved

and with the business but also get to look forward a little bit as as well so

i joined as you said earlier before we started this 17 years ago to build our

online business before i joined we didn't sell online and the company's original

vision back then where i mean music retailing was

really dark and dingy had a really poor experience

you had a really poor selection and two founders decided hey we can do this

better let's let's just put a thousand guitars on the wall have a little bit

of fun and see how we get on with that so that was that was the seed of the

idea i guess yeah so 20 years and you've been there There are 17 of them. Yeah.

How did they cope with the first three? I know. Well, they didn't,

which is why they had to bring them in.

But also, you know, if we think about music, the early internet selling was

dominated by easy products, books, you know, publicly available catalog.

Small, handleable, stackable, postable, easy.

Online grocery, very difficult, arguably not, well, lost making for a long time.

And apparel with varying levels of success.

So along you come and think, oh, we are going to send through His Majesty's

Postal Service a delicate guitar.

Someone hasn't picked that has to be insured plus

a plectrum and some strings this sounds to

me like one of those problems that if someone offers it to

you over dinner you just politely leave and

delete their phone number so what made you say

yes to this difficult task

well there's a few jokey conversations before it

all came came to pass but um

i had a history i grew up in the music and television industry had

no musical talent no no acting talent

i may add as well i was always into how things things worked

and a few jokey conversations turned into some serious ones in you laugh and

you talk about the smaller goods the first product we sold online a long time

ago was a 699 pound taylor acoustic guitar which would be the hardest thing

you would think to ship yes Yes.

But what we did at the very early days and still kind of emanates through what

we believe in today and about kind of engaging with the customer is we did things

like picking up the phone.

We phoned the customer and thanked them for their order.

Back then you had Amazon and other things going on that didn't do that. It was very faceless.

We had to try very hard to make it less faceless and actually connect with that.

But sorry, you've skipped the bit between the ring, the customer,

and actually get 700 quid's worth of guitar to them without it being matchsticks.

Do you remember carbon copy?

Yeah, I am old enough, George is. No, I have no recollection whatsoever.

So you would go as far as writing the actual delivery note in the parcel number.

Now it's all scanned to dispatch and all the rest of it. Yeah,

very early days you were.

You were essentially with the neatest handwriting guys were

actually writing the delivery address to the customer and making

sure it was right as well because tracking wasn't the

same it was pre sms text messages i am i am actually joking because i i actually

started in in fashion pr where i was shipping products and outfits across the

globe with just the levels of anxiety that i I think only maybe Mark can understand

on, I don't know where this thing is.

We had these amazing, over the years, I mean, we've gone, like Think Above and

Beyond to look after the customers, but we've got great stories of phoning up

depots when there's been snow, asking them to go in the back of trailers.

Can you find this 7,000 pound guitar, please? The customer's going away on holiday the next day.

It's going to be out in the cold for five days. Can you help us out?

He's called Sting and he lives up the corner.

Yeah so we've dived in some detail there

but can we just zoom out a bit or pan out

if we're being a media and talk about

the business overall because there was a time

last century where most major towns would

have a guitar shop and there

was a time last century when there were music lessons

in schools so you know there was a

sort of an old-fashioned analog music experience if

we track forward now then you know the music industry has exploded especially

with lockdown with people becoming djs doing digital production multi-instrument

etc so just help us understand how guitar guitar fits into the world as a retailer

what is your offer where are you positioned shouldn't.

It kind of stems back to the original premise of what we did online.

We did try, and still to this day, try to differentiate ourselves.

It's not about being a faceless box-shifting company.

All of our staff are musicians to some degree or another as well,

so we won't sell something that we wouldn't buy ourselves.

And within that, you get this trust with the customer, and it's about experience,

and we sell a product that people want to touch.

Research we come back to the very seeds of

it these stores you talked about would maybe only have eight

guitars on the wall would maybe only have 100 or 200 they

were trying to serve the whole music industry whereas what guitar guitar started

life out as is actually just about the musician the guitarist itself and then

we diversified over the years but it was really about okay what does that experience

look like on on steroids what does that look like because

the range that you can actually get into it is vast.

I mean, we've got over 3,000 electric guitars in stock, thousands of acoustic

guitars, and that's what we've always believed in, and that's how we've differentiated

ourselves, but also through multiple stores as well.

That's a big bit. And is it six you've got now?

Six at the moment. We have had a venture in other parts.

We had a pre-Brexit venture in Belgium, which washed its face and did reasonably

well, but unfortunately the powers that be.

Set that on a different on a different yes well you get

a prize for mentioning brexit first which is which

is good so a question though i get wanting a

bigger bigger range especially if from the

digital side you know you happen to want

a gibson 307 dash a antique with whatever

so that whole mega catalog but until

you play the guitar you can't really appreciate the

feel the sound the why i should

pay 7 000 rather than 700 rather

than 70 so the physical store and

the physical experience still has a real part in

if you like education and experience so just tell me how the stores work and

then how you balance the store and online from a customer perspective it's a

great question and i was doing a talk two years ago now and i remember and i

mean There was a lot of people there from other, other retailers at the time.

And everyone kept on talking about pure play, competing with the pure play competing

with on online, if you actually zoom out a little bit, a lot,

especially in the UK, a lot of the very successful internet retailer all have stores.

Stores is a, is a key part. It's about being local, having that support.

So yes, we want customers to come in store and many still do.

Do most still do that in fact but also the convenience

of on online you can have it next day you can

reserve the last one of a product to collect tomorrow

or have delivered to your work knowing that you've got

the local support and backup you can speak to us on the phone live chat all

of these essentially modern technologies that people have really got accustomed

to over the pandemic makes it a lot easier to actually engage with with the

customer so you're speaking with With musicians and advisors online,

you're doing the same in-store.

And really, the advice you should get online and in-store is very similar.

Yes, you don't get to feel it, but you can when you're at home.

And you know what? If it's not right, we'll exchange it or look after you.

And it's not about sending it out and getting it wrong. We actually don't want

any customer having a product.

They don't like right exactly yeah because then they

won't come back and you it's this longer term relationship because music's supposed

to bring joy and especially in the early years a lot of musicians don't stick

at it it's not instant gratification the djing other other kind of areas are

very kind of instantaneous you can have a result by pressing a few buttons.

Can i just say for the avoidance of doubt i have

not had any results at all for pressing any buttons

i'm at that age where

all of my male friends grow beards and

they don't already have them and then start offering to

dj at every party and so you're always bouncing off saying look i love you as

a friend but please you're looking anywhere near anything yeah in a party they

hurt so i just want to say that talent isn't as equally spread as is internet

access i mean i think we're We're all in agreement of that.

And equally, no shade thrown on budding DJs. None at all. Especially those who sing.

Speaking of which, sorry, Georgia, I was going to ask about this,

because the whole music production side has grown enormously.

And I say this sitting in our wonderful studio, surrounded by tech that somebody

else has put together and made it work.

We're talking over the airwaves on a sort of digital studio.

So there's been an explosion in that. So from the guitar-guitar beginning,

how has the music, sound, production-making scene expanded for you,

or are you still mainly four- and six-strings-based?

So as you grow as you as you run a

business you you do have to diversify and that

forces you to look at other opportunities a

big part of what we sell is replicating music from the 60s and onwards but sadly

when you get maybe the festivals you'll see it yourself on television you don't

get those many there's not as many artists these days fronting with a whole

band set up access to The music is different,

what people are into it is different, and there's trends, but a lot of it's

reliving the 90s, the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc., and different genres as well.

And people want to escape to those genres, so to speak, as well.

They want to get away from the now, and that's what music delivers,

I suppose. Away from the now.

That's nice. on your website there are two things i wanted to ask you about

one was the school's education.

Which strikes me slightly wholesaly b2b so

interesting market and you also have this

trade in second hand thing going on so let's start with schools first talk to

us about the school's market is it a teacher rings up and says can i have you

know a brass band 40 guitars you know we're doing a play about the Beatles and

I need 37 left-handed bass guitars.

How does the school market work from your perspective? It'd be wonderful if

that was the phone calls you would get.

I really feel for the education, the whole sector.

With everything, I think it's fair to say across all sectors,

there's cuts and everyone has their cost pressures, so to speak.

So we'll tend to sell products that we, again, going back to we buy ourselves,

but they're against these challenges of price points led by policies,

whether it's local council.

So trying to serve that market well and look after the education institutes

is a real challenge. It's a challenge I don't think any retailer has been able

to really crack and help.

There's obviously help to buy and schemes that you can help pupils with,

but they are overly complicated and very costly to administrate.

Teachers, school systems are probably enough pressure as it is to then try and

navigate helping students find affordable.

They've got the best of intentions but the support is

very it's a very difficult and challenging marketplace even

more so over the recent years the first sadly

one of the first areas that always gets cut is music education

it's the it's sadly the easy target because it's

it doesn't necessarily get the recognition that it

deserves and so what do you offer to them so

i came to your site as a a harried but

passionate teacher and i log onto the site is

there a special or different service for education whether

parents or teachers how does that work there's we

don't change we don't have any um hidden sections so

to speak or these used to maybe exist about a

decade ago a little bit more but what we

give is it's more about kitting out

a classroom or more bespoke offering or

recommendations yeah but a lot of it is maybe

in the future as well and there's obviously students looking to

buy products and we can always help with that they can

buy through the school and there's that incentives to

save the vat on certain goods some manufacturers

we deal with will give additional discounts to look after

the educational side because if you start.

On a particular brand or or on a particular instrument

you're very likely to continue isn't correct

exactly so yeah there's a lot of investment in

that space and some of it is served very very well but it's a very difficult

market and the funding for that's always changing and what it can end up coming

like the real you get people phoning up asking for one string not a set of six

strings but actually a string,

and having in your like look just send them out and yeah after them um that's

the type of level some schools are dealing with.

And do you feel, because I mean, just hearing you talk about it, it sounds like this is.

From where you are with your values as a business this

is all part of kind of how you can stay connected

to the communities to the people in

the the towns that you're based and and do the best that you can to kind of

stay connected to to music and i guess the people that are hopefully the future

of it yeah and we do a lot of musical therapy as well and charity yeah but but

it's It's a very challenging space to operate in, full stop.

So thinking about difficulties, then, let's talk secondhand,

because I saw a secondhand trade-in tab as well.

Is that mainly for people wanting to upgrade, so an upgrade path,

or how does that work, and how do you manage to assess the product.

Both for trade-in value, and then, of course, the challenges

of selling a slightly used but

loved product trading it's

probably been part of them whether you see it online or not but it's a big part

of of music retailing generally and it has been for for a while so it is people

do have aspirations they want to upgrade and they want to to progress so it

gives you that vehicle to to do that trade we do a lot of trade-ins

online we do that in store it's a bit of bread

and butter of of what most musical and is

that manually done so i emailed you a picture and you

look at it and think and mail me back or is there some

clever systemization because we see a lot for example

in fashion with re-commerce we see

a lot of validation it really is you know

this guitar rather than a cheap guitar with

a label stuck on it so just talk to me about the

processes behind that is it human and expert

or is it cunning and tech or somewhere in between it's a bit of both we've we

have a lot of data on on a lot of things over the years but you've got people

trading things in that we've never sold maybe before we even existed as well

as some stuff that people bought two years ago so we do we do have.

Systems in place to accommodate that and we do have

a team of people that look after that as well but it comes

back to this we want people to come into the store we want

you're trading something in well what are you really looking

for is what you're looking for the right fit for

you is it going to give you the expectations that you

want because the last thing you want anybody to do is trade in

a product and then they get the

new product and it's not better than what they've just let go of as

well so there's it's not fashion it's not an iphone

it's not a serial number on a website and then

you've it's really it's not really transactional in nature somebody's trying

to progress to to the next part of their musical journey that's twice now that

you've said we want you in store so i'm kind of take it back interested obviously

you kind of got bought in a few years in to really look at the digital presence

and and the kind of multi-channel journey but.

We keep harking back to the store. So I'm interested in kind of,

what is your strategy around this kind of multi-channel approach?

Like, do you, have you mapped out what these kind of customer journeys are?

Do they tend to start online, then in store, then back online?

And how are you connecting the pieces? Because you don't have stores everywhere.

You know, so are they sometimes finding guitars in other places,

but you want them to buy them with you?

Like how, how are you kind of really balancing your offline

and your online in that that way well do you remember back

in the day when you used to have other retailers have dual

pricing yes yes so we didn't

partake in any of of that and that

kind of ethos at the very beginning kind of set the stall

up right for what we do as a business today the buzzwords

have been out through the year multi-channel on the channel but we've

always just been about come to guitar guitar are

they'll look after you wherever you want to connect with us

and having the stores and online gives us that flex

the stores and our online presence helped because we could

do distributed dispatching and actually look after all all the staff we might

touch on that that later but going back to to the stores we've always had real-time

stock we were the first in our industry to to do that so everything you're looking

at and interacting with is one ecosystem yeah so So customers coming into the store,

their profiles and everything are available online and vice versa.

We've kind of holistically connected that.

And that makes servicing those customers a lot, lot easier.

If we receive an email from a customer automatically, we can look up their history,

whether they've been in store, whether they're online, what were they interested

in in store? Who did they speak to in store?

And connect the dots from the very get-go.

Yeah maybe been easier for us to to do

that because we've been smaller in size but that's always

been what what we've been about and we've always

used technology to drive that yeah so to speak yes that's interesting so you're

usually sometimes people talk a lot about you know how they work in harmony

but you are very much talking about it is coming in store and the the online

presence is in support of that and allows you to flex and maybe have greater

reach well you give I'll give the great example,

so we run hundreds of initiatives a year across all the different business units

and during the pandemic obviously everybody stores shut and I know peers of

mine had real challenges, what's the priority?

All we did, and it sounds quite simplistic in nature, is everything that was

store related that was already.

Tagged as such we just dropped out of our our focus and

we reassessed one or two things and then we just got on

with it pretty much the next day because we were operating in that fashion thinking

about what we're doing in store thinking about what we need to do online where

we want to get to but also then what we're doing for every other business area

and technologies in this wonderful place that gets to push the business areas

but also support what they need as well

yeah so you've mentioned you know the commitment to

the customer and you've also mentioned staff a

couple of times which is great because you know we love seeing the recognition

especially for frontline staff but i was reading that you are an employee owned

business so that's you and john lewis great company to be in of course so tell

us a bit about the employee ownership

and why and then i'm just

going to invite you to reflect on whether you think that helps you

with this customer focus and service rather than maybe another structure so

employee ownership just describe that for us a good target so we're in our second

year of employee ownership we're still very much finding our feet but the key

to it is about sustainability of the business

and and what we do in in the market if you'd gone down a route as various routes

you can go down whether it's merger acquisition listing and all the rest of

it would really probably.

Dissected and cut up what the business was about and two

years ago when we were going through that journey one of our

suppliers who probably was the seed of the idea for

us a company called taylor guitars in the states did a similar thing it's not

quite the same in america compared to the UK but they used a phrase that has

resonated with me ever since was you already were operating like an employee

owned company or employee kind of slash family to be able to do that transition,

to actually become that it wasn't that it was you were suddenly anointed employee

owned and then next year it all changed.

We were already probably operating. So that's interesting because some people

set up employee-owned businesses from political or moral conviction.

Others would go to it maybe for longevity or because they're doing B Corp and so on.

But it's not usual that something's been set up in a capitalist share-owning

structure then moves towards that.

So what was the conversation, the dear old memo?

Demo it sounds like it's a lovely collegiate place

to work so people come into the office one day and they

open their they open their inbox and it says dear all from

the management team we are going to be an employee of business how do you break

that news and what was the response i would like to think through that our short

conversations you'd realize it probably wasn't the way we did also because i'm

just making a really embarrassing concession which is when When Ian sent me the notes,

and he's like, well, we'll talk about, you know, because we do actually prepare.

We've just started preparing for

these offers. And it said, employee-owned business, you and John Lewis.

I thought you meant that it was owned by two employees, you and a guy called John Lewis.

And as you were talking, I went, oh, that makes so much more sense.

This just proves a preparation is not a good thing oh it's very funny anyway

so you and the company just not yeah i'm going to repeat that when i'm on the way home and the car,

it's like that's great one of my blonder moments thank you yeah we're at the

dear all moment so it's hard to like go down with staff and you're making that transition,

It was great. So there was a lot of preparations. As you'd imagine,

as a board, you're brought into the loop pretty early on.

And some of us were brought in probably a year before the event,

because you've got to put the feelers out there. Is this the right direction? How would it be taken?

But once that kind of pathway was set, we spent a lot of time and effort getting

that communication right, more

than we've ever done on anything else beforehand, because it's a big deal.

A lot of staff will have questions a

lot of staff and some some of us don't understand

or didn't understand some of the nuances with

regards to that are is it costing them in it like really.

Really yeah the basic bread and butter stuff

correct so so we spent a lot of time prepping

that we delivered screens to all

of the stores we had a big presence here in

hq and in the warehouse house we put on

a big stage we broadcasted it to all the

stores simultaneously so everybody as many people

in the company found out about it at the same time

it wasn't a tour it wasn't somebody found out

late we did it all all in one in one go

and we also invited

questions and three of us stood on stage and gave

the news and it was it was wonderful

to be able to do and it's very privileged to be able to do that

and we thought there was going to be five minutes of questions we

thought people have just asked five we could have been there all night

and you understand why but and we did about an hour

of questions and and there were great questions and everything everything from

our and there's this fine line between we're still operating as a business and

and it's sustainable that way but we're now doing it for the benefit of all

the employees which is totally it's not run by the employees albeit the employees

have a big say it's for the the benefit of all the employees.

So it's not every decision is not suddenly made by a committee and all the rest of it.

We're doing it with the best of intentions for people.

People that benefit from it and what that did though was we've already you're already making,

whether it's tactical decisions or

something a bit more more strategic or a large expenditure

you're already making those decisions with

some scrutiny but when you start to think

about it well we're making these decisions this is this

is the whole board and it's going to affect 165 employees

we better just make sure that it's right we better

make sure we're going in the in the right direction which is

still the same questions you would ask but there's

a but the appetite for risk is slightly different when it's privately owned

because you know what we'll go for that we'll have a punt on that

versus well let's just make sure

we're okay and then that's kind of followed us through and i always remember

one of the girls asking us afterwards because we did beers um wine pizzas and

everything afterwards just as a bit of a celebration and they went so are we

paying for this kind of but don't don't don't overthink.

So the ownership model kicks in pretty quickly

that was quite one that was that was

wonderful and um and that's and that's

how we how we run it and so if you had to just you

know someone asks you in passing what one difference do you as a director see

now that you've made this change is there anything that happens now that didn't

happen before I've thought about this a lot and I've.

It is about empowerment. In some way, we've always had that in different business areas.

But really, whether it's stepping up or wanting to be accountable to their peers,

but it is about empowerment.

And people are thinking about their suggestions a little bit differently or

how the customers interact in slightly different ways in some places, other places not.

But customers do resonate with that.

That we are all here helping them on their journey but

that's connected with with helping what we do as

well it's not it's not a faceless corporate it's a

company that that's kind of ran

by musicians for musicians or however you want to just like that that's the

kind of the optic that goes out from the customer we're on this positive moment

the wind of progress is under our wings so So let's use this moment to look ahead 20 years.

How are you celebrating it? Just to round off our time today.

And are Ian and I invited? Of course you're invited.

He said pizza. We have more than pizza, but we have celebrations throughout the year.

It's not just a birthday. It's the whole year we're celebrating 20 years.

I did a joke with one of my other colleagues. Hey, we should put a time capsule

in the ground and pick it up in 20 years' time.

Just to see what it looks like see what our predictions were

back then we i think

you'll you'll look ahead we've got a whole year of

celebrations planned out with people that suppliers customers

staff that have been with us that that whole time so

that that's what we're looking forward to this year

we do have some other things up our sleeve that i would love to share with you

guys but i can't oh he's teasing us so maybe we should catch up in another one

well i think mark what's happened is you're so excited about having featured

in the 2023 european top 1000 ranking.

But he's trying now to make sure he gets a space in 24 and 25.

I spat my coffee out when I read it last year. It was a lovely thing. That's so good.

I mean, most importantly, I've now realised that I should also celebrate my

birthday for the whole year.

I'm just celebrating, you know, the year of turning 22.

This is all part of ownership and empowerment. I'm turning 22 as well this year.

Ownership and empowerment. Yeah. Well, Mark, on that lovely note,

we will wish you a happy year-long birthday. That goes without saying.

And a massive thank you for joining us in the studio.

It's lovely to hear about the growth of a specialist retailer.

But with all this connection to the consume, the support for people's musical

journeys, and of course the staff engagement, it's just a very lovely story.

So from our side of the studio, thank you very much. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. Absolute pleasure speaking to you both as well. And thank you for

having us. And yeah, we could have talked all day, I think.

We'll do part two when you can tell us what the sequence is.

They better be good. But you've got to spoil those secrets. No pressure.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Mo. Lovely to see you. Thank you very much.

Do you play guitar? Good God, no. I play piano.

I own several guitars, none of which I can play. I would love to be able to

play because I sing, but I only tend to sing jazzy songs, which all seem to use bar chords.

And it turns out I just physically can't. I can't do it. I can't get that finger

to just stay in one place while the other. It's just not possible.

This is what he means by instant gratification. Maybe if I continued forever, I'd get it.

Well, I play the piano because there's instant gratification. Yes, exactly.

Yes, the piano I can do. The guitar is a whole other optic.