I Have Seen The Future

On Wednesdays I take my 10-year-old daughter to piano lessons. I drop her off and take the half hour to visit a guitar shop down the street - Guitarworks in Calgary. It’s a local chain. They carry a nice selection of the main brands of acoustic and electric guitars: Gibson, Fender, Martin, Larivee, Godin etc. I paid a visit there this week to ogle all the new pre-Christmas stock they're getting - gorgeous guitars that I can't afford.

I wander through the shop and drool over the eye-candy.

I didn’t stay too long because I had been meaning to check out the new Future Shop on Macleod Trail. They built a new big one very close to one they tore down some time ago. For you non-Canadians who don’t know the Future Shop, it’s very similar to the Best Buy chain of big box electronics store. It used to be a Canadian privately-owned-and-operated company but, oddly enough it was bought by the U.S. parent company that owns Best Buy. There are Best Buys and Futures Shops across Canada. Even though they are part of the same parent, they are run independently (at least last time I checked).

Like I said, this Future Shop was big new and shiny and opened not more than six months ago.

My first stop was the CD aisle to see if they had new releases and my jaw dropped.

I know these big box stores have radically reduced their CD selections but I was still shocked at what I found. The shelves were barely covered and what they had seemed random and disorganized. There was very little selection.
Frankly it didn't look like a newly stocked store, more like a closing-out sale that had been picked over. The DVD/Blue-ray selection was somewhat better and of course the video game section was overflowing.

I walked over to the new release CD selection and among their meagre selection they did have the new Feist CD. I instinctively grabbed it and then I thought: “Wait a minute. Why am I buying this? Should I reward this company for this slap in the face to music lovers?”

Then I recalled the first time I walked into a big box electronics store and remembered the HUGE selection of music. They not only carried a fairly full catalogue of rock and pop music, they even had a quite acceptable selection of jazz, blues, classical and even a decent amount of folk and world music, all at pretty good prices. But, over time what happened to the book biz happened to the music biz. First Big Box stores, then downloading forced the local music stores to close. 


Now, finally, big boxes have turned their backs on hardcore music fans. And I put the Feist CD back on the shelf.

(And yeah I know, downloading is making the CD obsolete but, as I have mentioned on my blog before, there are still music heads like me who download music who ALSO still buy lots of CDs and vinyl. We are being ignored.)

Here’s where this story takes and even uglier turn.

There’s a musical instrument section in this new Future Shop; it’s a very big section of the store. When they first opened, these big box electronic stores carried one or two no name brand guitars and amps, a token amount. That has changed quite a bit. There is now a large selection of mostly mid to low range guitars mostly of the off-shore no-name variety plus Gibson and Fender's budget brands - Squier and Epiphone - amps, keyboards and accessories. They also do have a smattering of higher end Fenders and Gibsons. In the case of this particular Future Shop, they are hanging high on a display organized so a salesperson has to climb a mile-high ladder to bring it down for you to plug and pluck.

Why is this ugly?

A friend of mine who owns a guitar store told me that most local music stores make more money off of the cheaper guitar-and-amp packages that sell for about $200 - $300. The higher volume of sales of the cheap stuff keeps them in business to they can sell high-end instruments and accessories. He also develops a relationship with families who return to upgrade the kids' instruments when they become budding Claptons and Hendrixs. (The other money-maker for his store is the music studio.)

Future Shop doesn’t run a music studio but they are obviously digging into the entry level instrument market; so if you have a favourite music store in your community, you better give them your business, because the big box stores are gunning for them too.

The sad fact in all of this is that these big box stores keep preying on niche markets until they choke out the competition and then they abandon those customers when the niche become less profitable.

I still maintain that there are a number of music fans – maybe older ones like me – who would still buy CDs at places like Future Shop if they had a better selection. We would buy other things too like oh, I don’t know, computers, big screen TVs?

But between the death of their music selection and the cynical jump into the guitar biz, I think last Wednesday was my final sojourn into a Future Shop.