👀 You've stopped seeing your own shop. Your customers haven't. There's a strange thing that happens when you spend every day in the same shop: eventually, you stop seeing it properly. The box that's been behind the counter for three months becomes part of the scenery. So does the guitar covered in fingerprints, the faded poster, the empty hooks, the missing price ticket and the pile of cardboard that was only ever meant to be there until someone had five minutes to move it.

D'Addario recently found itself at the centre of a row over a promotional video for its new NYXL HD strings. Some viewers believed the music had been generated by AI. D'Addario denied it, insisting real musicians played and recorded the guitars over MIDI-programmed drums and synths, plugins and a fair amount of production. The company admitted the demo had been over-produced, and that the decision had backfired. That should have settled it. It didn't, and this week it came ap

There was a time when the size of your dealer network genuinely mattered. If you wanted to build a successful guitar brand in the UK during the 1980s, 90s or even the early 2000s, you needed dealers everywhere. Manchester. Birmingham. Glasgow. Bristol. Norwich. Plymouth. Belfast. The first question wasn't, "Who has the best website?" It was, "Where can I actually see one?" If you lived in Cornwall and the nearest dealer was in Bristol, there was a good chance you simply weren

I've watched this exact thing happen more times than I can count. 🎸 A retailer signs up to a new brand. Takes two or three pieces. Sticks them somewhere near the back, sometimes literally behind a rack of something else. No staff training, no social post, no mention in-store beyond the fact they're technically hanging there. Three months later, those same guitars get a discount sticker slapped on them, and the verdict comes in: "That brand doesn't sell." Except it was never

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Fender's attempt to tighten control around the Stratocaster body shape. Then I wrote about the backlash. Now the story has moved on again, because Thomann has entered the room, and that matters. ⚖️ From pressure to pushback Not because Thomann is automatically right, or Fender automatically wrong. But because this is no longer a one-way conversation. For weeks, this story has largely been about pressure: legal letters, nervous brands, angry play

Every brand wants a community now. But here is the uncomfortable question: do they actually understand what that means? The recent reaction to Guitar Center's new in-house guitar project is worth paying attention to. Not because a major retailer launching its own brand is unusual. But because of how they went about it. Guitar Center asked players for input on the product. What frustrates you about current guitars? What do you love? What features are consistently missing? On t

In 2003, Barbra Streisand sued a photographer for publishing an aerial image of her Malibu home. Before the lawsuit, almost nobody had seen the photograph. After the lawsuit, everybody knew it existed. That is the Streisand Effect: when an attempt to suppress, hide or control something ends up making it far more visible than it ever would have been otherwise. And over the past couple of weeks, it has been hard not to think about that as the Fender Stratocaster legal story has

In April 1991, Gerald Ratner stood up at the Institute of Directors annual conference at the Royal Albert Hall and described some of his own products as “total crap.” He also joked that one pair of earrings was cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks & Spencer, but probably would not last as long. At the time, Ratners was the UK’s largest jewellery retailer. Within months, the company had lost hundreds of millions in value. Ratner himself was eventually forced to resign. The

Retailers are no longer the main tastemakers. That role has been slipping away for years and, in many cases, it now belongs to creators. A player sees a guitar on TikTok. A YouTube demo makes it feel exciting. An Instagram reel gives it context, attitude and identity. By the time that customer lands on your website or walks into your shop, they are often not starting from zero. They are arriving with a preference already forming. That matters, because too much of MI retail st

Something unusual happened in the guitar industry this week. Two court rulings. Same week. Opposite outcomes. ⚖️ One strengthened design protection. One declared a famous guitar shape legally generic. Taken together, they reveal something important about where guitar IP law is heading. What's gone on On 9 March 2026, the Regional Court of Düsseldorf ruled that the body design of the Fender Stratocaster qualifies as a “work of applied art” under German and European copyright l

I'm writing this quickly before jumping in the car to head up to Solihull for the UK Guitar Show this weekend. And here's something particularly exciting... Saturday is completely sold out! Not "nearly." Not "strong advance sales." Sold out. 🔥 That's unusual. Normally there are still tickets available on the door. Sunday is close behind. Which tells you something important. People still want to see and try guitars in the flesh. And they'll travel if the experience is worth

Here's a question that should make every MI retailer pause for a second: When was the last time someone walked into your shop who wasn't already planning to? Not your regulars. Not click-and-collect pickups. Not the ageing rock god playing the Les Paul he'll never buy. I mean a genuine new face. If you're struggling to answer that, you're not alone. 📉 The reality check UK high street footfall has been negative for much of the past year. In our world, we've already seen wha

For years, being busy has been worn like a badge of honour in the MI world. Busy shops. 🏪 Busy brands. 🏭 Busy diaries. 📅 Busy inboxes. 📧 Somewhere along the way, busy quietly became shorthand for doing well. Full disclosure: I wrote this between seventeen emails and a cold cup of tea. Draw your own conclusions.🙄 The question we all get asked 🤷 “Are you busy?” It’s the default greeting in business. And there’s only one acceptable answer, right? “Yeah, manic.” “Flat out.”

Happy New Year! It already feels like Christmas never happened and NAMM 2025 kicks off in less than two weeks! Which of course means my LinkedIn feed is filling up with the usual pre show buzz. Product teases. Travel countdowns. "See you in Anaheim!" posts. For those outside the musical instruments world, NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) is the industry's flagship trade show, held every January in California. It's where brands launch products, dealers place ord

So here we are, last Fret Not Friday of the year! 🥳 2025 hasn’t been a year of easy wins in MI. For many, it’s been a year of pressure. Margin pressure. Cost pressure. Attention pressure. In some cases, survival pressure. Some businesses grew. Some stood still. Some sadly didn’t make it to December. That’s not said for effect. It’s simply the brutal reality of the year we’ve all lived through. And while it would be easy to wrap things up with a personal highlights reel, this

The MI industry loves nostalgia. Vintage colours. Classic shapes. Period correct limited runs for exorbitant prices. Artist tie-ins from records released before 90% of TikTok users were born. Nothing wrong with that history and heritage is part of our magic! But here is my question : Is a huge part of our industry still building and marketing guitars/amps/pedals to an audience that is no longer the primary market? and most certainly not the future of it? I’ve spoken to brands

Why the industry keeps treating the symptoms while ignoring the cause. Last time we talked about the guitar industry’s “midlife crisis.” This week, I want to go deeper into the reason the crisis exists at all: MI keeps misdiagnosing the real problem . And if you diagnose the wrong thing, you fix the wrong thing. The industry doesn’t have a pricing problem. It doesn’t have a stock problem. It doesn’t have a marketing problem. In my opinion... it has a misalignment problem .

After nearly a century of riffs, reissues, and reinvention, the guitar industry’s hit a strange point in its story, what I'm going to call the midlife-crisis years. Clinging to the past, chasing reissues, lusting after the 'good old days' and pretending everything’s fine when for many in MI right now it really isn't. This isn’t just a story about brands. Retail’s right in the middle of it too. We’ve all been guilty of trying to replay the hits and that’s fine 🎶 until the c

Walk down MLK Boulevard in Portland and you’ll find something rare: three formerly competing music businesses under one roof, working together instead of against each other. I’ve just read about this in Music Inc Magazine (October 2025) and found it genuinely inspirational. It got me thinking, what if we saw a model like this in the UK? 🤔 The story is about Hank’s Music Exchange (🎸 guitars), Rhythm Traders (🥁 drums), and Eastside Guitar Repair (🛠️ service), who recent

By Lee Alexander Walk into almost any guitar shop today or scroll through their online listings and you’ll see it everywhere. Red sale...