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...Striking a Chord Want to be a rock star? Guitar Center caters to musical dreamers--and created a billion-dollar business
When the first store opened, in Hollywood in 1964, founder Wayne Mitchell, a former car salesman from the Midwest, was running a chain of California organ shops. Mitchell bought out a competitor, acquiring a shipment of guitars and amplifiers. Almost as an afterthought, he hung a GUITAR CENTER sign on a storefront on Sunset Boulevard to unload the new merchandise and launched his company from the sleepy world of keyboards into the nascent West Coast rock scene. The Hollywood outlet soon gained a reputation as a place where the stars shopped--some of its earliest customers included members...
...fuel the nation's pop-star fantasies, there is Guitar Center. The country's largest retailer of musical instruments, with 113 stores in 30 states, Guitar Center provides the teeming ranks of wannabe musicians with guitars, keyboards and digital recording and mixing equipment. Although 2002 was a grim year for many retailers, sales at the chain, based in Westlake Village, Calif., rose 16%, topping $1 billion for the first time. Profits jumped 48%, to $25 million, and investors took note. Guitar Center shares, which trade on the NASDAQ, more than doubled, from $16 in September 2002 to $34 one year...
...music icons who carry Guitar Center's sales. It's the twentysomething guys with day jobs, weekend gigs and outsize hopes. According to Marty Albertson, Guitar Center's co-chief executive, 43% of the chain's customers are aspiring professional musicians, whose purchases account for 40% of revenues--the largest chunk of any customer group. Among them are strivers like Andrew Geonetta, 27, a singer-songwriter who plays club gigs in Cincinnati, Ohio, a few nights a week and works for an interactive design firm during the day. "I'd love to make a living at making music," says Geonetta...
...Guitar Chords to Johnny Cash's Music - Grab that six string and strum such songs as Folsom Prison Blues, I Walk the Line and Ring of Fire...