"The end of Guitar Center"

[Πνοή και Νύξη]

http://www.ericgarland.co/2015/02/03/end-guitar-center/

 

Άκρως ενδιαφέρον άρθρο, το οποίο όμως, παρ' όλο που διάβασα ολόκληρο, δεν κατάφερα να εμβαθύνω, λόγω έλλειψης γνώσεων στα οικονομικά.

 

Για όποιον έχει διάθεση και γνώσεις, ευπρόσδεκτη η βοήθειά του.

 

Εγώ θα σταθώ σε ορισμένα σημεία που είναι πιο ευκολοχώνευτα:

 

"...but instead they hired a man who wouldn’t know a Marshall Plexi from a nuclear submarine."

 

"...it’s the end of big box retail, an irrational addiction to growth, and the scourge of unregulated structured finance. For a few years, unwise urban planning and unregulated banks created a new bubble in the American suburbs. People bought homes they could not afford and turned their houses into lines of credit. This swindle eventually brought the economy to its knees and has taken most a decade to regain some state of uneasy equilibrium. Still, it was particularly stimulating to a certain type of retail that also depended on constant growth and financial trickery. The objective truth is that the growth of the last decade was financed by banking fraud, and that financial trickery of this sort only fools people in the short-term. Eventually, you must have a product people demand, sold by competent people who care about the business, financed in a way that makes sense."

 

"This is not a moral judgment, merely an assessment of market engineering. Small and smart will carry the future while big, dumb, complex, and dishonest will bite the dust."

 

"The only remaining question is where the industry will go from here. Go ask the good people at Behringer for a preview. Representatives from their company have informed me that since they parted ways with Guitar Center they discovered a network of smaller, more focused retailers who were more than excited to form a stronger relationship with their company, and in turn delight customers even more. This resulted in the company’s greatest annual revenue in history, both in the United States and throughout the world. Behringer seems to think that a world without a single, corporate, banker-driven industry hegemon is not only possible, it’s preferable.

 

That’s a bright future, if you choose to share that vision. But whether you believe in it or not, this scenario is unavoidable. Guitar Center is finished. Now the musical instrument industry can get back to business."