No Prices On New Guitars in PMT

[Shambo]

I popped into my local PMT store in Bristol this afternoon, purely for a bit of a browse. As I wandered into the bass room I noticed that none of the instruments had prices on them. They all said to ask at the till for the best price.

They're a very friendly bunch in there and, when I was asked if I wanted to try anything, I said no thanks, then remarked about the lack of prices. This was the cue for a long one sided speech to everyone within earshot about the volatility of guitar prices at the moment, making it practically impossible to keep the pricing on the tags up to date.

I'll be honest and say now that I almost immediately started to glaze over, but I picked up something about Amazon complaints, accusations of price fixing, PMT working in cahoots with other large music retailers, bricks & mortar overheads and non-commital distributors . The guy was obviously a little wound up about the whole situation and unfortunately I wasn't the most empathetic person he could have picked to listen to him vent.

I had at first just assumed the lack of prices was a sales ploy to get a potential customer to engage with the salesman, but after hearing the guys empassioned description of the situation, it got me to wondering (only a little admittedly) about the troubles music retailers might be having in these uncertain times.

As I slowly meandered towards the exit, I noticed none of the skinny stringers had prices either. No prices on any guitars in PMT.

Is this the new normal?

Edited January 6, 2019 by Shambo
poor grammar

[Chris2112]

It doesn't surprise me. It's a difficult time to sell guitars and POA gives the store some agility in the face of day to day fluctuations. 

[Cato]

It's an understandable policy but I'm not going to even try a bass or guitar if I don't know what price bracket it's in and I don't want to be asking 'how much is this one' every couple of minutes.

I supposed it's easy enough to find out online, but I reckon it would feel a bit weird, not to mention rude to wander in to a guitar shop to just to sit there googling other music websites.

[AndyTravis]

I left the guitar selling game in 2015. 

It was always mega hard, and I know guitar shops get slated on here and there’s poor service everywhere etc.

Thing is, if retailers with own brand product are struggling you’d better believe anyone re-selling like guitar shops are.

In America they ran the MAP (minimum advertised price) System, meaning retailers all advertising the same price and you choose your buying experience and the retailers apply their desired discount.

Think Yamaha and Fender got into bother over trying that in the UK.

There’s no money in selling music gear - very poor margins and nice retail space is expensive to run.

apart from strings and an amp, I’ve not bought new since leaving MI retail (in fact I bought a Breedlove and Sandberg from GBBL when drew ran it - but that was a sale price/px deal)

 

 

[lemmywinks]

I had a conversation in a music shop a few years ago where the policy was also "ask at the till", the manager said it was because of  enforced price fixing which he wasn't too happy with. 

Edited January 6, 2019 by lemmywinks

[doomed]

I went in pmt Bristol the day after boxing day and noticed the same thing, I've had good buys on a couple of basses from there in the past but if there's no starting point on display I'm not interested.

[lemmywinks]

With the shop I went it it sounded like they didn't have much choice - either display non-competitive prices and risk customers walking out to buy online or don't display any and risk customers walking out anyway. The manager of this store basically said they had an enforced minimum price to sell items at, it's a very good shop with extremely nice staff too.

[AndyTravis]

Also we had to replace tickets all the time.

I approached the MD with Hand written swing tags - we spent hours a day producing price tickets for stuff. 

The vat changes, fluctuating strength of the pound vs dollar, costs of fuel affecting delivery charges (at one point we paid £5 a guitar on Fender and £8 a guitar on Epiphone/Gibson) it was fecking soul destroying.

The MD said ‘no - it’ll look crap’

All the big companies took turns upping prices, eventually, the store manager just used to spend days on end typing new prices onto tickets.

 

[paul_c2]

I heard a rumour that the "price fixing" by eg Fender et al was ruled against by the EU recently, meaning that they now can't do it. I haven't noticed much variation in the prices though - I suspect Fender have a RRP very strongly enforced in its contract with retailers, and if anyone tries to undercut it then they'll not be a Fender retailer any more.....

[Dad3353]

In France, the retail inspectors would issue warnings, then fines, if prices were not correctly displayed on the goods, for shoes, food, instruments, cameras, toys... Everything has to have its price displayed. I suppose the commercial conditions are similar, so why should this not be practised in the UK..? 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Dad3353

[kodiakblair]

@paul_c2

I never bothered following things up but Fender,Yamaha and a few shops all got a visit from trading standards last year over price fixing.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/06/06/fender-yamaha-casio-roland-korg-price-fixing/

No idea if it's related.

[skankdelvar]

38 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 why should this not be practised in the UK..? 

To paraphrase the novelist Mr LP Hartley:

'The past France is a foreign country; they do things differently there'.

[Gottastopbuyinggear]

I do find it a bit frustrating when browsing, but on the other hand PMT will price match any UK retailer that has an item in stock, so armed with a smartphone you can effectively find the price you’d pay on any item.

[uk_lefty]

What I don't understand, and there may be good reason for it... Hypothetical scenario to illustrate my point:

Retailer stocks a bass, say a jazz, puts it on sale in June 2017 for £600. It doesn't sell. It's still there in March 2018 but the currency changes, costs go up. A new one in stock is now £650. The one stocked in June now goes up by £50 too. 

Why?

[SH73]

54 minutes ago, Gottastopbuyinggear said:

I do find it a bit frustrating when browsing, but on the other hand PMT will price match any UK retailer that has an item in stock, so armed with a smartphone you can effectively find the price you’d pay on any item.

Disagree.  I found a cheaper item online. I  sent PMT a message as per PMT  price match. This was 3 weeks ago and to thus day had not had a reply!

[SH73]

Could something to do with Brexit?

[Aidan63]

Does the retailer buy the product from the distributor or does the retailer pay for it once sold (like M&S and other big retailers do), I don't know how it works with the instrument business, but I guess that PMT and Andertons etc. pay distributors 30-90 days in arrears and small retailers pay up front or on delivery/on invoice from supplier

If you've had £500 capital tied up in something for 18 months and new stock will be more expensive and everyone else is selling for £650 then I can understand why you'd up the price as long as it was indistinguishable from current model, which is partly why manufacturers keep changing specs and available models so if you want the latest version you pay more and so old stock is apparent to knowledgeable buyers

[charic]

Could QR Codes and readers that can be leant out + a smartphone app be the answer?

[gs_triumph]

Or electronic shelf labelling?   Automatically updated from your Epos price database.  Always the live price on display. 

Currently being trialled by major food retailers but much easier/cheaper to implement in an environment with fewer SKU's to manage. 

[Deanol]

6 minutes ago, gs_triumph said:

Or electronic shelf labelling?   Automatically updated from your Epos price database.  Always the live price on display. 

Currently being trialled by major food retailers but much easier/cheaper to implement in an environment with fewer SKU's to manage. 

Or a QR tag on each item, which you can scan on your phone which would give you the shops price. The prices would be held in a database and picked up when a scan was performed.

Not everyone will have a phone of course, so for those (very few) people "Ask at the till" is the only option, because that's the way life is for you these days.

[Ed_S]

39 minutes ago, SH73 said:

Disagree.  I found a cheaper item online. I  sent PMT a message as per PMT  price match. This was 3 weeks ago and to thus day had not had a reply!

Quite - can’t comment on PMT, but I’ve had a couple of recent interactions with other shops where I’ve asked them to match a price because I’d rather buy from and support them, and they’ve politely refused - basically said that I wouldn’t be doing them any favours buying at that price and they’d rather I go and buy from the other shop because in doing so I clear another cheap one off the market leaving their expensive-but-in-stock one looking more attractive.

[tauzero]

2 hours ago, uk_lefty said:

What I don't understand, and there may be good reason for it... Hypothetical scenario to illustrate my point:

Retailer stocks a bass, say a jazz, puts it on sale in June 2017 for £600. It doesn't sell. It's still there in March 2018 but the currency changes, costs go up. A new one in stock is now £650. The one stocked in June now goes up by £50 too. 

Why?

It's paying rent for the time it's been occupying space in the shop.

If it was on sale for £600 and then the new one is £550 (it may happen), would you expect the old one to come down in price?

[Gottastopbuyinggear]

1 hour ago, Ed_S said:

Quite - can’t comment on PMT, but I’ve had a couple of recent interactions with other shops where I’ve asked them to match a price because I’d rather buy from and support them, and they’ve politely refused - basically said that I wouldn’t be doing them any favours buying at that price and they’d rather I go and buy from the other shop because in doing so I clear another cheap one off the market leaving their expensive-but-in-stock one looking more attractive.

I’ve not taken them up on the offer but several times in the Cardiff store they’ve made that statement to me.  Has to be in stock at the retailer they’re matching was the only stipulation they gave.  

[uk_lefty]

2 hours ago, tauzero said:

It's paying rent for the time it's been occupying space in the shop.

If it was on sale for £600 and then the new one is £550 (it may happen), would you expect the old one to come down in price?

Good point.

[petebassist]

At the weekend I saw a news headline about a shop (not a guitar shop) in Japan where they charge people to go in - I don't blame them either. A lot of people use shops as a free try-the-product out place, then buy it online at a cheaper price, or expect in-store prices to be the same as online.

It's tough competing against online-only retailers, so I guess having price on request enables them to be more competitive. What next? Subscription-only shops?