Reinvent Retail

There’s a fascinating, well-thought-out read over at FISTFULAYEN describing changes in the Jazz world.

The scary, one-line summary: the median age of the jazz-show goer (yes, that’s a phrase) is 46, up from 29 in 1982.

I think his advice is equally applicable to music retailers:

• Build modern websites
• modernize portals

Every Friday afternoon my dad would pick me up from school. From about 4 – whenever he would close, we would hang out at LJ Sports Cards with my dad, Lenny (the owner) other kids on their way home from school, then the guys on their way home from work. We’d hang out late, talk about the Mets, statistics, what new sets were coming out, what big cards we were thinking about buying… Probably most Fridays for 3-4 years we did that. It’s what I loved to do. Its how I became a collector. It was the greatest thing in the world.

The Guitar Store – Southampton, UK.

And damn proud of it. Go Follow Us for the latest updates when Boutique – The Point of Sale that’s not a P.O.S. is released.

For an indie retailer, there are a lot of inexpensive yet effective ways to connect with customers – In-store exclusive events are always fun, gallery openings, in-store DJs.  Lately we’ve been seeing a lot of sweet blogs pop-up to showcase new product arrivals.

There’s an awesome sneaker shop in our neighborhood, Sole Classics, which has a pretty awesome product blog. They just posted some sweet new arrivals from UNDFTD.  The genius part is that they’re giving their blog readers an exclusive head-start, by not putting these items on the shelves for a week.  Tell them you saw them on their blog and they’ll sell it to you.  Great way to hype the blog and keep loyal customers loyaler (that’s not a word)  Anyway, pretty badass, great work Chri