Oh, for those looking, I think one of the ex BGE chaps has set up in Pottinger's Entry, across from The Doc Shop/Morning Star, in half of the computer shop that's there (yeah, pretty much, it's in the "InShops"). There's not piles in stock, pretty much a lot of Cort Guitars and Black*Star amps, but it's something.
where's that?
One of the biggest problems that "Good" shops face is that people use them to test stuff out and then go to an online "box shifter" with no staff or retail premises to upkeep to save a few quid.
I know only too well the intense difficulties in keeping a shop or facility open - see my recent thread about my £3000 electric bill.
The costs for business owners keep going up and up whilst the actual trade keeps going down .
Sadly it is only a matter of time before we lose most of our shops and we will be much sadder for it
It is only the shops selling beginner stuff that can survive as first purchases are still usually done in a shop as the customer needs the advice or guidance.
Higher end stuff tends to be where it gets tricky as players have more confidence to shop around
I've actually bought several things from them. Not a ton, but if everyone who played guitar in NI gave them what I gave them I reckon they'd still be in business. Granted, I do buy a lot of stuff online too, but that's mainly because the stuff I'm buying online I can't get here (no dealers), or is ridiculously more expensive here (I'll pay an extra £20 on e.g. a £500 item to buy local, not an extra £200- and that's before you even consider that that shop ISN'T actually local to me, and is a ~100 mile round trip).
I refuse to order something which a shop claims will be able to get into stock because (a) I've had problems with that before when something took 6 months to turn up and (b) that kinda defeats the purpose of getting to try it first. There's a distinct lack of higher-end stuff here, too. And by "higher end" I don't mean "more expensive Fenders", I mean stuff like suhr, tyler, all the british builders etc. Not one dealer here for any of that stuff (actually there's one dealer for JJ, and that's about it, and they have about 2 guitars in stock, one of which has a gigantic ding in the front which they offered me about £80 off for :lol: ).
Sorry for the rant, but it goes both ways. If the shops don't have what I want in stock, of course I'm going to go online. Even the odd shop which did stock the brands I was interested often didn't have the exact model i wanted in stock... and often when i did go in to try something with the intention of buying it if I liked it, I didn't like it. :lol: or at least didn't like it enough to buy it.
EDIT: the stuff I ordered was that new VHT special 6 amp (not available in the UK yet, as far as I know) and a set of sperzel locking tuners, mainly ordered to get me over the free postage threshold at thomann. As i said, those "local" guitar shops aren't exactly local, I'm not going to drive 100 miles to buy some tuners (which they probably don't have in stock anyway) when 2 clicks online will get them posted to me.
