Peach Guitars - opinions wanted!

rlw

All the guitars I've ever bought in store have been impulse purchases - I was nearby and popped in.  That's about 10 guitars.

dc77

I live about an hour away from Peach and always drop in whenever the chance arises when I'm on or near the A12. Not once have I walked out empty handed purely after seeing something that caught my eye or something specific. The shop is a great place to be in and look round be it the main floor and in the rooms upstairs. I've taken both my kids there when they started playing purely for the experience. Again not leaving empty handed. 
I fully appreciate the need for appointments currently. But I do hope that if and when a level of normality returns the appointment system is ditched and normal service is resumed.

barnstorm

shaunk26 said:

SPECTRUM001 said:

2. Relating to the above, is there going to be prioritisation for someone booking to try out eg a £4K Custom Shop vs an £800 Vintera ? It would be horrible to feel like you are not allowed in cos someone else is more affluent.

You beat me to it Spectrum001. It is my worry that peach will eventually ask what your budget is when making an appointment and decide how soon you can get an appointment. Second class citizens created potentially.

When they sold me my first guitar a very long time ago, they spent more time giving me advice than a £300 sale was strictly worth, I'm sure. The only thing I've bought in person since they moved to the shiny new place was a reasonably expensive amp and when I got there I had to wait for service (which I didn't mind at all) until they'd sorted out a chap with his first guitar and a dinky Orange Crush. I don't know how much of their business beginners represent these days, but it's never been a snooty outfit.

Bridgehouse

Dear theFretboard,

Please don’t fuck this up like last time.

Love,
The modmins.

duotone

PeachGuitarsRyan said:

With lockdown about to lift again, and the expectation that shops will in some capacity re-open their doors, we are considering making our appointment only system a permanent fixture.

We are sufficiently staffed to continue to grow online, and this is an area we feel passionately about developing further. Over the last year we’ve been able to work with our contacts to secure some incredible deals and exclusives, push out more great content than ever before and subsequently get ourselves into the NAMM Top 100. We’d really love to continue to push forward in this direction but the decision to close the store to passing trade is something that we feel you guys, the customers, should have a say in.

So, how would you feel if we continued to limit in store purchasing to pre-arranged appointments but offset it with an improved and refined online store? In addition to responding on here, my email address is ryan@peachguitars.com should you want to discuss it in any more detail!

I would have no problem booking an appointment during the pandemic, but would be annoyed post-pandemic, if I was shushed away at the entrance for not having pre-booked one. Honestly this would 100% make me go elsewhere & probably would mean I wouldn’t be in a hurry to use them again (both bricks & mortar shop & online). 

Isn’t this a bit like NEXT only letting me in the store to try on jeans if I had pre-booked a slot?

When you say “push out more great content than ever before and subsequently get ourselves into the NAMM Top 100” - Is this “Content & Top 100” bringing in enough income on its own? 

 

The best online store in the world, would not replace a store (no matter how small) that I could physically walk around in & try out guitars, by strings/straps etc.

LordOxygen

RaymondLin said:

LordOxygen said:

FWVLIW... once Covid is behind us I’d still be happy to make an appointment (with a 80 mile drive each way it makes sense to do that), but I would still like to have a walk around and browse rather than just try 1 or 2 guitars I preselected from your website - the attraction of a big guitar shop for me is to see things I didn't know I wanted – and then buy one.

I am pretty confident you could, it wouldn't make business sense to stop a customer trying and buying a product.  I would only presume that the appointment is to limit the number of customers in store, during covid would mean social distancing, post-covid would mean less staff required (cost-saving). But in terms of, seeing another guitar you hadn't thought of when booking and trying it, I can't imagine a store, any store would deny a customer that unless it's already spoken for.

Thank you, that's useful to know. 

bencowling81

First of all, hats off for putting the question out there and canvassing some feedback. I think your approach makes total sense if its the case that most people make a special trip to you anyway and you don't have a lot of passing trade (which given your location and that you focus on high-end gear might be the case) .

On the other hand, I work right next to Denmark Street and massively value (and recently miss) being able to pop into the stores there on a whim at lunch time. Have actually bought 2 guitars on impulse thanks to the relationship built up with the guys at the stores there, a TV Yellow Heritage H-137 and a gold Fernandez strat (which turned out to be "the one" - who'd have thought?)

If they were appointment only there I'd have never happened upon those guitars.

lukedlb

When I buy jeans online, I buy 3 or 4 of the same jeans, two size M, two size L, choose the one that fits and looks better and send the other three back. Does this ever happen with guitars? After all, no two guitars are ever the same. It’s not like I’m inventing anything new; even Hendrix did it back in the day: six wah pedals would turn up and he’d choose the one that sounded the best. 

Now it’s true that modern pedals are built to more exact specs compared to the wild values found on old fuzzes or cry babies. Even fender builds guitars to exact specs so instead of just one crap guitar, you have a hundred (g-dish!). 

While standardisation does help customer confidence in buying online, it’ll be a shame that a customer will never get to hear or feel an unusual guitar by chance, thus reducing the chance of going beyond the usual. Analogue instruments need to be played, not watched. FX or digital instruments should fly off the digital shelves however. 

JayGee

I live relatively locally (Braintree) and have been a regular in person visitor for pretty much as long as Peach has existed, going back to the days of previous management when the guitars shared space with metal detectors.

Quite often I’ve passed through without buying anything, occasionally I’ve emerged with more than I bargained for, sometimes I’ve emerged with something radically different to what I went in for, quite often I’ve just been popping in for a pre-gig emergency purchase of a lead or two or a couple sets of strings. Both of my children became regular customers too. I’m not convinced that an appointment only policy lends itself to building up that kind of relationship, and it’s something I’d miss....

It could well be that the benefits in terms of long-distance, big ticket customers outweigh that, in which case, well, it’s a business decision, and it would be daft to argue with the numbers. But I’d miss being able to drop in...

Gerz6558

Was looking at the fender player series buttercream strats you listed only yesterday. Clocked that you had individual photos of each and their weights. Definitely the right way to go. It would make your place pretty much the only option if I was buying something.

Niallseroreilly

Why don't you just open weekends and have appointments during the week..

skullfunkerry

S56035 said:

Website improvements:

• Change the background of some of the guitar pictures to highlight the guitar as the current one is similar to lots of the acoustics.
• Wider range of filters such as "T-Style", LP-Style etc for those looking for a particular shape with a different headstock name.  Same with amps i.e. good for Metal, blues etc
• I've always liked the videos you guys have done and would love to see a service were you produce a video for a specific guitar or amp I'm looking at (if you haven't already).  Would probably have to be at cost other wise you'll get inundated.

I believe they're starting a new YouTube channel with videos of every guitar they have in stock (pretty sure I didn't imagine that).

As far as the appointments thing goes I think on the whole it's a good idea; it certainly wouldn't put me off using Peach in the future - although I would feel a little sheepish if I spent an hour in the shop & then ended up not buying anything after trying out a load of gear...

bingefeller

Having a solid online store is a big plus for me as I live in Northern Ireland and my chances of visiting your store any time in the future are slim.  

I have to say that I was speaking with Connor on Saturday afternoon and he was fantastic.  The fact that you take the time to inspect your guitars, and have a tech check them over before they are sent out, is a huge plus for me and a major reason as to why I will now be dealing with you again in the future. 

ThePrettyDamned

Appointment sounds fine to me, but I'm sadly not a peach customer yet!

More important, in my opinion, is service - every guitar should be set up by someone who knows what they're doing before being shipped, pretty much regardless of cost (cheap guitars benefit greatly from a quick set up, expensive ones probably need a lot less attention so that's where the cost is covered perhaps?). 

Jimbro66

Peach seems to be looking at three categories of customer: Those who live too far from the store to want to visit so are happy to buy online, those who are happy to drive up to a few hours to visit and those who are reasonably local and like to drop in.

Online buyers will continue unaffected. Long distance visitors would probably welcome appointments as long as they are reassured that their visit would not be in vain (e.g. item sold) and that there would be some flexibility in what they are allowed to see and try out. Local drop-in buyers would probably not appreciate being asked to make appointments so may well go elsewhere (good news for Mann's).

So perhaps it comes down to what proportion of Peach customers falls into each of those three groups as to what policy decisions are taken?

Bellycaster

If by some miracle we get past this Covid thing, I'd want my Shopping experiences to be the same as they were before. So, I'd prefer the ones that offers that.

Of course, it's not all about Covid, I can see many plus sides for a Business that wants to operate appointment only. I don't think I could warm to it though.

brownovich

Jimbro66 said:

Local drop-in buyers would probably not appreciate being asked to make appointments so may well go elsewhere (good news for Mann's).

Not sure there’s much that would persuade me I needed to go into Mann’s....

I stood outside Primark in the rain waiting for my wife the other week rather than go in there...

sev112

It takes me several to many visits to a shop to narrow down, then play the likely guitar 3 or 4 times,  before I make my buying decisions. 

100% appointments would not really suit that, unless you were happy to give me several appointments without guarantee of a sale.
But I doubt that I’m really a statistical representation of your business numbers

however, I don’t buy strings and plectrums and guitar straps and sheet music off the web - I buy them from one of the various guitar shops I frequent as it seems better to give them my money than a website.   And you know I’ve then seen and then bought guitars and amps from those shops in the past as a result, even if I did go back and visit several times to do so.


id suggest one day in the week and one day at the weekend when you do “open shop” even if only for half the day, and change the days each week,  might be a nice compromise and “win:win”

Philly_Q

I think appointments, as an option, are a good idea even if things return completely to "normal".

When I was younger and less confident - not that I'm very confident now - I quite often took long train journeys to guitar shops to check out something I'd seen online (or more likely in a magazine ad, in those days).  Sometimes I'd arrive, find all the cool staff chatting to their cool mates, and completely bottle it.... and off I'd go, all the way home again.  Having an appointment solves that problem and establishes you as a proper customer.

duotone

Would be great to have the ‘Country of manufacture‘ within the product details. Rarely is this included & accurate on any guitar sites I visit.