Discount Culture Is Crushing Independent Dealers

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]So talking about discounts is not a way about talking about a way to steal from dealers.

[00:00:07]Talking about discounts is about figuring out how to make things that are unobtainable to you a little bit more un obtainable.

[00:00:15]>> The Know Your Gear podcast.

[00:00:16]>> Here was a topic. This one was came in.

[00:00:18]This one's hot. So, this one was actually a disgruntled dealer uh who is uh wanted to let me know that they do not like uh when I talk about discounts on the podcast and teaching or invoking or or uh amplifying, whatever you want to call it, promoting you viewers asking for [clears throat] a deal.

[00:00:46]And uh here is the thing uh that I'm going to respond with. Okay, so I understand that. I mean, who does who wants to give up money? No, none of you guys want to take a pay cut, right? Um asking for a deal. I want to be very clear because I have been very clear in how I've done it over the years, okay?

[00:01:05]And how I've explained how I do it and when I do it and why I do it, but I didn't dumb it down. So, let me just dumb it down even more. Not to I'm not insulting this person and their question. I'm just saying let me just dumb it down to you. I'm an informed consumer. Okay? And most of you, regardless of what you do for a living, are informed consumers because, as I always say, hobbyists are informed consumers. They obsess over the thing they care about. In this case, music, guitars, you know, and guitar- like stuff. So, it's not like you walk in and some of you guys do this and if you do, you should stop because it's an move. But when somebody goes into a business, let's say we'll use car dealerships. You go into a car dealership and you see this car and it's $50,000 and you go, "Hey, sell it to me for 30 grand."

[00:01:54]Pulling it a number from your ass that you would like to pay is not negotiating. It's not asking for a deal.

[00:02:00]That's not what I do. I don't go two things I don't do. I one I do not assess their vulnerabilities.

[00:02:08]Why? Because I've been on that side of the fence and I didn't like it when people did it to me. What I mean by that is I don't go, "Wow, they look like they really need to pay their rent this month. Let me see how desperate they are." Okay? I don't work desperate people. Uh it's just an ethic thing. If you do that, it's on you. But I don't do it. So, first of all, let's that's already out out of the equation. The second thing I don't do is pull numbers from my ass on things I'd like to buy.

[00:02:32]Like for instance, if uh the guitar is $1,000, I don't go, "Would you take 200 bucks?" Because I obviously paid $200 for $1,000 guitar. When I make an offer, and this is the point that I'm trying to make to this dealer, when when most of us make an offer, it's an informed offer. In other words, I've done my research. Um a good a good for instance is like I go on out on on online, Craigslist, Reverb, you name it, Guitar Center.com, everywhere, and I look at the products and I go, there's a lot of them out for sale. and and the last few have sold for this price. I'm willing to buy one, but not I'm not gonna pay more than I have to. That's dumb, too. Just like you don't want to sell less than you have to, but there's an informed decision. This guitar is generally selling for about $800 or in my equation. Let's say it's a,000. It's selling for 800 bucks. That's where it's selling.

[00:03:21]And I'm asking them if they want the opportunity because that's what it is at this point to sell it. Do you know that in most the cases where I send an offer to someone on Reverb, most of the time when they decline it later, they come back and accept it.

[00:03:37]They come back a week later. They come back a day later, a month later, they send me an email and they go, "Hey, we'll take your offer." I'm like, "Right, because my offer was correct. I knew I knew what it's going to sell for.

[00:03:48]I've done both sides. I've sold all this stuff for years. I've bought all this stuff for years. I generally can tell what the market's doing at any given time. And I can see where it's all uh selling at, right? And I'm not trying to steal from anybody and I'm not trying to give anything away either on my end on both sides. I'm trying to find something that's reasonable so that I can either buy something and make motivate myself to purchase something or I can sell something and recoup as much as the price I want back that I that I'm doing because I obviously bought it and now I'm trying to recoup. My point is when So talking about discounts is not a way about talking about a way to steal from dealers.

[00:04:28]Talking about discounts is about figuring out how to make things that are unobtainable to you a little bit more un obtainable. And because here's the thing, there are things that I would never buy at a certain price point ever, ever, ever. That's fine. and and if it's a market where they're not selling, maybe it is a time for me to see if there's an opportunity for me. It's a perfect example. Plus, I always look for win-win opportunities, you know, a good example is uh I don't know if I talked about this, but when I bought my Universe, which is a very expensive guitar, and my wife and I uh and Shauna is like, "You should buy the guitar."

[00:05:03]And and for our anniversary and and we're like, "Let's do this." The person selling it wasn't a small dealer. I reached out to him and I said, I didn't say, "Hey, man, the market's a little soft right now. You should give me a deal." I said, "Hey, um, I'm willing to pay this, but I'm willing to do a couple things like, uh, I know that you're in a different state, but I have a friend and I that can drive to you and bring you cash if that could help." Right? No credit card fees. Let's cut some credit card fees. Let's see if Look, I'll save you the fees. That saves me the fees, right? We're Okay, maybe we can do something. And and and whatever it takes, we'll figure it out, right? like I'm I'm willing I'm also willing to let you ship it a little slower. I'm also willing to you know whatever. Let's work it out. And what we ended up doing, so you know, is he came to me and he goes, "Would you write the check to my wife, [laughter] right?" And he sold it outside of his store. Now, that's he didn't have to charge sales tax because he's out of state, so there was no sales tax and there was no credit card fees. And he I don't know, maybe he's keeping off his business books. I don't know what he was doing. I don't know. Maybe he owed his wife uh maybe his ex-wife and he owed her uh alimony and he's like, "Pay my wife alimony, right?" I don't know. But the point is we found a mutual win and I got the guitar at a good price and it and it kind of worked out. So that's what I'm trying to say is that when you're out there negotiating, that's you should make sure that you're an informed consumer, that you have a reasonable price that you're you're coming out with. And and I think the dealer wins in that scenario because the reality is most of the time when a dealer's cut me a deal like uh this week I bought something this week and the dealer cut me a deal. By the way, I didn't ask the deal. The dealer cut the deal. Let me give you an example. Uh I was out looking at a particular amplifier in the last two weeks online and I noticed there's a lot of them. I mean a lot of them. I had already decided to buy it.

[00:06:55]In fact, I was like, I'm buying this amp. I know I want it. I'm buying it.

[00:06:58]So, I went to buy it and I was out looking and I was like, "Wow, there's a lot for sale." Like, a lot. And then I was like, "Wow, there's a lot of used ones." Like, okay. And you could save a lot of money for for going used. But, you know, used tube amplifiers shipped, it's a little dodgy sometimes, especially when they're expensive, you know, right? If it's a right deal, maybe go that way. I'm I'm open both ways. And imagine after about a week, it took, you know, didn't take a lot of time. I found a dealer who was making deals on them.

[00:07:28]Of course they were because they were sitting on them like everybody else and they ti decided it's time to turn that money back into something else. So they gave me a deal. I didn't ask for the deal. They gave the deal. The point is that's what you do when you're an informed consumer. That's when you do when you actually know what you're talking about or know what you got your research and you figure it out. So um that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about asking for a discount or a deal. informed requests um that uh that are reasonable.

[00:07:59]So, and like I told you guys in my store, I never gave a discount. I never h I never gave a discount in 13 years. I didn't have to give. So, anytime anyone got a deal for me, which was a lot of times because I did have a store through four years of horrible recession time of that section of it. Um, if I give you a deal, yeah, it's because I had to. And I can tell you uh that because there was a lot of times when people are like, I'll buy this off you for that price. And I'm like or this price and I'm like, nope.

[00:08:31]And I wouldn't sell it. And I got the right price. So, it works both. If you like this podcast clip, you can watch the full episode by clicking here. Or you can watch another video if you want to click here. And as always, I want to thank you for your time. Until the next time, know your gear.