RETAIL INDIE PROFILE
Francis Jones and Graham Jones of Amen Corner Music in Berkshire reveal how good service and a strong reputation in repairs have helped them survive the worst of the recession…
What are your best selling lines? Acoustic guitars, particularly Freshman at the moment.
How is business compared to this time last year? It’s picked up slightly over the last 12 months actually. It’s not as good as it used to be, but it’s not too bad either and it’s certainly improved recently. I think we’ve reached that turning point – people are still talking about the effects of the recession and all the doom and gloom associated with that, but I think we’ve turned that corner now.
How do you market the shop? We have our website and that’s about all we use on the marketing side, but we also have an advert in the Yellow Pages.
How do you compete with the online competition? We do try and get pretty close to them. Some we can compete with, others we can’t, but we do try as best as we can. We get a lot of enquiries through our website, but it’s not the most important part of the business, although we are looking into improving the site in the future. As for the local competition, there aren’t any music shops in Bracknell or Wokingham and you’d have to go to either Windsor or Reading to find another similar store, so we take most of the area up.
What are your biggest strengths? It’s probably the repairs side of the business, particularly with guitars. We have a great reputation for being a major port of call for anything to do with the physical side of guitars.
How do you ensure a good level of customer service? This shop has been here for 33 years and it’s part of the fixtures and fittings of Binfield. Because we offer such good prices on the repair side, we really do well in this area. It’s a personal service that we adopt here, especially as buying a guitar is such a personal thing and therefore we’re always inviting people to come down and try out as many models as they want. We let them take as long as they like and it’s that kind of service that is the key to this shop’s success.
What is the one product you couldn’t live without? Lower priced package deals are doing really well for us right now, as are tuners, particularly from Korg, but it’s the string sector as a whole that’s most important for us.
How can the industry do more to support retail?
It seems that our online competitors are getting better deals than we are – it’s certainly more of a cut-throat business with the online side. However, we don’t rely on the Internet as much as most do – we focus more on point of contact and sticking to what we’re good at.
FACT BOX
Address: Beehive Road, Binfield, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 8TR Phone: 01344 427783 Owner: Francis Jones Established: 1977 Employees: Two Best-selling lines: Acoustic guitars, particularly Freshman at the moment.
WWW.MI-PRO.CO.UK miPRO OCTOBER 2010 67
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