Dealer Spotlight
This month:
www.peachguitars.com Peach Guitars
Peach Guitars takes you back to the halcyon days of the good old local guitar store where you could stroll in and hang out whilst perusing some seriously mouth watering musical equipment. Fender Custom Shop, PRS, Marshall and, of course, Dr. Z amplifiers take pride of place among the amps and guitars stocked in this deceptively large music store tucked away in the corner of a craft centre located outside the quiet hamlet of Blake End, near Braintree Essex. Owner/manager John Priest began working at Peach as a part time assistant during his school Work Experience, eventually joining UK Mesa Boogie distributors Westside before returning to take over Peach in 2005, transforming what was an already well established dealer into one of the UK’s most respected independent music retailers. “When I took the shop on I knew it was good business to start with
and I already had built up a good relationship with the customers. I also knew that the business could be improved upon and we’ve certainly done that thus far.” John explains, “I think really you need a good selection of quality stock. We don’t set out to be a bargain basement guitar store, of course we are competitive but I think that a lot of the reason why our customers keep coming back is that we have a lot of killer stock and knowledgeable staff, and that’s what has helped to get us through these tough times that we are all experiencing at the moment. We all really enjoy what we do, a lot of the time when a piece of equipment comes in we get as excited about it as anyone else. We’ve been careful to establish a platform of products that we enjoy selling and that we are knowledgeable about.” Peach guitars is famous for helping to establish premier U.S. amp brand Dr. Z in the UK; so successful is this arrangement that Dr. Z also uses Peach as its official European artist support base, supplying amps to the likes of Steve Miller when he is on tour in Europe. “We built up the original dealership stocking level, which was about 12 amps a year, to about 200 amps a year now,” John states proudly, “We are the second biggest Dr. Z dealer in the world and it looks like we’re going to win their Exporter of the Year award for four years in a row now!”
John admits that some famous clients number among his regular customers, including one or two who are not necessarily associated with guitar playing... “Probably the most diverse customer we’ve had is Keith Flint from The Podigy. He had four or five of the original Rory Gallagher Strats off me, he didn’t know who Rory Gallagher was but he absolutely loved the look of the guitar. I think there were 40 pieces of the original run worldwide and he wanted me to find every single one of those for him!” PM
Planet Waves is a registered trademark or trademark of D’Addario & Company, Inc. or its affiliates in the US and/or other countries. © 2010 D’Addario & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. © 2010 Yearhour Ltd.
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