An east-side store that sold guitars to many local musicians and taught guitar lessons to many would-be musicians for nearly three decades has closed, a casualty of the bad economy.
After selling Taylor, Gibson and other major brand-name guitars since 1982, Guitars Etc. shut its doors at 5646 E. Speedway on Feb. 16.
The closure ends a lifelong dream of running a music store for Adrian Schumacher, an Australian native, a classical guitarist starting at age 10, a rock guitarist starting at age 17, and a Tucsonan since 1980. Now 46, he had owned the store since 2003.
He had borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal Small Business Administration loans to buy the store but never earned enough to repay the debt, Schumacher said Thursday.
The store sold hundreds of thousands of guitars yearly at its peak in the 1990s, he said. But it never recovered from the recession that hit in 2008, he said. Since then, he's lost 30 to 40 percent of his business and saw no turnaround coming, he said.
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Five of nine store employees lost their jobs in the closing, but most repairmen and music teachers were relocated to other music stores in town, Schumacher said. Three full-time guitar teachers worked there at the time of closure. At one time, five worked there.
"We thought we could hang in there and secure additional financing, but no banks would give us any," Schumacher said. "We just couldn't sustain it any more. It was not going to get better, in my opinion, anytime soon."
In bad times, people pull back on luxury items, and "you can't have a bigger luxury item than a guitar," Schumacher said. "Things costing more than $1,000 didn't sell anymore."
What will be missed with the closing is the personal customer service you can get from a local business but not from a large chain store, said Jon Rittman, a guitar teacher at the store for 28 years until it closed. He will now teach from his home.
Rittman has been a jazz and rock guitarist for decades whose pupils included Barry Sparks, who was a bass guitarist for the heavy-metal favorites the Scorpions, as well as for Ted Nugent and Dokken. Rittman said he also taught Ty Miller, star of the "Young Riders" TV series.
Greg Morton, a bluegrass guitarist in Tucson for 42 years, worked at Guitars Etc. for several years during its peak business era in the 1990s as manager of shipping and receiving and in demonstrating guitars for customers. His current Greg Morton Band plays weekly downtown.
"It was very popular, and the economy was doing really well," Morton said of the store. "I think it was their personable style that made it popular, their customer service was so good. Anything you needed, they'd get for you at the drop of a hat."
Morton described Schumacher as a "very smart guy, with a charismatic quality about him. He was one of the best salesmen I've seen in a long time. He knew his way around the guitar and had great knowledge of amplifiers and sound equipment."
Like many local guitar stores, Guitars Etc.'s business had taken a hit from the opening in 2001 of the national chain Guitar Center, at 4720 E. Broadway, which offers lower prices for some of the same equipment. But numerous other local guitar stores besides Guitars Etc. have survived despite the national competition.
Officials at the Chicago Music Store and Sticks and Strings, both longtime Tucson businesses, said they're still profitable despite the recession. Officials of Rainbow Guitars declined to comment on their business. Beaver's Band Box, the Instrumental Music Center and Metronome Music are among other surviving local guitar and musical instrument stores.
One reason Guitars Etc. didn't last as long as some competitors may be that it relied heavily on local business and didn't delve as much as some competitors into online retailing, Schumacher said. He was selling guitars over eBay but had shut down the store's online operation a year ago.
But he added that he has no regrets about having been so closely tied to the Tucson music scene, economically.
"The local Tucson musician population got hit very, very hard by the downturn and that was my bread and butter," Schumacher said.
Selling off of the Web "is a huge part of our business," said Tony Bernard, owner of Sticks and Strings, 8796 E. Broadway. "We have a whole website where you can buy hundreds of things. We do a lot of online advertising in social media. It's been going pretty good. We're not stocking as much of everything. We're bringing in pieces people feel they want."
Longtime Tucson rock guitarist Rich Hopkins used to buy guitars from Guitars Etc. a decade ago when he was more into collecting equipment.
A founder of the Sand Rubies and the Luminarios, Hopkins described Guitars Etc.'s closing as a sad event.
Contact reporter Tony Davis at tdavis@azstarnet.com or 806-7746.