According to reporting on The Washington Post online today, Guitar Center has filed for
Chapter 11 protection.
Citing a press release, the Post explained that the California-based company plans to
exit bankruptcy by the end of 2020 with $800MM of its debt erased.
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Personally, I'm thrilled they plan to continue business operations. I'm really surprised — here we are
the week before Thanksgiving and they plan to have it completed by the end of the year. They must be
really confident about their financing.
The store near us has some really talented people working for it, and I like the
store manager — she lets her personality show, and I really appreciate that. And everybody
there has been fantastic with Kiddo. They've got my support.
UPDATE:
A couple of things.
First, Musician's Friend is the same company as Guitar Center. I'd
suspected it for a little while because a lot of their data sure seemed similar; but when I placed an
order, the customer service rep actually SAID it. So, that puts that mystery to bed.
The second thing is that they don't have any inventory. Maybe this is part of the restructuring,
but every instrument I looked at online was back ordered. So, I don't exactly know what's included in
"retail operations," but inventory isn't part of it, I guess. This super sucks for customers who
were looking to spend their money with them, because I'm sure many of them shopped elsewhere after
finding their potential gift wouldn't be in until after the holidays. In my case, two likely more
popular colors weren't expected until late February; the only other color, black, was
estimated to be available at the end of December (and not in time for Christmas). I didn't check on
the back-ordered instruments I was less serious about.
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