How One Music Retailer is Beating Amazon

Anderton’s is a music gear store in England, focused mostly on guitars, that really gets social media. Their YouTube videos feature really good musicians having a really good time experimenting with the equipment they sell.

Their best videos involve the two primary hosts, a guitar maker/pro musician and his friend, the owner of the shop, as they’re blindfolded and handed various guitars.

They’re asked to guess whether they’re playing cheap guitars or expensive guitars — custom handmade guitars or factory-churned guitars.

Often they have a hard time. Sometimes the differences between a $500 guitar and a $5,000 can’t be heard at all by one or both. They need to look to know for sure. It’s not that every guitar sounds like a $500 guitar, but rather that they’re so skilled, they can make any guitar sound like a $5,000 guitar.

I see parallels here to every creative hobby/profession. So much emphasis is placed on tools, when the listener/viewer only cares about the output. Who cares what camera you used to produce that photo, or what app you used to write your book? Was the book any good? Did the photo evoke any emotions?

Another lesson: the success of their videos has turned them into a huge, thriving music retail company in the age of Amazon. It’s because their videos are so honest. They’re willing to trash a bad piece of gear even if they make a lot of money selling it. Imagine the trust that builds with an audience.