Guitar Center operates almost 300 showrooms plus another 229 sister stores, drawing shoppers for try-before-you-buy jam sessions, classes and rentals. 'They did not expect a very sharp downturn and recession, and the growth of online (stores) that limited Guitar Center's top-line growth potential.'ĭebt led Guitar Center toward bankruptcy, and the pandemic became the catalyst. 'They were anticipating continued growth,' says Brian Majeski, who runs the music industry data and market research firm Music Trades. In 2007, it got bought by the private equity firm Bain Capital, which borrowed heavily for the deal and saddled Guitar Center with the debt that by 2020 reached $1.3 billion. In the mid-2000s, the chain got infected with a common retail malaise: massive debt. By the 1990s, Guitar Center blanketed the country as the largest seller of musical instruments. First came guitars and amplifiers, then drums, keyboards and gear. But when the British Invasion hit the U.S., the founder heard the driving guitar riffs of the Beatles, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and went all in on rock and roll. Guitar Center started out selling home organs in California in the 1950s.

The company's representatives did not respond to NPR's inquiries.

No turnaround has been more rapid than Guitar Center, which reportedly filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering, or IPO, less than a year after emerging from bankruptcy. Mattress Firm, Claire's, Guitar Center - they're all recent bankruptcy survivors whose stores you might have passed in a mall, perhaps with their doors shuttered early in the pandemic.īut this year brought an unexpected, dramatic reversal, as these chains join a surprisingly long list of retailers who aim to find new life on the stock market, looking to go public. View of Guitar Center in Hollywood, Calif.

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