A little pro-active activism on behalf of Middle C Music

Best Buy plans to open a guitar store-within-a-store at their Tenleytown location. They are eager, as one Best Buy employee so eloquently put it, to “kick the competition to the curb” with this new venture.

Although Guitar Center is the competition that Best Buy claims to be targeting, BB is *not* opening its first East Coast guitar shop at its Rockville Pike location (just a mile from a Guitar Center). Instead, Best Buy has chosen its Tenleytown store – one block away from Middle C, a flourishing independently-owned local business and DC’s only full-service music shop – for its initial foray into this market.

While competition between two nationally-owned chains (like GC and BB) vying for dominance in the same market niche could benefit consumers, the David and Goliath scenario that’s shaping up in Tenleytown will certainly leave us worse off. Best Buy’s increasingly global purchasing power, as well as its geographical and product-line diversification, mean it can easily wipe out a small local retailer.

For the past six years, Middle C has been a real neighborhood resource, bringing music to our streets virtually every day of the year. While Middle C provides a variety of different services (music lessons for all ages and levels, performance space, part-time professional employment for local musicians, sheet music for bands, piano instruction, choral groups, instrument rentals, master classes by visiting artists, summer music camps, publicity for other performances and music venues), it depends on guitar sales to keep it in the black. Remove that profit center, and the whole enterprise is likely to go under. Best Buy cannot and will not be able to replace what it is likely to destroy.

Middle C also serves as a kind of anchor for other retailers in the area, including (ironically) Best Buy itself. Parents whose kids will be spending the next half hour to an hour at lessons typically run errands while waiting. I’ve routinely patronized the Best Buy (ink for the printer), Whole Foods (stuff for dinner), the hardware store (odds and ends I’ve saved up in anticipation of my weekly visit to this block), as well as Starbucks, Robeks, and Hungry Tiger in this context. I see other parents walk in carrying Guapo’s takeout, bags from the Container Store, etc. And my kid can’t be the only one who frequently leaves her guitar lesson eager to purchase a new CD. Middle C is also useful in extending the retail strip on its side of the street. It has replaced at least one service business (a travel agency) and provides a nice bridge to Hudson Trail Outfitters in a block that otherwise would be dominated by office uses.

It’s probably not too late to encourage Best Buy to locate their guitar store in one of their other metro-area stores. They haven’t started rehabbing the customer service section at Tenleytown yet to make way for this new store or publicly announced their plans. A petition campaign at this stage, explaining what’s at stake for our neighborhood retail strip, might be effective.

I’ve drafted such a petition, which we hope to submit to Best Buy's Officers and Directors as soon as possible. If you’re interested in signing it, stop by Middle C Music (4530 Wisconsin Avenue) or email Myrna Sislen (Middle C’s owner) at info@middlecmusic.com with your name and address and a request that she add it to the petition.