The majors don’t need us. The majors probably haven’t heard of us.
We will stop the boutiques being pushed out
Some time around 2007 I was chatting in one of the guitar shops still standing in Denmark Street, London. Crossrail, the huge engineering project to build a train station underground, hadn’t yet forced the eviction of many of Denmark Street’s guitar shops.
The owner was telling me about one of the huge guitar brands demanding swathes of shop floorspace and a minimum order commitment of hundreds of thousands of pounds from retailers to allow them to stock their products.
You know the brand. You’ve probably narrowed it down to one of two.
The shop didn’t stock these guitars. They couldn’t afford to.
This was guitars, not pedals, but the fact still stands. The major manufacturers don’t need any help getting exposure. They were trying to block the smaller competition from getting a look in.
Here, the smaller boutique pedals will never be pushed out by the majors.
We promote boutique pedals ahead of the major manufacturers
If you’re a genuine boutique pedal creator then you might not be stocked in the major stores. You might not have deals with the distributors who put pedals on shelves and you probably don’t have the time to market the bejesus out of your products. You need exposure.
The majors have this all sewn up. They already have the slick marketing machine that means their products end stocked in your local stores, front and centre of your favourite websites and in the hands of your chosen YouTube influencers.
We promise that, where possible, we will elevate the boutique pedal creators ahead of the majors. We will give them and their products the platform they need to be seen.
We will promote the underdog ahead of the corporation.
We give a fairer wholesale price
We will make sure that our boutique pedal creators receive a bigger cut of the sale.
The massive retailers can call the shots. They can screw the wholesale price down because they know the manufacturers want to be seen there. Only the majors who shift thousands of units can afford it.
The boutiques are priced out.
We will give favourable terms to the boutiques and ensure they are promoted ahead of the majors.