But last week, mere days after the last Allans Billy Hyde store closed its doors, Con Gallin’s Australian Musical Imports (AMI) bought the Allans Music and Billy Hyde brands as well as Australian Music Group, musical instrument distributors Musiclink and Intermusic, their associated domain names and websites. So the flagship stores at Southport in Queensland, the NSW stores in Sydney, Alexandria and Parramatta, the Adelaide outlet and Melbourne’s Blackburn and Bourke Street stores will continue to trade.
“This is probably the most important thing that’s happened in our industry,” Gallin says. “Allans and Billy Hyde were the two most substantial companies in the history of Australian musical instrument retail. Some of the consumers think, ‘Oh that music store ripped me off’ – y’know, whatever – they think people that sell something at a store are rip-offs. The fact is, you’ve got to make some kind of money to pay the rent and the wages of the people that work there. And in our industry, nobody gets rich. You can see these Allans and Billy Hyde guys have been losing enormous amounts of money for years. Over $150 million. The consumer wasn’t being ripped off. The company was losing money hand over fist. So the question was, do we let it all disappear? Or do we take the risk and do all the hard work to get them going quickly, within about a week? That was the challenge. Did we need it? Certainly not. We were comfortable as we were. We liked the business as it was. But in six months, twelve months time, you’re going to regret not doing anything. If you’re going to do something, do it now.”
The receivers had turned down a previous offer by AMI for AMG. But AMI wouldn’t give up, and had already secured the leases for the buildings the stores were in. “Right at the very end, when they liquidated the stock, they said they would tender out the names,” Gallin says. “So we had to make a choice: do we give them a stupid offer, something ridiculous to make sure we get it, or do we put a cheap offer in? We decided to put our best foot forward. We already had the leases and people and we could trade under Gallin’s Musicians Pro Shop but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Allans and Billy Hyde would disappear. And the databases and the websites and all the history and all the rest of it. So we made them a phenomenal offer and were successful. The idea is, it’s going to be musician’s stores where musicians work there for the benefit of the customers.”
Gallin’s link to Allans goes back to his early teens, initially as a student taking lessons, then as a part-time employee dusting guitars and cleaning the floors. Through determination and a strong customer service ethic he’d moved his way up to a management position by the time he was 19. “I didn’t know anything about sales. I was just keen. I just loved instruments.” From there he struck out on his own, making weekend trips overseas to source vintage instruments to bring back home. Eventually AMI secured the Australian distributorship of the iconic Gibson brand and associated companies Kramer, Epiphone and Trace Elliot, as well as Orange Amplification. Through extensive networking and research (including reading virtually every business-related biography on the market), Gallin has a unique understanding of both sides of the musical instrument retail industry: the music and the business. A few weeks ago, Gallin said in an interview that AMG didn’t understand the culture of musical instrument sales. So what did they get wrong? “They weren’t from our industry. They had a lot of ideas and they knew how to run companies, they were very professional and their back-end office was unbelievably organised and professional. But the problem was nobody knew what anybody was doing. The computer programs were the best and most expensive you could get, but it didn’t work. They tried but they hadn’t been in the industry long enough. Sure, they had colossal turnover, but they couldn’t make any money. And it’s not me saying it, it’s just what the outcome shows.”
Gallin already has plans for the revived Allans: “We’ve only just got the keys. And our first promotion is, we’re offering customers free tickets to the KISS/Motley Crue concert. Come in and buy a guitar and you get two free tickets. We’re trying to link the stores to live performance. It’s going to be a feel-good music business. It’s not about the money. You need another business if you’re in this for the money! It’s great for us because we’re probably now the biggest music company in Australia, but that’s not the point. We’ll be able to build a much nicer, better business more focused on music than money and accountants.”
BY PETER HODGSON
