Strumming A New Business - GuitarStreet
The growing influence of eCommerce on our lives has reduced our weekly trips to the supermarket. From clothing to pets, food, furniture, beverages -- internet has it all. Adding another feather to this ever growing segment is GuitarStreet.in, an online store that caters to musical instruments for music lovers.
GuitarStreet sells musical instruments online and is more than just an eCommerce store. GuitarStreet’s blog and Facebook page lets users research the products they want to buy, to learn more about music -- for example the different tabs for playing guitar or to share interesting stuff. Founded by Utkarsh Apoorva and Madhu GB (Maddy) in October last year, GuitarStreet serves an ideal platform for both amateurs and experts to buy a musical instrument. Utkarsh holds a B Tech degree from IIT Delhi while Madhu is a graduate in computer science from University of Mysore.
Both founders have worked for start-ups in the past and entrepreneurship was just waiting to happen. They had no intention of working on GuitarStreets in particular, but got the idea based on customer feedback during the experimental stage. At that time the duo were toying with different eCommerce frameworks and ideas like social eCommerce, educational games and GuitarStreet was one of it. Utkarsh shares “We found our first set of customers easily. In fact we were not completely prepared and wanted to see if people would respond. None of us was really sure if people would buy something like guitars online. But they did!” While the first consignment didn’t bring profits to the table, as the word spread, the cash counter started ringing. Since launch GuitarStreet has shipped around 500 instruments.
Most of GuitarStreet’s customers come from Tier-2 cities. “We knew when we entered the market that we were solving a real problem for the customer,” says Utkarsh. The increasing loyalty among customers also motivates the nine member team at GuitarStreet to work harder. They are looking for good people to join their team. And Utkarsh promises that the company is a fun place to work at. “We are a group of individuals having fun, playing guitars, listening to music and working pretty hard while doing all that,” says Utkarsh.
Today the startup has over 5,000 people on their mailing list and over 30,000 likes on their Facebook page -- and both these metrics are continuously growing. GuitarStreet sources its guitars from Sonido Musicals, their supplier. Scaling up is the biggest challenge that the company is facing today. eCommerce is not very easy model to execute, scalability and lower profit margins tend to affect start-ups. While Utkarsh wants GuitarStreet to scale, high costs of doing business is holding them back. GuitarStreet wants to goto the next level and are in the process of finding an investor.
