LeftyBassist.com

I was just thinking the other day two of the bigger supposed lefty friendly sites Bass Central and Southpaw Guitars never update their inventory on line. I go on once in a while and yup same old crap never changes and I have called both shops to talk to a sales guy and I always get the same type of customer service that they are too busy to bother with me and they have no idea what’s in stock. Why invest in a website with pictures and pricing if you’re newest bass pictures are 3 or more years old. Just saying...

But then again maybe it's better I don't know about the newest inventory?

Same experience. Amazing to think how much more business they could be doing with a true web marketing strategy -- not just keeping their site updated, but doing more to engage with online communities, like this one. Perhaps with their website, they're turning over inventory too fast to keep it updated. In any case, to treat those who don't set foot in their store as something less than bona fide customers seems rather old school.

From what I gather, most of what you see on the Bass Central site were special orders anyway... other than some Stingrays, an occasional Spector and a Fender or two, they don't really stock any lefties anymore.

They did have a sunburst/rosewood Lakland 55-94 in stock a little while ago that I GAS'd over... I think it was an accidental double order for a customer or something.

Adirondack Guitars has a very good lefty inventory that they keep up to date:

http://www.adirondackguitar.com/lefty/lh_bass.htm

You can also check out Drum City:

http://www.drumcityguitarland.com/drumc ... index.aspx

+1 to what PJ said. I was just at Drum City Guitarland this past week, and at first I was a bit disoriented. I saw only one lefty bass on the floor, but when I asked about the website, the ended up bringing a bunch of lefty basses down the stairs that they had new in box. They told me that they sell 3 lefty guitars a day, and lefty basses about once every couple of weeks. They thought lefty instruments were an important part of their business.

I brought this issue up with Jimmy at Southpaw, after having spent the better part of two days there, I got a sense of the issue. They have a lot of low end righties that they sell as well, and the foot traffic is intense between the people who come in for the righties from the local communities, and the lefty guitars that they are busy packing up each day for shipment. Seems like they already have a business built up. Also, they only have Larry, Jimmy, and a luthier who comes in a couple of days a week on staff, so they keep busy, to put it mildy. If you want to see what they have visit my thread on this earlier. It's is still up o date for the most part.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3377

I had some good experiences dealing with Dennis at Adirondack. The guy seem to care about his customers and does update his site. They don't carry Fenders or Musicman but a lot of cool lefties.

Since the owners of these businesses are far more concerned about selling merchandise than following technology trends... and they're WAY better taking care of walk-ins than they are updating websites... they could benefit GREATLY from contracting someone to set them up with a way to gather peoples emails so they could email everyone with a weekly stock update... which would also be incredibly easy for them to do if they're on any kind of computer-based sales system.

I have done this... several times... and it's not just EASY to do, but it's easy to maintain.

I mean... even if they are still on a paper-based records system, almost everyone knows how to use a scanner at this point. Scan your stock list and send out a mass email to your subscribers on a weekly basis.

This is what I suggested to them, among other things.

Addison,
jimmy @ Southpaw is not just old-school. He's WAY old-school. He has no interest in technology whatsoever other than having his cell phone work. it took him a long time to get used to cordless phones, let alone cell phones. he'd rather retire than go the modern route (and he's not all that far off from retiring).

He probably could have retired 5 years ago, had he bothered with a decent website.

Apparently, we all think we could do a better job. We should jointly buy his business and show him how to do it!

Well, I don't think I could run his store better than he can... but on the ecommerce/web marketing/design side of things, I know I could.

It's what I do for a living.

Well, I train people to properly run retail stores!

I am an outstanding consumer. just the kinda guy you two are targeting LOL