No answer to emails. Phone constantly engaged. Website down since last week.
Anyone having any luck with GAK or have they gone under ?
1 Like
Lots of rumours stating they’ve gone under, also mentioned in the bax financial troubles thread
That would be mental if true.
Wow - appears they have
yeah it was in the news a few days ago
i live not too far from GAK, sad to see it’s gone down
4 Likes
yeah it’s a shame
Oh man… another one gets squished under the big capitalism boot.
I haven’t been seeing their products on google search results for a really long time either. their new rebranding and website was quite bad. hope that wasn’t the reason. It’s a quite known phenomenon dramatic changes to brands damages businesses.
Yellow was their colour, so it was on brand.
I got used to the new website quickly which is an indicator it was fine. (humans don’t like change in general I think that’s what you were feeling)
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/25043491.closed-brighton-music-shop-gak-says-unable-trade/
I haven’t been there for a few years (I don’t live in Brighton) but it seemed like a good shop.
GAK the physical shop, and GAK the online retailer were originally separate entities. Don’t know if that changed recently, but I remember going in there years ago and asking why the shop prices were higher and that was their answer, and would explain why they didn’t offer an in-store collection service at the time. It seems both have gone down though. It was never very well run, and they did a lot of shady shit and got fined some years back for price fixing with Yamaha:
Hopefully the retail store can survive. It’s a characterful place with lots of history.
1 Like
I read about this a few days ago, something to do with an agreement they made with Yamaha that violated UK law regarding anti-competitive pricing. Said that GAK was found to have actively participated in Yamaha’s pricing policy, using price-monitoring software to ensure compliance with minimum prices and even informing Yamaha about competitors’ price drops.
I only know what I read online though so can’t say how much of that is accurate.
Bought a second hand qy70 from GAK in 2000. Still got it. Still remember the guy tweaking the cutoff and resonance to hook me in and close the sale.
5 Likes
The term ‘price fixing’ and the notion of this being shady/underhand is absolute BS.
Price Fixing = MAP (minimum advertised price) in most other territories outside of the EU, and it’s designed to stop businesses/retailers race to the bottom with discounts.
It might sound like it’s in the interests of the customer, but long term it isn’t when it means that big retailers who can afford a ‘loss leader’ pricing tactic can afford to take more of a hit than their competitors.
Bax, and GAK, have both been in that race to the bottom and have gone under.
I was working for a large online retailer back in 2006/7, and, even then, GAK had ‘price bots’ scouring other online retailers making sure they were always price matched to the lowest advertised price.
I’m surprised they lasted this long to be honest.
1 Like
“close the filter, close the sale”
2 Likes
I disagree. Price fixing only benefits large corporations and as a consumer I couldn’t care less if Korg’s profit margins. And as a consumer I don’t see why we don’t deserve to get cheaper goods? Competition is always healthy. If you don’t have competition then you only have adobe. Then you only have Google. Why same synths are more expensive compared to 10 years ago? Same tech same plastic but mr Roland needs to show higher profit margins on their slide show. Not like overall percentage - compared to last year percentage.
I have a feeling GAK felt under pressure to lose such a large client like Yamaha and did the deal. Honestly- large companies can just sod off. I’m more sad that gak being under fire and Yamaha is just slipping away - correct me if I’m wrong but somehow they got some sort of immunity from getting fined aren’t they? So basically they’ve saved the day by crushing a local business.
Edit: the bold word
You either have a free market or you don’t, for better or worse. Colluding to price a product at a minimum is unlawful in our basket case of a country and that’s a basic fact. In any case, the reference to shadiness was about something else.
Ok my bad. I think I’ve accidentally deleted a crucial word on my first sentence. The new version of discourse’s text editor (especially when selecting text) doesn’t work well on iOS 
1 Like
Argh. Nothing amazing but least it was a shop you could walk into and touch things, have a conversation.
Weird about the Yamaha thing. They once had all the Refaces new at £200. Think the sign even said ‘in store only’
I remember trying the tr8 there when it came out. Got into a conversation with a guy about the R8, which I said I disliked because it had sloppy timing. He sort of agreed but at the same time looked at me like I was slightly mad, which was fair enough. Around that point I realised he was Phil from orbital. Then the sales guy came over and tried to get me to put down a deposit.
6 Likes
It was up for sale. The deadline being 31st March I think. Not sure if they found a buyer or what any buyer would do with it though.
Gonna miss the place. Bought many an instrument from there. Latest being my Roland FP30x a month or so ago. Being able to try it in store was what convinced me that was the one to go for.