MAY 20 I GUITAR CENTER I SALES
GC Severs Relationship With Behringer

On May 16, Guitar Center terminated its relationship with Behringer. According to Guitar Center sources, “the decision was made by Guitar Center executive leadership based on Behringer’s revision to unreasonable business terms late last year and a continuous history of attempting to force unfavorable changes into agreements.”

“Decisions like this are never made easily,” a Guitar Center spokesperson said. “There are rare occasions where the integrity of the relationships and agreements we make with vendors are challenged, despite the potential impact to the bottom line or overall sales. We can’t speak for anyone else in the industry, but we’d had enough of watching Behringer try to do business this way. It’s not the way we like to work with people and it’s not productive. They made some questionable choices that put us into a position to develop a contingency plan. As we re-evaluated that plan several weeks ago, we found that it would allow us to build better relationships with other vendor partners in the category. When Plan B starts to make this much business sense, it became clear we didn’t need to tolerate this anymore. We’re focused on where we can succeed in partnership with our new vendors and we’re excited about the future.”