Exclusive: MI Retailers Report Strong Holiday 2022 Sales

Many MI retailers across the country are starting off 2023 on the right note after reporting strong sales during the 2022 holiday selling season.

“We had our best December on record with growth over last year of about 6%,” said Rand Cook, owner of Candyman Strings & Things in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “Last December, in 2021, was for us, and most other music retailers, was the best on record as we were still in the MI consumption frenzy. Our usual flow of sales in December is above monthly average for the first two weeks and then we get a big bump in internet purchasing when it starts to get close to the 25th. This year, we saw the average go up earlier and stay there pretty much the entire month.”

Justin Sims, general manager of Sims Music in Columbia, South Carolina, saw a similarly strong selling season.

“This December was great, and it’s looking like we will finish with the best December in our 43 year history,” Sims said. “Online sales were very strong amongst all channels — especially Amazon at 20% of sales — and our website saw a lot of sales, as well. Overall, we’re super close to catching last years numbers, which were the best ever.”

At Easy Music Center in Honolulu, Peter Dods said 2022 was the store’s busiest holiday season that he can recall in the past 17 years.

“Foot traffic was crazy,” Dods added. “Unlike other years where the start of December is normally slow, it was busy here for the entire month. Foot traffic and web sales were up. I noticed that our chat function on our website had at least two times as many users as it did last year. Between the phones, the floor, email and chat, we were scrambling to keep up with customer demand on almost a daily basis. We made a couple of lucky pre-holiday hires that helped us greatly. Without that, we could have missed a lot of sales opportunities.”

Sims said despite the pandemic-fueled musical instrument boom beginning to quell, guitar sales were still strong.

“Guitars were the hot seller for sure,” he said, while Cook shared that amplified products were popular at his Candyman Strings & Things.

“There was no clear product category ‘winner’ save for amplified products — like guitar amps and pedals — which made up for an expected downturn in acoustic guitar sales,” Cook said. “This was expected due to the ridiculous demand for acoustic instruments in 2021.” MI