Interview with Steve @ Jordan Guitars
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Steve is owner of Jordan Guitars – a rare, vintage and preowned guitar specialist in the UK
What drives you to sell guitars, and how did Jordan Guitars come about??
I’ve been personally collecting guitars (and gigging) since the age of 15, so putting the knowledge I’d accumulated over 2 decades to good use seemed liked the next logical step. This resulted in Jordan Guitars starting to trade in 2016.
How do you describe your shop and which are the main characteristics of the products you sell?
We are a small, independent and family-owned VAT-registered business specialising in vintage, rare and pre-loved guitars. We cater for both ends of the market, from ‘beginner’ guitars, all the way through to the more prestigious custom shop, vintage and masterbuilt guitars.
You can always expect to see quality brands like Fender, Gibson and PRS on our site, however a quality guitar, is a quality guitar, and we often look to bring in more niche brands where possible, like Patrick Eggle and Suhr for example.
Can you describe your business model?
We stock a wide selection of guitars, and the majority of our sales are part-exchanges of customer’s guitars against the guitars in our collection. We always try to offer fair trade-in prices to enable our customers to trade-up to their next dream guitar.
Do you have regular customers and are they located worldwide?
Our focus has always been on offering exceptional service, and this has resulted in most of our business being from repeat customers. We are exceptionally lucky and grateful to have a strong, loyal customer base who we will deal with multiple times a year.
Brexit has certainly made selling internationally more challenging recently, but we continue to sell guitars across all 7 continents and always welcome new international customers
In your perspective what leads a customer to buy with an independent shop?
I think it’s a combination of 2 things – having exceptional guitars, and having exceptional service. Being a small independent business always provides an opportunity to offer an enhanced level of service vs the bigger retailers.
This often manifests itself in the amount of time you invest into each customer and sale, ensuring that you offer all of the support that a customer needs to ensure that they select the right guitar for them, and leave with a big smile on their face! The used guitar market is quite a minefield (particularly for inexperienced buyers) so we aim to make things simple and build trust with our customers.
There is nothing more satisfying to us than welcoming back a familiar face to Jordan Guitars HQ, and chatting about guitars over a coffee!
In your experience which is the most sought after guitar model or models?
In my experience it’s always been Strats, closely followed by Les Pauls and Telecasters. Often color can play a big factor also……anything in shell pink always flies out the door!
Where do you find all of your guitars?
All of our guitars are sourced through relationships that have been built with collectors or private individuals. We are in the fortunate position that we are contacted by many guitarists every day who want to trade with us – it’s then our job to just make sure that we are only selecting the finest guitars for our website and our customers – and we are very picky!
Word of mouth has given us a strong reputation for being easy and pleasurable to deal with, and this means the guitars will come to us 99% of the time, rather than us having to search anything out.
Do you certify your products when selling them?
A big focus for us is ensuring that we list our guitars accurately so that our customers know that when they buy from us, there will be no surprises when they receive the guitar.
We invest a lot of time in our photography (ensuring that all blemishes are visible) and checking over our guitars pre-sale so that we are 100% confident that we are describing our guitars accurately.
Do you sell your instruments exclusively on your website or do you also sell on other platforms like facebook or reverb.com?
We sell internationally across all of the big selling platforms, including Reverb, Ebay, Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree. We also have our own online store and a new app which is now available to download for both Apple and Android.
We always recommend our customers to contact us and purchase from us directly if possible, as it enables us to avoid platform selling fees, and then pass that saving onto the customer. We also have Facebook and Instagram sites where we launch all of our latest guitars a week before we list across the big selling platforms – it’s just our little way of saying thank-you to our loyal followers!
What about you, what keeps you busy?
Life is hectic – constantly trying to balance work, with family-life (3 kids), and of course guitars/music which is my main passion and addiction.
After playing in ‘originals’ bands for 25 years I’ve recently joined the UK’s top Smashing Pumpkins tribute band (The Smashed in Pumpkins) so looking forward to playing our first shows after Covid-related delays – it will be great to be able to throw myself around a stage again!
Can you share with us what are your plans for the future?
We’re just going to keep doing what we do – offering the finest selection of used guitars available, whilst offering the best experience possible to our customers to ensure we see them again further down the line.
It’s a simple strategy (and a bit of a cliché?), but it has worked for us so far, so why change?
