Brothers' store location a plucky pick: Guitar shop hatched under chicken icon

By: KATHRYN GILLICK - For the North County Times | Friday, August 3, 2007 10:05 PM PDT ∞

CARLSBAD --- A former egg packing plant-turned-general store isn't a likely location for a guitar shop, but Buffalo Brothers Guitars in Carlsbad has turned the 1960s-era building into one of the top guitar stores in North County.

Walls, office spaces and nooks built into the building when it was the packing plant serve as dividers between the guitar store's departments: baseline acoustics and the checkout counter make up the bulk of the main room downstairs; the former downstairs packing room is where the electric guitars and amplifiers are kept; and upstairs, high-end guitars, ukuleles and mandolins are grouped into displays by brand.

In addition to guitars, Buffalo Brothers carries all the traditional guitar-store wares such as strings, songbooks and straps and has a full-time freelance music teacher. Downstairs guitars start at around $500, while upstairs the guitars start at $3,000, said Kevin Kinnear, the store's manager.

Adrian Demain, the store's other manager, said that about 80 percent of the guitars the store sells are acoustic. Its most popular brand of guitars, according to Gavin Rose, the store's assistant manager, is Taylor. "We sell more of those than anything," he said. He estimated that the store sells between 500 and 1,000 Taylors each year.

Kinnear said, "We have 45 brands at least, and then we have used things that go beyond that." Many of the store's 16 employees are local musicians.

Buffalo Brothers started as joint venture between Bob and Tim Page when the brothers combined their two guitar stores. At the time, Bob Page owned Traditional Music in Leucadia, which he started in 1989, according to Kinnear. Tim Page owned Buffalo Brothers Guitars, a mail-order electric guitar store based in Fullerton, which he founded in 1991.

The brothers consolidated their businesses in 1993 and moved the company to an industrial park in Carlsbad. Kinnear said that although the company had a showroom and was open to the public, most of its business at that time was done over the Internet.

Tim Page left the business in 1997, according to Kinnear, but works at the store on Sundays and runs 10 guitar shows for the company each year.

Bob Page expanded the business in 2006 when it bought Old Time Music, a guitar store in San Diego. Old Time Music employs five people and will gross $360,000 in 2007, according to Kinnear, while the Carlsbad store will gross roughly $4.5 million in 2007.

Buffalo Brothers moved into the roughly 10,000-square-foot building it now occupies in January 2004. The building is still owned by the ranching family that ran the egg packing plant. Its history is noted with pictures on the wall of the family and property as well as a 6-foot-tall chicken statue that sits on the building's roof.

When asked about the chicken on the roof, Kinnear said, "It's a serious landmark."

Standout facts:

Name: Buffalo Brothers Guitars

Address: 4901 El Camino Real, Carlsbad

Phone: (760) 434-4567

Web site: www.buffalobrosguitars.com

Year established: 1993

Products and services: Instrument sales

Number of employees: 21

Size: 16,000 square feet total

Gross sales: $4.8 million in 2007

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