The Guitar Center 
New Orleans, LA 
Renovated  Home Depot
The Guitar Center is a major national chain that sells guitars, keyboards,
drums, other musical instruments, and a mass amount of gear and accesories
for musicians of all types. This branch of the Guitar Center chain is in a renovated
Home Depot. Major big box retailers rarely sell or lease their abandoned
buildings to other major national retailers, avoiding competion in the surrounding
retail market. In fact, a big box retailer will often pay the rent or the lease on an empty building for long periods of time if the right buyer doesn't come along, in order to avoid competition at all costs. In this case, the Guitar Center's
market is a far cry from that of the original Home Depot, and so the retailers were
able to make the building change hands from one company to another.
 
When Julia drove to New Orleans to see the Guitar Center with her own eyes, she was surprised at what she found there. She was
expecting to see a local hometown sort of music store, a mom and pop guitar center that had taken over an old Home Depot.
This is not what she found by any means, as she learned that the Guitar Center is a corporation that recently bought out The
Musician's Friend, a mail-order catalog company that has been around for many years.

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