Shoreline Music • History

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Shoreline Music - Handcrafted Acoustic Guitars

Back in the early 90s, Chuck Bloom had an inspired thought: If we can buy books and CDs and all sorts of stuff online, why not sell guitars online? You see, back then, no one else was doing this--the big corporate online stores were not yet even a twinkle in the eye of some CEO. But Chuck managed to pull it off: In early 1995, he founded Shoreline Acoustic Music, the world's first online guitar store. To give you some perspective, his registration of this shop's original domain, "samusic.com", predates eBay, and roughly coincides with the launch of Amazon (with whom we now partner). The shop was originally located in Santa Barbara, CA, and you can see a reference to the Santa Barbara pier in the main logo above (the abstract version found at the bottom of the page was done by his daughter). The online store was at first quite small--basically just Chuck in his living room--but his impact was large. Not only was Chuck selling a lot of guitars (one of the largest Lowden dealers in North America, for example), but within a few years, a number of one-guy-in-his-living-room online guitar stores cropped up, several of them following in Chuck's handmade-guitar footsteps. In fact, this business model is still alive and well; most other guitar stores you see online today are just one guy in his living room. Yes, they all inexplicably refer to themselves as "we", but most of those shops really are just one guy.

You can check here and here and here for a few examples of the early incarnations of Shoreline Music, courtesy of the Wayback Machine. The guitars you see there--Goodall, Larrivee, Santa Cruz, Eichelbaum, Froggy Bottom, Bourgeois, Lowden, Blanchard, Everett, McCollum, and more--are now household names among acoustic guitar fanatics. But Chuck's website was really the first place where anyone in the world could go to check out pictures of all these instruments. It was certainly my first exposure to handmade guitars, exotic tonewoods, and the notion that I could buy a guitar sight unseen, based entirely on the testimony of the seller. Long before I bought this store, I spent many hours drooling over the guitars Chuck was selling.

Well, after many years in the guitar business, Chuck put his store up for sale. And his timing could not have been more provident. I had worked as a philosophy professor and had launched an independent company several years prior, but at the time I ran across Chuck's "For Sale" sign, I was doing hard time in corporate management, praying for a way out. In a personal sense, the music business was an obvious choice: I have spent most of my life making music on stage, from my high school and college garage bands, to my brief and uneventful professional career, to my more recent unpaid gigs (they're far more fun that way) doing backup bass and guitar work for other musicians. More importantly, I have been leading live worship in churches of all sizes for the better part of 15 years.

So, with the help of several investors, I bought Shoreline Acoustic Music in September 2001. And while the business model has grown up a bit--we now have a nice little storefront with actual paid staff--we have stood by Chuck's original vision of cool, hard-to-find handmade guitars, fair prices (I know what it's like to be a starving musician!), and a simple, fast-loading and informative website. By the grace of God, our business has grown tremendously since those early days. Our most notable changes in recent years have been our relocation to Durango, Colorado, and our name change from "Shoreline Acoustic Music" to "Shoreline Music". Not only is the shorter name easier to remember, but we now carry handmade electric basses, so "acoustic" in the title would be a bit misleading. Of course, now that we've settled in Durango after nearly a decade in Southern California, I suppose "shoreline" is a bit of a misnomer, too.

I decided very early on that everything that makes it into this shop should be something that I actually like, or even better, something that I use. I've adhered steadfastly to this principle, even though we surely would have made a lot more money by now if I had just said 'Yes' to all those guitar, pickup, and string makers who sent me their stuff to try. This has meant that our selection has always been small compared to national chains, but it also means that all the stuff here is really, really good. It also makes it pretty nice to come into work each day, knowing that some of the world's best instruments await me.

Nearly everything you read on this website was written by yours truly, so I hope you enjoy your visit here. If you're ever near the southwest corner of Colorado, please do stop by.

Blessings,

John Fowler
Owner
Shoreline Music

Shoreline Music - Handcrafted Acoustic Guitars