Earlier today I received a call from an editor of a trade magazine for music instrument store owners (MMR Magazine)… yes, there is a magazine for everything these days… looking for comments on the emergence of super-niche stores (which I have previously covered, here).

He's noticed that there's a trend for (musical) instrument stores to become very niche—say, a store selling just flutes or one selling only left-handed guitars—and he wondered what I thought.

I cautioned that while specializing means you're definitely limiting your customer base, there's opportunity there as well.

Let's say that there is a store that only sells flutes and all the paraphernalia that goes along with them. And this particular store owner has customers fly in from around the country to shop at his store. He often "rolls out the red carpet" for his out-of-state shoppers, coordinating airport pick-ups and treating them to dinner at a local restaurant.

It makes great sense. Let's say you play the flute religiously, and maybe you'd rather shop at a store that just sells flutes, rather than a larger store that sells all sorts of instruments and only two or three kinds of flutes.

How does this relate to our industry? If you're going to specialize, you need to have a dynamite marketing program and wonderful customer service… and a niche that's viable.