Every once in a while I like to give the faithful readers of my little blog a bit of an update on what's going on over here at KAOS. Well, let me tell you June is a pretty busy month for us here. Not necessarily the busiest month for retail sales but busy in terms of getting ready for our Dutch Auction sale which just wrapped up (more on that in a moment) and busy in terms of getting ready for our big year end recital (this weekend) as well as making plans and starting to implement a bunch of small renovations and promotional efforts. So, the Dutch Auction sale ran last week and was by all accounts a really good success. I think I could say that in terms of excitement this years sale superseded last years version. This year we started at a lower discount, 30% and ended at 50% which seemed to produce more people hedging their bets and waiting until the last or second last day to pull the trigger on their purchase. In the end, there were a few people who hit the jackpot and a few that missed out by waiting. All in all, lots of fun as expected. Our big recital for our students is this Sunday and will surely prove to be a fun filled day for the participants and their families as they get up to strut their stuff. As always, we will conclude each recital with a staff performance which this year is rumored to be Lou, Jay, Bill and Everett. Hope that works out... As for renovations, we are not going as nuts as last year but we are planning to move our repair counter to free up some floor space by moving it into the back corner of the store. As well, we are planning to frame it with an accessory wall to help us offer you guys a better selection of smaller goodies. As for promotions we are planning a bunch of activities including a big mail out to promote our new adult guitar programs as well as a bunch of new online promotions to promote the rest of the school. Despite the slow business cycle of the summer months, we are always super busy during late June, July and August. Oh ya, Lou and Jay are taking some well deserved vacation and I'm planning to spend a bit of extra time with my wife and kids as well.

Well, its not that big a deal that a music store might hold a sale at the beginning of the summer. June, July and August are famously slow months in the music retail business and often times it makes sense to hold a sale. A business can generate some useful cash and move through some inventory all while giving its customers something special by way of a savings opportunity. All that said, the public are pretty desensitized to sales these days. When isn't something on sale? Last year however, I got the idea from a good friend to have a Dutch Auction type sale. To be honest, I didn't even know what it was. Basically you identify a bunch of products that you would like to include in the sale and set a period of time for the sale to run, a week for example. Then you start on day one with a pretty good discount on those products. Each day you increase the discount for the products that haven't sold. By the end of the sale, the discount that you are offering on the unsold products is pretty big. The fun part of the sale is that people watch the website and try to guess when a product will sell. Some will jump on the savings in the first day while others will gamble that a product won't sell today and will be cheaper tomorrow. Last year, people really got into it and we sold pretty much everything that we offered. As well, people had fun watching and participating in the sale. It was a great point of conversation for the whole week. This years version of this sale starts tomorrow and hopes to be just as much fun. Click here to check out the Auction products.

Well, after a week or so of consultations with some of my teaching staff and a ton of web editing, the basic framework of our new Adult Guitar Courses is now complete and up on our site for people to review. From my perspective I can be honest in saying that this new education activity has been really exciting for me. It's not that I had forgotten how much fun it is to be involved in a brand new activity but I haven't launched anything this substantial in quite a long time. The creative part of it is really enjoyable for me and the potential for success with this new set of learning programs seems very good which is also potentially great news for us. Having said that, every single person that I have talked to about these courses seem equally excited which just adds to my excitement. Anyhow, Click here to check out the new courses and feel free to call us (416) 233-2232 or email us anytime with your questions and comments.

More importantly, if you are an adult and either play or want to play guitar, we hope that you will consider enrolling in an appropriate class. Its our hope that these classes will be as much fun as they are effective in getting you to start playing or improve your playing quickly. This is the goal.

As any regular reader to my blog already knows, I made a trip to Manhattan last week to visit a music school. The trip's goal was to quickly examine how this school offered adult specific guitar classes, something that we are really interested in pursuing this coming September. So, was the trip a success? In a word, definitely! Here's a brief replay of the 2 day power trip. Thursday morning, arrive at the airport at 5 am, this really hurt. Arrive in New York at 8:15 am take a bizarre cab ride into Manhattan. Now, I know that New York cab drivers are a bit famous for their behavior but this guy was honking at imaginary people about every 5 seconds. Even on the highway with nobody for 100 meters of us on all sides, he was still honking. Anyhow, breakfast and a long walk up to Times Square and then onto Central Park for a bit of sight seeing and shopping for the kids. We had to stop into the famous "cube" Apple store which is just like the Apple stores here but about 10 times bigger. Along the way we stopped in at about 4 music stores including Sam Ash to have a look at how things were being done in NYC. After a super overpriced and only mediocre smoked meat sandwich we headed for the guitar school meeting at 2 pm. For about the next 7 hours, we talked and brainstormed with the owner and administrator of the school about lots of different issues. In the end, we had both learned lots about each others school. I learned how he ran a successful adult group guitar program and he found out how we ran a successful private lesson program largely geared towards kids. The exchange was awesome and hugely helpful for both us, me for sure. We intended on checking out a show but we didn't get out of our meetings until almost 10 pm, just enough time for a quick dinner and walk back to the hotel. Friday, we slept in a bit and got moving around 9 am for breakfast. This day we took a lot more cabs as our feet were sore and we had to cover a lot more distance. We checked out Ground Zero, Washington Square, the University and had lunch in Greenwich Village as well as stopped into a number of additional music stores. Perhaps the most important mission of the trip was the cupcakes that I had to pick up for my wife (she's a bit of a cupcake expert). Once we had the cupcakes it was back to the hotel and then onto the airport. The only other really notable thing about the trip was the 'crap my pants' turbulence on the flight home. More then a few people left their dinner in the plane and it was the first time that I have been truly scared for my life on a flight. Nonetheless, we lived to tell about it.

More information to come about our impending new adult guitar lessons. We have so much information to get through but soon we will have it all laid out for our potential new students. I can say that the courses that they are running look fantastic. The students are learning to play basic guitar in a very short period of time all while having a really fun time. Better then that, the program accommodates the busy schedules of adults letting them miss some of their lessons with the ability to still get the material covered. More details to come but we are sure our customers are going to love these courses.

It's been planned for a while but the week has arrived and I have to say that I'm a bit on the excited side. This Thursday I head out to New York for a few days to visit a very cool guitar school to get some new ideas for our upcoming adult guitar classes. Other then visiting the school I'll be taking some time to visit a number of music stores, both big and small. We're always on the lookout for new ideas and what better city then Manhattan? Watch for my post trip review next week.

It's with a fair bit of excitement that I am able to announce that we have just begun developing a series of new guitar courses. There are a number of courses in development but they break down into two basic categories. Each category will have courses designed for adults as well as for youngsters. In other words, adults will not be mixed with kids and vice versa. The first set of courses are geared towards beginners. There will be a course for absolute beginners as well as at least one more course for more advanced beginners. These courses will focus on getting people playing quickly paying most of the attention to having fun. There will also be a series of courses designed for people who already play but want to focus in on a specific type of music or a particular discipline. An example of such a course would be "Basic Blues Guitar" followed up with an advanced version of it. Some of the courses being considered are the Blues courses, lead guitar courses, finger style guitar and possible band specific courses such as The Beatles or Led Zeppelin. It looks like these courses will run for 10 weeks and be taught in a class format, once per week for an hour. Class size would be as small as 3 students and as large as 6. Our first step in the development of these courses is a trip to New York to visit a school there who is having great success with this type of teaching. After doing this research we are going to set out to develop our own curriculum and start laying out the schedule for September. Saying that I'm excited would be an understatement. From our initial market research it seems that these types of courses will be popular, here's hope'n...

Watch for more information on these courses as we work through their development.

Check our Lou's most recent blog on "point to point" amplifiers. Click here
Check out Jay's most recent blog on personal recorders. Click here

Well, okay... our new blogs may not be as cool as this Mazda concept car but they're pretty cool. We are happy to announce that starting immediately both Jay and Lou will be contributing each week to their very own blogs right here on our website. Jay will concentrate on writing about products that are related to guitars, recording and electronic music. Lou will focus more on amplifiers and guitars, specifically how they are made and what he thinks of the various products. With almost 40 years of combined experience in the music retail business, both Jay and Lou have a lot to offer when it comes to practical advice and expertise about music related products. We hope that you enjoy the blog entries and invite you to visit weekly. Here is a link to the Blog index page... enjoy

As recently announced on our Products Page, Bill Nash of NASH Guitars is now accepting new and used Gibson (must be Gibson) Les Paul's from his dealers to perform his magic relic treatment on. As a result, we are now in the market to purchase some select pieces. If you have a Gibson Les Paul Standard, Classic or Traditional that you are not playing and would like to sell, please email us to let us know. We may be interested in buying from you for cash or an equivalent trade. Email us here to get the conversation rolling.

As promised, Godin product continues to arrive in our store. Most recently, more of the super value Godin Session's in some of their solid color offerings. The blue and the red are great. We must say, the pictured red is not nearly as nice as the real thing. Not being a huge fan of red guitars in general, I wasn't really looking forward to it but I have to say this slightly darker tone red is pretty nice, for red that is. Anyhow, these as well as the trans black and many of the other colors are all in stock for you to see. Drop in.. For more information about the Sessions, click here.

Tags: Godin, session, strat

Ever since it's inception, the KAOS website has been handled pretty much exclusively by me, Bill. This single person approach has worked well for us for a number of reasons. One, we're a small company and we don't have a ton of money available to hire a big firm to produce a website for us. Two, given our small number of people, we only have so much time in a day to serve customers, buy product, receive it etc etc etc leaving us very little time to be creative. Bottom line, having me take care of it on my own was a good working solution and to be honest, I really enjoy learning how to do it as I go. Also, it gave me a chance to work more from home which is a perfect fit for me right now as I have two young children who love having me around. I'm told that doesn't last forever so I'm trying to take advantage.

The down side of having only one person work on a website is that it gets difficult to continually come up with new content. As any regular visitor to our site would know, we have been continually moving towards a model of more product content. Our videos are a prime example and our product page, while still pretty basic is improving all of the time. Also, our Gbase.com presence is a move to improve our online product offerings. The KAOS blog is well read but my area of expertise is business not music as much so I only have so much to offer beyond announcements. Point is, I find it difficult to come up with what I think is interesting content for our customers to read week after week.

So, with that said, I am happy to announce that starting very soon both Jay and Lou will begin contributing to their very own KAOS Blogs. Lou's blog will concentrate on amps and guitars. He'll talk about new stuff, old stuff, how stuff is made, how it ought to be made, basically anything related to guitars and amps. Jay will concentrate more on effects, recording, software and hardware devices. He'll talk about things to do with making you sound better and how to record it.

Adding Lou and Jay is an exciting move for us. As a good friend of KAOS recently pointed out to me, Lou and Jay are two of the industries best kept secrets. What he meant was that both of these guys have almost 20 years of experience each and are both seasoned experts in their fields. The problem is that most people don't know about them. Those who do, visit the store and benefit regularly from their knowledge. We're hoping that these new blogs will serve to expose their knowledge to a far bigger audience, hence improving the appeal of our website. Watch for these new blogs soon under "The KAOS Blog" menu on our website.

We've been waiting eagerly for the Performing Artist Martin's to arrive. Yesterday the DCPA-1 finally arrived ahead of schedule thanks to the prolonged warm spell in the weather. Martin has a strict policy about shipping their Standard Series guitars when the temperature is below what they feel is a safe temperature to transport a guitar without damaging it. Not surprisingly to us, the dreadnaught member of this family did not disappoint. Awesome Martin tone, the magic of the Aura pick up system combined with the beauty of its contemporary design make this guitar the most exciting piece that we've received in some time. For anyone in the market for a top end guitar with one of the best performance pick up system available, this guitar is one strong contender. Stop by to have look and strum a few bars. For more information from Martin click here.

Being one of the industries most progressive companies can't be easy. Godin, the mother company of Godin, Seagull, Art & Lutherie and La Patrie seems to be up to the challenge. Most recently, Norman announced a number of new improvements to their existing models. Among some more minor design changes was the announcement that their very popular ST40 model was about to become an all solid wood guitar. With its new design the ST40 is now an all solid wood guitar for less the $500. Combined with Norman's legendary quality this new all solid specification makes the already popular ST40 just that much more of a great value, not to mention just that much better sounding. The all solid ST40 is now in stock for you to check out in our store.

Every year at this time Ibanez gives us an opportunity to purchase guitars in a fairly large quantity in return for some favorable terms. As a result, we usually stock up on popular models as well as take the opportunity to expand our Ibanez product offerings. This year we have focused in on the Artcore hollow body guitars. Aside from their stylish good looks the Artcore series is famous for being among the best quality, mid priced hollow body guitars available today. This series comes in a big variety of body sizes, pick up configurations as well as bridge options. We have already started to receive our inventory and expect to receive the entire order in the coming weeks. Drop in to check them out. In the meantime, if you'd like to check out the Ibanez website click here.

Hot off the press, the February edition of our KAOS Monthly newsletter is up on our website and ready for you to read. A few announcements, a request for customer input and a number of product reviews. Click here to view it online and if you haven't already joined our email list, click here to be notified about our newsletter, special sales and other cool things.

Despite going head to head with game one of the men's Olympic hockey, the KAOS Jam enjoyed a decent turn out and some great performances. Ryan and the house band entertained the crowd with a new assortment of tunes including an awesome version of The Ocean featuring who else but Lou on guitar. Performances ranged from some KAOS Jam regulars to a few new people who got up the nerve to plug in and perform for their friends and families. As alway, lots of fun had by all. We haven't scheduled the next jam but it should be sometime in May. To view video from last nights Jam, click here.

In the next few weeks, a new section will be completed on our website. The VIDEO section will consolidate a number of different types of videos for our customers. The first two series of videos will be: Phil X in a series of highly entertaining videos that he has shot for California based vintage guitar company Frettedamericana. In these videos, Phil shows the guitars off, explains why they're cool and does some amazing playing and singing. Phil is a Toronto Native and great friend of ours here at KAOS. These videos are awesome. The other series will be a new series of product demos by our very own staff. These videos will feature our guys giving you a quick 'live' look at the products that we sell. Both series will start to appear in about two weeks when the site update is complete. Other valuable and entertaining videos will be added as we discover them. We're pretty sure that you will find this new section of our site fun and helpful. Click here to view the Phil X Videos.

Having just been in Los Angeles for our industries "New Product" show there is a long list of new products slated to be released over the next 6 months. We'll endeavor to keep you up to date about these new products and when they are slated to arrive in our store. Keep an eye on this blog, our newsletters and your email in-box for details as they become available. We just posted some information on the new Martin Performing Artist Series of guitars and some big improvements to the already famous AC series of amps from Vox in our product section. Check them out.

Tags: new products

On Sunday January 10th, we are pleased to be offering our community a FREE concert to celebrate some of our communities unique talent, a brand new and very innovative hybrid digital grand piano by Yamaha and most importantly our appreciation for many years of support by the good people of our neighborhood. The concert will be approx. 60 minutes in length and feature three separate performances. A chamber group, a solo piano performance and a jazz vocal performance will round out the entertainment. Attendees will be welcome to stick around after the performance to take a closer look at the piano and speak with representatives from Yamaha Canada. We are very excited about this event and hope to host more like it in the future. For more information and to request tickets, click here.

Tags: Yamaha, Avant Grand, Tyson Kerr, Sharon Burlacoff, Liza McLennan, Elyssa Lefurgey-Smith, Heather Bambrick

As you have already noticed, our website has been completely revamped. There were a few different goals that we hoped to achieve with this overhaul. Firstly, we wanted to make our site look better, more consistent and more professional. Secondly, we wanted to make it even easier to navigate then the previous version and lastly, I (Bill) wanted to make it easier to maintain. The previous site was based on the iWeb platform that while extremely easy to use, had some serious limitations that was making the upkeep of the site very tedious.

This new site combines the Blog and the Podcast of the previous site into this single Blog. Here you will find all of our blog entries and our Gear Review Podcasts. As well, our used and new product pages have been significantly improved with better photos and categories to make finding stuff easier. More improvements will come as we go after we finish porting all of the content from the old site into this one.

Hopefully, you will enjoy this newly improved site and will continue to visit. Thank you as always for all of your support. Feel free to contact me directly at any time with your questions or comments, billkaos@rogers.com.

Tags: Bill, Welcome, new site