Acoustic Guitar sales taking away from Ukulele sales?

[JustinJ]

I noticed that several music stores in my area have let their ukulele stock dwindle. I was just in a privately owned large music store and they had very few ukuleles in stock. They had about 5 Dolphins on the wall. I'm thinking these were orderd for Christmas. There were no tenors or concerts. Before they had different brands and even electric ukes.



One trend I've noticed in my area is the growth of acoustic guitars and acoustic electric. There were many more different size acoustic guitars. There were many crossovers, 1/2 size, 3/4, and etc.. I would say that the store I referenced above had a 100 acoustic guitars in stock. This is not guitar center or corporate owned. I was surprised at the number of acoustic guitars.

The acoustic guitars seem to have doubled in the amount they carry. I've noticed this in other stores that I visited. The electric guitars do not seem to be growing from what I've noticed.

Are the ukulele players moving to acoustic guitar?

Are people picking up acoustic guitar instead of the ukulele as a first instrument?

Is anyone else noticing this trend in their area?

I also thought that perhaps many ukulele players are no longer purchasing as many ukuleles or they're having customs built.

[70sSanO]

I haven't really been following any current trends. But trends follow the music that is most popular at the time. In the mid-60's electric guitars pretty much dominated music stores and acoustics made a return to some extent. And it has gone back and forth from there.

As for ukuleles, except for certain periods of time, such as the 20's and possibly the 50's, they have not been a dominant instrument. There has been the obvious ukulele explosion through the 2000's but I think there has been some decline or at least a leveling off for a while.

As for a first instrument, I was born in 1951 so I went through the folk, surf, british, hippie, and hard rock trends. Trends are what influences kids and I don't think that has changed. I don't see the ukulele really being mainstream. It is what it is.

John

[UkieOkie]

Since Oklahoma and the middle of the country in general seem to lag on trends I am not seek that much here. As a matter of fact some of the stores around here are just getting more serious about Ukes.

[JustinJ]

I live in the North East. You make a good point. I was not sure if it was something that was happening in certain regions of the U.S.

Since Oklahoma and the middle of the country in general seem to lag on trends I am not seek that much here. As a matter of fact some of the stores around here are just getting more serious about Ukes.

[janeray1940]

My local non-corporate shop has ukes galore - pretty much always has. Sales in general on all instruments are down but I haven't seen much evidence that players are ditching the uke in favor of guitar - I certainly have no plans to! At the shop, guitar classes are still more popular and always have been, but the uke classes are going strong too.

[spookelele]

if only they made "Ukulele Hero" maybe it would be more popular.

[Rllink]

When I started playing the ukulele, and it wasn't that long ago, absolutely no one I knew played the ukulele. I had several friends that were playing guitars, but no ukes. And in the almost two years that I have been playing ukulele, I've met very few other ukulele players. They are out there, but I'm not finding them. I'm always amazed at people who have hundreds of ukulele players in their clubs. I have found only one other ukulele player who is willing to get together with me to jam. But, I have several guitar players who like to get together, and welcome me to play with them. And, of course, they always try to convert me to guitar, which they are not very successful in doing.

My local music store, the only music store in the town where I live, has lots of guitars hanging on the wall, but not much for ukes. And they never have had much for ukes. They used to have one of the lower end Lanikais in each size hanging on the wall, and a concert size Fender. That was it. Now they have replaced the Lanikais with Amari ukuleles. They have a couple of method books, and they carry some cheapie strings.

[Booli]

I plan to visit my local shop either later today or tomorrow. They are both a Kala and Cordoba dealer. The last time I was there, about 6 months ago, they had at least a dozen different Kala, and about 6 different Cordoba ukes on the wall, and can order anything from either maker, and it takes about 2 weeks to get. I bought my first uke (Kala KA-T) from them back in April 2013.

So, once I go in there, I will survey the current offerings and talk to them and report my findings back here. Hopefully this can add a data point of some value from here in Northern NJ, USA.

[RichM]

I don't know the actual numbers, but I'd wager shops sell 100 guitars for every uke they sell, maybe more.

Edit to add: I stand corrected! I reviewed the NAMM Report for 2014, and according to NAMM, about 1.4 million acoustic guitars were sold in North America, versus about 900K ukuleles. That's much, much closer than I would have guessed.

Also interesting: The NAMM report shows a steady growth in Ukulele sales until 2012, when they began declining slightly; based on the number provided, uke sales were about 450K in 2007, grew to about 1 million in 2012, and decline to about 900K in 2013.

Conversely, acoustic guitar sales (in units) declined slightly until 2009, and been increasing slightly since then.

So the numbers seem to bear it out; ukulele sales are declining, and acoustic guitar sales are increasing.

Digging deeper: the 1.4M acoustic guitars represent about $600M in revenue, while the 900K ukes represent about $65M in revenue. That works out to about $428 in revenue per guitar versus $72 in revenue per uke. Seems that the uke volume is strongly oriented towards lower-priced ukes. In market share terms, that means that even though there is not a huge difference in units sold, acoustic guitars represent nearly 35% of dollars spent, while ukes represent only 4%. Seems like acoustic guitars provide quite a bit more value to a shop.

[kohanmike]

I went into Sam Ash recently in Hollywood, CA and they have more ukuleles then ever, including Kala U-basses, conversely, the Guitar Center right across the street has fewer ukes. In fact, Sam Ash has more of everything than Guitar Center. But for ukes, I go to either U-Space in Downtown LA, or McCabe's in Santa Monica.