My initial forays into doing business with the music cartel left a bitter taste. Nevertheless, it's the huge name brands that account for the bulk of products being sold. And my particular undertaking requires selling musical products. So I called one of the big boys. What exactly would it take to do business with you? I've left several voice mails, none ever returned. This is a very large company from Japan. One of the primary name brands in music. Finally one call must've paid off. It was to the manager of the particular US sales group. He in turn sent a drone to make a special trip and deal with me directly. The guy was clearly agitated that I was wasting his time. What will it cost? He went into a long tirade that the company does not accept dealerships. They have to do market research on the surrounding area and decide if you have a shop that fulfils their long term vision and a customer base and maybe they might be so kind as to offer you a dealership. Ah and there's the rub. The store across town sells a lot of our product. In order to qualify for consideration would cost you 'x', where 'x' is sufficiently large to make up for ticking off the folks across town. And he told me 'x'. That's what I was looking for. That's a pretty good sized truckload of instruments. Ouch. You most likely don't have it ('x'). [Absolutely correct]. Give us a call when you do.

It was only his time that was wasted. My mission was to find the value of 'x'.

This morning a phone call from one of my suppliers in LA. Cheap guitars. What are you buying now? Yeah, these are better. We've got pedals you can sell for $20 and make a profit. Cheaper freight too. Only need one? Fine. We'll ship you any quantity you want. Want a 'Sonica Music' guitar? Left-handed? I'll make you up a logo and laser engrave it myself. Call me.

Decisions, decisions. Who should I call?