Sam Ash Music Corporation is the second-largest musical instrument retailer in the United States. The private, family-held company trails closely behind industry leader Guitar Center, Inc., a public company with 1998 revenues of $391.7 million.
Sam Ash Music operates approximately 30 discount superstores across California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Sam Ash also sells sheet music, recording equipment, electronics, videos, computers, software, and vintage guitars, and also offers custom-built instruments and music clinics. All of the stores feature rooms in which customers are encouraged to try out instruments.
Musician Sam Ash and his wife Rose, whose families had emigrated from Eastern Europe to Brooklyn, New York when they were children, opened what would become the first Sam Ash Music Store in 1924 as a way to transform Sam’s work as a violin teacher and gigging musician in the Sam Ash Orchestra into a steady income.
In 1944 the Ash family moved their business to a new Brooklyn location on 236 Utica Avenue, gradually expanding the store’s initial offering beyond sheet music, music instrument repairs, and phonographs, and capitalizing on area school music programs by delivering sheet music and stocking a growing selection of band instruments.
In the 1950s as rhythm and blues and rock and roll gained popularity, Sam Ash was among the first stores in the area to add guitar brands like Gibson and Fender, as well as a record shop. By 1990, there were eight Sam Ash Music stores in the New York area, and in 1992 the first Sam Ash Music store outside the New York area opened in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Today, Sam Ash Music remains family-owned, with the fourth generation of family members already employed by the company.
According to en.wikipedia.org; referenceforbusiness.com. Source of photo: internet
