Thunder Road Guitars’ owner Frank Gross in his new, soon-to-be retail space.
In an age where a new guitar is just a click away, Thunder Road Guitars is investing in the brick-and-mortar experience. Its latest space is designed to bring players back into the shop, and keep them there. — By Katie Kailus
W hile many guitar retailers in 2026 are leaning into building up their e- commerce presence, Seattle-based Thunder Road Guitars is doubling down on brick-and- mortar retailing. Owner Frank Gross said he wants customers to feel the instrument in their hands, hear it in the room and con- nect with his staff who genuinely care about their playing experience. “Part of why we want to invest in a bigger brick-and-mortar presence is because anyone with a computer can hop on Reverb, eBay or Musician’s Friend and find an instru- ment,” Gross said. “What we want to do is give someone an experience they can’t get online, in a genuinely welcoming and beautiful environment.” And the design of Thunder Road Guitars’ brand new yet-to-be-opened showroom in Seattle aims to do just that. “The design of our new store is really aimed at giving people a reason to get off their com- puter, get in their car and come see us in per- son,” he said. “And I’m really excited about it.”
SOUND YOU CAN SEE Gross has been working at music stores since he was 16, sweeping floors and tuning guitars. When he founded Thunder Road Guitars in 2011 in a one-bedroom apartment, he launched with just an e-commerce site — something Gross said was unfounded when he started in the industry as a teenager in the early 2000s. Since then, Thunder Road Guitars has moved locations several times in Seattle — as well as opened a brick-and-mortar location in Portland, Oregon — before finding its next home which is scheduled to open in June. “Our business really exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020–2022, and with that growth came a serious lack of space in our current building,” Gross explained. “We’d bought the building we were in up until re- cently, so we felt a bit stuck. We started look- ing for something in the same neighborhood with significantly more square footage, and after about a year and a half of searching, we found our new location. It’s still in west Seattle, roughly three times our current square footage
in both showroom and storage space, and it’s in a really cool historic building. We’re very excited about it.” While Gross said they still do a significant amount of e-commerce business, brick-and- mortar is just as important to Thunder Road Guitars’ business model. “It’s really important to us to have a place where people can walk in, feel welcome, and see, touch, and experience our inventory as part of a real guitar community,” Gross said. “In the last couple of years, a lot of guitar- oriented businesses have closed or shifted to purely online sales. We wanted to do the op- posite and really lean into the in-store customer experience and create a beautiful, welcoming space that people genuinely want to shop in.” THE SOCIAL EFFECT Just because it’s leaning into brick-and-mortar retailing doesn’t mean Thunder Road Guitars has shunned social media. In fact, the store has 96,100 followers on Instagram — a con- siderably large presence for a music retailer.
34 I MUSIC INC. I MAY 2026
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