Bob Moggio can’t be accused of moving his retail store because he no longer cared for the neighborhood. After all, he only moved it right next door.
In the college town of Edwardsville, Ill. (pop. 25,000), Mogggio has had Mojo's Muisc at the same address on Main Street for 13 years. “What happened was the lease was over in October [of 2013], and I was paying more than I wanted to pay,” he says. Enter serendipity: The men’s clothing store next door was losing and the 1938 building it was in was put on the market. The two neighbors wrote out the contract themselves, and the building was sold “as is.”
Financially, there were significant advantages to the move. Moggio’s mortgage became less than he was paying in rent, plus he was able to rent the upstairs out to a recording studio owner making it even more financially appealing. But anyone who has ever bought an old house will be sympathetic to this: despite his best planning, it was a lot of work to remake the old building into something that would fit his need, and of course it all cost more than he expected it to.
Mojo’s has embraced the “boutique” moniker and electric guitars featured are not the common axes found elsewhere: Duesenberg, Suhr, and Heritage guitars. Alongside of these are Ernie Ball, Ibanez, G&L, ESP/Ltd., and Rickenbacker. Many of those makers’ basses are there, too, plus Lakland. The store is a draw for the discriminating player and their ability to present well carries over to their website, which at this point is about 50 percent of his business, he says.
The new space has allowed Moggio to improve on how his accessories are displayed. There’s a nice wall of strings, and there are two guitar strap stands from Levy’s Leathers and Henry Heller right near the register. Then there are the pedals: In addition to the accessible Boss pedal display, there are Pigtronix, Vox, Wampler, Fulltone, Way Huge, Z-Vex, and MXR pedals available, all of which reinforce that hip boutique vibe. Of course there’s the Kala Ukulele display tree there now, too.
Also there are now two guitar workstations behind the counter. Three nice lesson rooms keep traffic coming in.
The Physical
Moggio laughs when he’s told the new store is bigger. “It’s almost identical in square feet to the old one, but it just feels so much bigger,” he says. “It’s bigger at the front, the aisles are wider, and the ceiling is taller – it’s a nice effect.”
His attitude on remaking the store in his vision began with the rallying cry of “everything must go!” He pulled down all the walls revealing the original brick that, which he instantly saw as an attractive place to hang his Martin, Taylor, Seagull, and Alvarez guitars. There are a couple of Peavey Composite Acoustics included in that acoustic mix as well.
All the plumbing had to go. All the lighting, too.
He worked closely with the city getting permits and jumping through whatever hoops they asked of him. “There was so much I didn’t know I had to do, like the need to get an asbestos report.” Luckily the building was free of that toxic material.
Then there were the upgrades to code. As is the case in many communities everywhere, if he didn’t touch anything, it all would have been pretty much grandfathered in. Of course doing that was never considered (um, there was one electrical outlet in the entire building).
There were some trade offs he had to compensate for. He traded in a usable basement where he could store instruments and cases in for a basement he couldn’t trust with a bag of picks. His solution was to build shelving high above his guitars on the floor that was suitable for storing cases without taking away from the overall clean, visual look he was going for.
To keep those nice boutique amps of his from getting those dreaded “foot scuff” marks, he put in a two-inch high riser along one side and got them off the floor. Now his Aguilar, Magnatone, Rivera, Huges & Kettner, Traynor, Peavey, Budda, and Orange amps are better displayed.
The Wow Factor
The extreme makeover has lead to lower energy bills, too. There’s an all-new furnace and LED lighting that are much more efficient. He took advantage of the extra ceiling space and put in a truss, hanging some Leviton LED Par Cans up to better highlight his guitars. He says he chose Leviton pars because he didn’t want to “buy the cheap Chinese ones,” but wanted quality ones that would last for a long time instead.
“We didn’t skimp on anything. There are no low-end fixtures. And we could have bought laminated flooring or tile or carpeting, but I laid in this real wood floor myself.”
The store’s success is no doubt due to the strong vision of what this next chapter of Mojo’s Music was going to be. And that had more to do than just the financial advantage to owning versus renting. It was a chance to hit the reset button, and in that process a few things got purposely left behind.
“This was an opportunity for me to just focus on guitars, amps, and effects, plus everything fretted,” he explains. After years of sliding sales in his drums and P.A. products, his vision included leaving all that behind. Also jettisoned were any of the little bits of B&O rentals he had dabbled in.
“I had a vision of what I wanted this to be, and it is all pretty much here,” he said. “I’m still not completely happy with the window display, but otherwise, I’m really pleased how it turned out. When people walk in, they go, ‘Wow.’”
