Canadian Music Trade - October/November 201 | Page 20

FACES
Tyler Stang
By Andrew King
T
yler Stang started his MI career
at Edmonton, AB’s Avenue
Guitars in 2005. Over the
subsequent years, he never
hid the fact that he aspired to
be just like storeowner Brian Shultze, his
mentor and longtime friend. Sure enough,
a decade later, a guitar specialty store with
Stang’s name over the door was officially
open for business in Edmonton.
“I’ve been into guitar gear since even
before I started playing,” admits Stang,
recalling the day he bought a pile of
guitar magazines from the ‘80s to kill time
on a two-hour drive from Edmonton to
Lloydminster. “The centerfold poster in
one of the old issues of Guitar World was a
1964 Fender Stratocaster in Burgundy Mist
Metallic and that lit a fire in me. To this day,
that’s my dream guitar and started me on
my love of gear.”
The thought of a non-guitarist
buying a stack of guitar magazines would
seem stranger were it not for Stang’s
already impressive musical pedigree.
Growing up in Edmonton and then
Lloydminster, Stang was immersed in
music from a young age. His father was
a drummer in a busy cover band and the
family had several instruments – plus a
jukebox and over 11,000 45s – around the
house always begging for attention.
“So I was always interested in music,
playing piano, and then clarinet, saxo-
phone, bass, and then guitar,” he shares.
“Once I started playing guitar at age 15,
that was basically my only interest from
then on.” He and some friends started
a band and, as Stang says, he’s “never
looked back.”
From then on, he bought every guitar
magazine he could get his hands on and
went through each issue several times. Later,
while studying business at the Northern
Alberta Institute of Technology, he spent
hours and hours on a fledging website
called Harmony Central, reading as many
gear reviews as he could – which, for awhile,
was all of them. “That meant I was reading
thousands of gear reviews per week,” he says.
“I’ve been the ‘product knowledge’ guy at
every place I’ve ever worked – selling cars,
telephone systems, advertising… So I just
have a head for storing it all.”
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CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE
After years as a regular customer,
Stang started work at Avenue Guitars in
2005 as sales manager. He and Shul-
tze worked closely together over the
subsequent years, with Stang planning
to purchase the business when its owner
was ready to sell or retire; however, Shultze
passed away in the fall of 2013 after a
bout with cancer. Stang stayed onboard at
Avenue until May 2014, still hoping to pur-
chase the business though a deal simply
couldn’t be reached.
“I left with only my contacts and
my reputation and started building what
would be Stang Guitars,” he says. “I secured
commitments from Fender and [Ernie
Ball] Music Man the next day and went full
steam ahead.”
After finding the right location,
securing financing, planning the lay-
out, and stocking the store “with as few
compromises as possible” – a process
that took nearly three times as long as he
was hoping – Stang Guitars was open for
business in early 2015.
In the store, Stang straddles the
balance between being on the sales floor
(which he loves “more than anything”)
and working on administrative affairs in
his office (which he’s “trying to do a lot
less”). Over the course of a given day, in
addition to either of those activities, he
could also be putting up ads, running the
store’s social media feeds, or shooting
video for YouTube.
Come closing time, the single
father heads home to spend time with
and cook for his daughter and get her to
piano lessons, often practices with one
of his two bands, and handles online
sales from his phone until he falls asleep.
In his admittedly limited leisure
time, he enjoys running, cooking and
eating good food, and then “having to
run some more.” Though most of his
travel is work-related, including an annu-
al trip to The NAMM Show, he does en-
joy heading down to Las Vegas once or
twice per year to “blow off some steam.”
In fact, two of those activities will come
together in November when Stang heads
to Sin City for a half-marathon. “Two birds,
one stone,” he says with a smile.
On the horizon for the business is a web-
site redesign, set to launch in a few weeks,
and hopefully a successful Christmas sea-
son that will allow him to “refill the hooks
at NAMM,” which is one of his favourite
things about owning a guitar shop.
The clear favourite, though, is and
will always be opening the new boxes de-
livered to the shop week after week. “I’ve
never lost my love of gear one bit,” Stang
asserts. “I sell so I can order new guitars my
customers will love. I don’t collect guitars
for myself, though I have about 15-ish at
home. I just love playing the new ones
and showing them to customers and see-
ing happy faces walk out with them.”
That’s something he’s relished since
well before opening Stang Guitars, and
undoubtedly, Shultze would be proud to
see him carrying on that tradition.
Andrew King is the Editor-in-Chief of
Canadian Music Trade.