My new President at my Company is a personal friend of Richard Branson. He said that about 10 years ago, right when the .com bubble was bursting, they were in real bad shape already. If you remember, that's when e-Commerce was really taking hold, and Virgin America Stores were kind of a Niche' type of thing, in the US like FYM, Sam Goody, etc. They were all fading her, but Virgin was HUGE in Japan, Asia-Pac, and Europe.
Well, supposedly Branson went to them (the GC / MF people) and offered them an ass-ton of cash, for the brand, and was going to market music, merch and instruments in giant Sams Club style Music "haven's" . . Think, the Wal-Mart of cultural arts. Now it doesn't seem like a winning idea in the US, but internationally, Mega Stores and especially Cultural Media type stuff is HUGE in 2nd and 3rd world. (Dubai, all that was just coming into it's own)
Well, in any case, there was all this FTC preamble stuff, and they were really close to doing it. It just never materialized. If I had to guess, they probably were going to over value GC, to make it make sense to the Virgin shareholders, and the idea seemed like nonsense at the time.
Looking at them now, can you imagine ? There are a couple of them that have those "GC Music Academy" which is a 3rd party itself, with contracted instructors with non-compete clauses and all that.
No wonder they can't make it work. Fender and Gibson have no incentive to market to small chains because their products sell themselves.