Artificial intelligence and generative AI play increasingly important roles in how consumers research, discover and purchase products from retailers in 2025 — and Guitar Center’s CEO wants his company to embrace that trend, both online and in stores.
Gabe Dalporto became Guitar Center’s chief executive officer in 2023. However, he had already been on the retailer’s board of directors since 2018. He oversaw the launch of Guitar Center’s Rig Advisor AI assistant in July. The tool can guide customers toward instruments and equipment, incorporating context such as desired tone, setups and in-store availability by location.
Digital Commerce 360 interviewed Dalporto via email about the role Rig Advisors will play at Guitar Center. He offered insight into what it took to incorporate the assistant into the retailer’s ecommerce platform, as well as how it can enable better omnichannel and holiday-season outcomes for its customers.
Guitar Center is No. 116 in the Top 2000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest online retailers in North America. There, it falls under the Toys & Hobbies category.
Q&A: Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto on the retailer’s new AI assistant
Digital Commerce 360: As Guitar Center prepared to launch its first AI assistant, what did you know you needed to get right? Were any features more important than others?
Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto | Image credit: Guitar Center
Gabe Dalporto: More than anything, we needed to make sure the recommendations would be credible to the serious musician, which took a surprising amount of iteration. Sometimes AIs get lazy or exhibit weird behaviors, so we had to take multiple approaches until we felt comfortable we had consistently high-quality answers.
DC360: We’ve seen in-store availability statuses rise in adoption and play important roles in driving conversion across online retail in recent years. And I see it emphasized in the Rig Advisor announcement. What have you done behind the scenes at Guitar Center to enable inventory visibility at your stores? And what kind of impact do you see it having on sales?
GD: Our ecommerce platform has had visibility into local store inventory for a while now, which enables us to enable “buy online, pick up in store” as well as “buy online, ship from store.” Deploying this in Rig Advisor took integration work between the AI agent, our internal search engine, and our product information system.
Omnichannel activity
DC360: From an omnichannel perspective, what else has made a difference for Guitar Center’s digital sales? And how do you anticipate Rig Advisor’s role evolving over time?
GD: Unlike some other categories, buying many musical instruments is a deeply experiential category. You can line up three “identical” Les Paul guitars, and each one will weigh, feel, and sound a little different. You may hate one and love another — and yet they’re all the “same.” So, from an omnichannel perspective, we’re seeing good success marketing our local inventory online and driving customers into the store to experience them. It’s one thing to search online for a product and see it listed across various sites. But it’s something entirely different to see that it’s available right now to experience at your Guitar Center just down the street.
Gifting and 2025 holiday season planning
DC360: Gifting appeared as a use case in the Rig Advisor announcement. What are your expectations for how shoppers will use or benefit from it during the 2025 holiday season?
GD: Holiday gifting is a huge use case for Guitar Center and spans the gamut from a grandparent buying their grandkid their first entry-level guitar to a spouse buying their touring musician wife a new axe. These are very different situations, and most gift purchasers feel paralyzed because they don’t know what to buy. Gear Advisor can digest all the context of the gift recipient and make a highly intelligent gift recommendation. It changes the whole experience from one of stress to one of joy and relief.
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