Selling Guitars Across Channels (like Reverb) Doesn’t Have to Be Manual

If you run a local guitar/music store, you get a cool thing working for you these days: a guitar on your wall locally isn't a just a guitar on your local wall. It's on your Instagram. Maybe your website. Maybe Reverb too. You have tools to get around local limits on liquidity, visibility, and attention.

But there's a pretty obvious catch. When you get a guitar in, how many times do you have to enter data for that guitar in different websites and apps? There's probably also some accounting software or ERP before we get to any of the platforms I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Your POS? You get paid per guitar sold, not for each of these little tasks. Even if it seems manageable, multiply it by each guitar and it starts to become clear that there is the need for integrated automations.

Luckily, Reverb has its own app store with free and paid integrations that can help sellers. There's also an API that lets developers build custom integrations for businesses. If you're in the business of selling guitars, I think it pays to know the options and the potential time it could save.

What's an an API and how can we use this one?

An application programming interface (API) lets computer programs interact with each other and share data. The Reverb API I'm covering in this article is a web API; we can make requests over the internet to Reverb's servers from our own programs and websites to aggregate information and get stuff done!

A simple but powerful example of how this could be used is building a section of your website that presents your Reverb listings . Not only is this possible, Reverb expects people to do it, but they request that you link back to the page on Reverb.

Also, if you're offering a guitar on multiple other channels besides Reverb, you might find it useful to have the Reverb listing automatically cancelled when the guitar sells through other means. It would be awkward to double-sell an instrument!

Finally, if you use other services that offer API access/interaction, we can think in terms of composability and integrations, which is where the actual value is in the real world. Essentially, this is what makes the pre-made integrations for Reverb in their app store possible in the first place.

Not all APIs are documented equal

When evaluating using an API (from both business and engineering perspectives), documentation quality is key. Even though APIs are how programs share data, people need to be able to understand how to make this work. I think Reverb's API looks at least decent here, but keep it in mind as variable in play if you are looking at how different technologies/platforms play together.

Don't be intimidated by the costs of custom plugins and "glue" software

So, we've established that Reverb has an API that is documented well enough for a competent developer to build plugins/integrations for other systems that business use. But it still must be expensive if you need something that isn't already in their store already, right? I don't really think so.

As much as I hate to just throw out numbers for something like this, I think building a custom software/e-commerce integration with Reverb for your business with contract/freelance developer labor would cost somewhere on the order of magnitude of a guitar. The key is to keep things well-defined and fairly narrowly-scoped, but that's achievable since this software only has to meet your businesses requirements. Reverb's documentation on building ecomm integrations seems aligned with this perspective, noting that apps that sync a single customer's data are "are thus simpler conceptually and from a scalability standpoint."

Even if a hypothetical solution requires its own server to sync data between your platforms/services, that server itself will cost roughly on the scale of a pack of strings a month and scale fine for most retailers. Servers, along with the software running on them, do have to be maintained occasionally too, even in the cloud!

Closing thoughts

Some, but not all, independent music shops use Reverb as an e-commerce channel for their guitars. There's pros and cons to being on both sides of the fence, of course. But if you have reservations about selling on Reverb as a part of your business, I propose a clarifying question: are any of your concerns actually concerns about lack of integration or automation? If so, those aren't dead ends.

If you're just a solo guitarist trying to sell a little of bit of gear, API integrations and Reverb apps are overkill, and you might just want to look into adding a button to your website that invites visitors to your Reverb shop. And if you don't have a website, you can also check out my article about how your guitars might be able to give you some inspiration for a website design.

As a guitarist, I love supporting local shops. I also like buying extremely specific guitars online at weird hours as a well-researched impulse buy, so I think there are valid reasons to have information about your inventory online to the extent feasible. And perhaps Reverb's API (and others like it) can fit into making it feasible for you. Thanks for reading!