Sam Ash Music's assets to fetch $15.2M from Mexican buyer, which is not keeping stores

Family-owned Sam Ash Music Stores’ 100-year run will come to an end soon, following a Mexican company’s purchase of the Hicksville-based musical instrument chain’s assets in a bankruptcy auction.

Sam Ash Music Corp.'s remaining 25 stores, including a Carle Place location at 385 Old Country Rd., will close this month, said Richard Ash, co-chief executive.

“It’s a total heartbreak that the business is gone -- heartbreak for me, heartbreak for my family. … I started working in the store when I was 6 years old,” said Ash, 70, the grandson of the business’ founder.

A distributor of musical instruments to dealers in Mexico, Organizacion Gonher S.A. de C.V., submitted the winning bid of $15.2 million June 20 for Sam Ash Music’s assets, including intellectual property, e-commerce site and Samson Technologies Corp., a wholesale business that makes speakers, microphones, bass amplifiers and guitars.

Gonher, which owns two stores in Mexico called Gonher Music, is not keeping Sam Ash Music’s stores open but it will retain the Hicksville headquarters at 278 Duffy Ave. and Samson Technologies next door, Richard Ash said. Gonher might reduce the size of the headquarters, he said.

Sam Ash Music has four distribution centers in Hicksville, Indianapolis, Las Vegas and Tampa, Florida, but Gonher is keeping only the ones in Hicksville and Tampa, said Sam Ash’s chief restructuring officer, Jordan Meyers, a managing director at SierraConstellation Partners LLC, a Los Angeles-based interim management and advisory firm.

Gonher will retain about 100 of Sam Ash’s employees at the two distribution centers, Hicksville corporate office and Samson Technologies, he said.

Gonher did not respond to Newsday’s requests for comment.

A bankruptcy court judge approved the asset purchase agreement between Gonher and Sam Ash Music on June 28.

“We are hoping to close any day,” Meyers said.

Online competition, pandemic cited

Sam Ash Music was the largest family-owned musical instrument retailer in the United States, with 44 stores in 16 states, including two Long Island stores, until recently.

The retailer announced in March that nearly 20 stores would close, including a location in Huntington Station.

But shortly after the company and its affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey on May 8, it said closing sales would be held at all of its stores;  42 were open at that point. The Ash family had hoped a buyer would retain at least some stores, Richard Ash said.

All the stores are in leased spaces, and most range from 20,000 to 30,000 square feet, he said.

Sam Ash Music has faced financial challenges for years, including growing sales of musical instruments by online competitors, which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Meyers wrote in a bankruptcy court document.

“The debtors lost significant market share when customers converted to online shopping, and they could not regain that share post-pandemic,” he wrote.

Sam Ash’s court filing shows it defaulted on a loan agreement with Tiger Finance for $18 million by not meeting deadlines for “showing progress toward a sale of the business or refinancing," said bankruptcy attorney Patrick Collins, a partner at Uniondale law firm Farrell Fritz PC who is not involved in the Sam Ash bankruptcy.

Sam Ash Music reported having between $100,000,001 and $500 million in estimated assets and the same range in estimated liabilities in a bankruptcy court filing.

The company employed 830 people, 671 of whom were full-time workers, as of the date of the bankruptcy filing.

Losing connections

Violinist Sam Ash (Ashkynase) and his wife, Rose Dinin, founded the business in Brooklyn in May 1924. He died in 1956, leaving the company to be run by his wife and two sons, Jerry and Paul.

The first Long Island stores opened in Hempstead and Huntington in the early 1960s, Richard Ash said.

Most of the business’ store growth occurred over the last 30 years, he said, adding that the loss of the personal interactions with customers is one of the biggest blows from the stores’ closings.

“What breaks my heart is that connection with customers we had and customers’ ability to see the merchandise in person and play it and try it and … get repairs and get advice is unfortunately gone.”

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.