Watermelon Music transfers ownership, remains open

By Alyssa Hwang

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

For over 30 years, Watermelon Music has provided musical instruments and resources to the Davis musicians of all ages, ranging from elementary to professional level. However, until this past summer, the store was on the brink of shutting down after previous owner Jeff Simons announced he would put the building up for sale.

Earlier this year, Simons announced that the store’s closure was due to a lack of revenue, credited partly to the rise of online stores.

“I would say in a nutshell, we were spread too thin,” current co-managing partner Brian Aguilar said. “Just the times changing and the increase of online shopping, particularly Amazon, really led to the downfall of the store, as well as increased shipping costs to get instruments sent to us; the profit margins went way down, so we were making a lot less just with the modern economy.” 

After much conversation involving Simons and Aguilar and various organized groups, the music store now remains in business through the new management of three separate entities.

The retail aspect of the store is currently run by longtime Watermelon employees Aguilar and Eric Wellington, who took on management in September 2024. 

Following the recent changes, Watermelon’s retail department had to make several major alterations in both its catalog and services.

“We’ve cut down the size of our sales floor so we’re renting less space, we are not carrying as much merchandise as we used to, we’re no longer doing rentals; these are all things we’ve had to do in order to save money in order to keep the doors open,” Aguilar said. “We wanna be here for the long haul.”

The second branch of the reformed Watermelon ownership is managed by private music instructors formerly under Watermelon, now independently called the Watermelon Music Academy.

“That’s been a big development–the fact that there are other groups that are all working symbiotically to make the things that one person used to do happen,” Aguilar said.

The store’s management is also shared with Friends of Watermelon Music, a non-profit organization that will take on the instrument distribution service instituted by the store’s previous ownership.

Instead of instrument rentals, Friends of Watermelon Music will provide instrument loans from its library of instruments, allowing for extensive musical experimenting all under the price of one $250 annual membership. 

“If you wanna try one instrument for a few months, and then try a different instrument, it allows that flexibility, so you can have one instrument checked out,” Wilson said.

Alongside instrument loans, the non-profit will offer music classes and workshops to promote inclusive music education across Davis. 

“We’re also looking at filling a gap for homeschoolers,” Wilson said. “They get these vouchers that they can use for music education that might not be accessible at the charter school that they are homeschooling through.”

Despite these major changes, the Davis community’s support of Watermelon Music allowed the store to remain open all throughout the transition. “We never reopened, because we never closed,” Aguilar said. “And the only reason Eric and I are here running the store is because of Jeff, and of course the community really wanting to see the store stay open.”

Watermelon’s persistence to protect the musical presence in Davis is not commonplace. “Music stores all over are closing down. No one can keep up with Amazon and other places like Sweetwater that are online that are blowing away all the stores you can walk into,” Aguilar said. “Davis is one of the few communities in Northern California that actually still has a music store that you can walk into and play an instrument, so we wanna keep that alive and keep it going.” 

After undergoing changes in leadership, Watermelon finds much of the Davis community unaware that the store remains operational.

“Every day we encounter multiple people that have no idea that we’re no longer shutting down,” Aguilar said. “A lot of people walk in and they’re like, ‘We’re sad to see you go,’ and we’re like ‘Well, no, we’re not gone, we’re here.”