You Help Me, I Help You

People often wonder about the competition among music stores. You may think that we are all trying to undercut eachother and put the other guy out of business. Sometimes this happens, but more often, music stores try to help eachother.
There are two music stores in my tiny little town of Burnt Hills, New York. We get along fine with eachother. I do mostly repairs of wind instruments. The other store does mostly lessons, accessories, instrument rentals, and guitars. He sometimes brings instruments to me for repair and I sometimes send people to his shop for accessories and music books. There are also four other music stores that I correspond with regularly. They give me a lot of instruments to repair and I send people to them when I cannot meet their needs. We try to help eachother in any way we can.
Rather than trying to beat up the other music stores, it is helpful to everyone to work together. There is plenty of business for everyone and it allows each of us to specialize in one or two things and do them well. It also helps the customer to get better service.
Thank you to all of my fellow music store owners.