The outside of Spicer’s Music.
The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) awarded Spicer’s Music with two global honors at the 2026 NAMM conference in Anaheim, California. The honors included were the Music Makes a Difference Award and the Retailer of the Year Award.
The NAMM conference, held annually in Anaheim, brings together members of the music industry for trade shows, education seminars and networking opportunities. The conference includes the Top 100 Dealers Award Ceremony, where honors are presented across multiple categories.
Spicer’s Music, located at 2140 E University Dr., has been recognized as one of NAMM’s Top 100 Dealers for the past 8 years. This year, the store was nominated for three categories and won two.
One of the awards Spicer’s Music took home this year is the Music Makes a Difference Award, which focuses on the community engagement of the nominees. Spicer’s Music has taken two initiatives that it believes contributed to the team’s success in community involvement.
One of these initiatives is its Rock Club, a program that creates opportunities for youth or adults who want to be in a band to form musical groups. As a part of the initiative, Spicer’s organizes individual musicians together and assigns a band leader to help form the group. The band then meets weekly at Spicer’s to rehearse and develop a set list, which they eventually perform at a public event at an Auburn-Opelika venue.
Jonathan Hendrix, chief operating officer at Spicer’s Music, said the program helps connect musicians who otherwise might not have the opportunity to form a band.
“We’ve got all these individuals who play music and love to play music but are struggling to meet people,” Hendrix said. “We, kind of, are the bridge for that where we bring all of these people together and form a band for them and then they are able to live out this dream that they’ve had to play a show and be in a band.”
Another initiative highlighted by Hendrix is the She Collective, also known as SheCo. Jessie Osborne, assistant manager at Spicer’s, created the program to connect local women musicians and help address the male-dominated nature of the music industry. Since creating SheCo in fall 2024, Osborne has provided program members with many opportunities to perform.
Spicer’s also hosts its annual Fall Kickoff in August. The event brings the community together with food trucks, face painting, giveaways and other activities.
Hendrix said the kickoff consistently brings in the most people through their doors each year.
“We take a lot of pride in our customer service,” Hendrix said. “We are super relational. We really try to form relationships and connect over what we are all passionate about, which is music.”
Spicer’s takes pride in the store, working to keep it clean and presentable to ensure it is an enjoyable space for customers to shop and spend their time. Although the Auburn team is fairly small, each employee is dedicated to their customer-first mission, which is shown through the store atmosphere.
“We’re not the kind of shop where you have to ask to touch a guitar or to take down a guitar and play it,” Hendrix said. “We’re not the kind of shop where anyone is going to talk down to you or look at you differently, because you don’t know how something works. We are the total opposite of that.”
The second honor awarded to Spicer’s was the Retailer of the Year Award. This award is the top category in the ceremony. Spicer’s has been nominated for it once before but has never won until this past conference.
Hendrix said that winning the award is humbling but recognized the hard work it took to achieve the win.
“We’re still super customer-centric,” Hendrix said. “We’re going to continue to be the kind of business we always have been, and there is no sense of our heads getting inflated. It’s just truly an honor and honestly, I think we feel the most pride for our customers and the fact that they get to say that they are a part of the top dealer in the world right now as far as NAMM is concerned.”
For Hendrix, the award reflects the Auburn-Opelika community and the support Spicer’s has received from its customers.
“I hope our customers really take pride in that too and recognize their contribution to it and that this is a community-wide honor that everybody gets to share in,” Hendrix said. “It definitely pushes us to work even harder.”
To learn more about Spicer’s Music or to get involved in its community initiatives and events, visit the website.
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