It turns out a small business in downtown Kamloops that was robbed just after Christmas had more stolen than first thought.

Riversong Guitars owner Mike Miltimore says when someone broke in and stole the company computer on Dec. 27 they also stole a $6,000-dollar bass guitar.

He says staff are two days away from leaving for Anaheim for a massive trade show.

“It’s like one per cent of our sales, maybe. But the reason why it’s so key and important is that you meet up with big bands and they want things like acoustic basses, and that’s your entry into working with the band a lot of times. And it’s just one of those niches products, one we’ve won awards for.”

Miltimore says there will be 200,000 people at the trade show and says not having the bass will mean a loss of opportunities.

“It’s the economic driver for us, for the next year really. It’s a huge show, and the bass isn’t going to ruin the show but it’s certainly not going to help us, and it’s not going to be as successful as it could be.”

Meanwhile, Miltimore says the company computer is still missing; he says a lot of the data was backed up but a significant amount of data was missing.

“Before it got stolen is when we put everything together and had all the catalogs ready for print, ads ready to go out, that kind of thing. We were able to recover from the (loss of) data, but literally yesterday was the first day we actually started producing new content, and started working. So it really put us behind.”