Piles of boxes, repair tools and guitar cases lay strewn about the tiny Lower East Side store where Matt Desilva and his two employees were busy recently with the last-minute details of their move. While Desilva transferred the utilities over the phone, his assistant and repairman sealed and tagged boxes about to be loaded on a van bound for a new location in the East Village.

Desilva, 39, hopes the new spot can boost his shop’s sales, which were dealt a serious blow by the recession. Since mid-2008, he has lost at least 30 percent of his revenues.

“2008 started as our best year ever,” Desilva said. “The first half of the year we did more business than we had before. As soon as the mortgage crisis hit, our business died.”

Called Guitar Man, the store is just one of many small businesses in the Lower East Side that has been forced out of the neighborhood during the recession. Seventeen percent of the storefronts in the area stand empty, according to Katie Archer, a representative of the Lower East Side Business Improvement District. That is a sharp increase from 2008, Archer said.

Despite this exodus, Desilva’s landlord tried to increase his rent, from $3,200 a month to at least $3,500. With more losses looming, Desilva decided to take his 5-year-old store from Orchard Street in the Lower East Side to Seventh Street and First Avenue in the East Village. His monthly rent is now $3,000.

In addition to the move, Desilva developed other strategies to weather the economic crisis. In December 2008, Desilva hired Mas Hino, whom he hails as one of the two best guitar repairmen in the city. “We wanted to boost the repair end of things as a source of income,” Desilva said, adding that repairs now generate as much as one-third of his revenues.

At the back of Desilva’s new store, Hino has his own small workroom. On a given day, the 43-year-old repairman huddles over his work table, juggling dozens of repair tools as he nurses worn-out guitars back to life. Instead of buying new guitars, Hino said, many musicians are looking to save money by fixing their old ones. Despite a slow summer, business is picking up, he said. On a good week, he will have five or so guitars to fix. A repair job typically runs between $100 and $200.

But in the front of the store, Desilva is having a hard time selling expensive and custom-made guitars, costing between $2,000 and $5,000 each, though not for lack of experience.

“Matt was the top salesman at Manny’s Music on 48th Street … so everyone knew Matt,” said Chris Mojo, Desilva’s long-time friend. Desilva, who grew up in Garrison, New York, and attended NYU, sold guitars at the well-known store for eight years before opening Guitar Man. In a sign of the times, Manny’s closed in June 2008, after 74 years in business.

Throughout the city, the recession has affected the music industry. In May and June of this year, Virgin Megastore, the giant music retailer, closed two of its outlets, one in Times Square and the other in Union Square. One of Desilva’s former neighbors in the Lower East Side, Ludlow Guitars, also moved to a new location in the East Village this year, in an effort to drum up sales, according to Jan Howell, the store’s owner.

In his 16 years in the music industry, Desilva has had to adapt before. In 1993, he began working at P.P.I., a recording studio in Manhattan. He started as an intern, answering phones, and eventually moved up to the position of sound engineer. Five years later, when digital technology was beginning to wreak havoc on the recording industry, Matt decided to branch out into retail. He saw a job opening at Manny’s Music and applied.

Though he hadn’t initially planned on being a guitar salesman, he quickly got the hang of it. Within three years, he was promoted to a manager position. At that point, Desilva said, he was amassing sales of $1 million a year, with a $50,000 annual salary.

“When I started, I didn’t think this was anything I was going to do for long,” he said, “and it turns out this was something I was good at.”

By 2005, Desilva was ready to start his own business with money he had saved and a business loan. He had also recently met Gina Pedone, a fashion designer and small business owner. The two were engaged within three months of meeting in 2003 and had a baby, Lucia, in 2006.

With Guitar Man struggling and Desilva’s wife trying to establish her own fashion line, the couple has trouble making ends meet. A major expense is child care. To trim costs, Desilva often takes his daughter to work with him.

Desilva, who has been playing music since the age of 6, is cautiously optimistic about Guitar Man’s future in the East Village. “We have a lot more foot traffic,” he said. “We are definitely getting more customers than we were.”

But, he added, it would be “a few months before we really see if anything improves.”