FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Martin Guitar Company

Question:
Looking through Martin's 'Sounding Board' newsletter, I couldn't help but wonder what their goal for the future is, besides make money while the money is good. I'm all for expansion, and more jobs. But they list 83, yes 83 models that they are going to carry, not including special & limited editions, customs, etc.. Do they intend on having a group of employees making the 'standard' and 'vintage' guitars, the core their existence (IMHO) and another group of folks making their bread&butter guitars (X-16) of which they probably sell a lot of. Nothing wrong with DXM and DM Martins. they have their place in the marketplace. There's just a big difference between a DXM and a D-45, and I hope Martin intends on keeping a very high standard for D-18 and up guitars. Hope you folks understand what I'm trying to say.That 'small' company just isn't to small any more. Any thoughts or insight?

Answer:
All I can say is that the imminent death of the Martin Guitar Company has been getting predicted for as long as I've been playing, but I have never seen them doing as well as they have this decade. At some point, it's likely that the amazing acoustic guitar bubble of the late 1990's will deflate, if it hasn't begun to already. But somehow the Republic will stand, and, I suspect, so will the Martin Guitar Company In some ways I agree with you and in some ways I don't Wade. The Martin Guitar Company has gone through financial ups and downs as all companies do, but its one saving grace has always been that it is a privately held comapny. It would surely have folded in the depression, the electric guitar boom of the seventies, and perhaps during the war if it had to answer to shareholders. I don't think any of its financial woes has ever effected the quality of its core instruments the 18's, 28's ... However, the business tack that Chris Martin the current is taking is dangerous. He is creating the New technology guitars under the company's name direectly, and the sound is not all that it might be. They are less expensive to buy, but I believe they carry a higher profit margin for Martin as they are less expensive to build. Part of the problem I think is that Chris never took any real interest in the company prior to taking it over, and he doesn't play the instrument even slightly. Also, his increasing of the product line, and sales over all means a depression in sales in the next couple of decades. Martin experienced this in spades in its building boom of the sixties. He believes that he can recapture the market of Martin type guitars, such as Takamines, Guilds, anyone who builds a dreadnought, by offering so many variations of his core instruments that everyone will come circling back to Martin. I believe that this thinking is flawed because marketing is not always about product. It's largely about what people think is cool. The problem with saturating the acoustic guitar markets is that once they are sold then you have to compete with the your own used instuments to sell your new instrument since they exist on the market for such a long period of time. The firearms industry has long had this problem. That is why respectable builders don't soil their name by creating cheap products. In the 1970's Harley Davidson had similar problems. It's market was not invaded by its own product since Harley's are basically a product that will wear out. It was invaded by Japaneese knock-offs that were superior to its product and less expensive to purchase. When Triumph met this problem, it decided to lower the quality of its product to remian cost competitive. Harley went the other route, it kept the quality high, and made them very expensive, which led to other issues. They were consequently limiting the market of people who could or would purchase their product, so they have intentionally limited the number of bikes made each year to keep demand ahead of suppy. This is the model that Martin has always followed although I don't think that it was intentional. The current company concept is to enter lower priced markets through their own name brand as a marketing tool, and it is starting to hurt them already. The discussions on this news group alone have pointed out that the new technology guitars don't have that old Martin sound and feel and therefore all Martins must suck. In a word of mouth advertising world with lots of competitors nipping at your heels, this is really dangerous. Lastly if the construction that is going on at Martin in building new infrastructure is leveraged past the level that the company or Chris Martin individually can afford to repay the debt then it is entriely possible that the whole company could go down. Many good companies have folded in the past from aggressive strategies such as the ones currently being employed by Martin. As a Pennsylvanian and a Martin owner I really hope not becase I love my guitar, andI love having the best guitar company in the world close to home.