INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
[ EASTWOOD GUITARS ' UNIQUE DISTRIBUTION | Bruce Adolph ]
[ GTR ] The traditional way of guitar distribution has been that the manufacturer first designs and then makes the instruments, sells them to music retailers, and then the retailer sells then to the guitarist / consumer. It seems that you have looked at this configuration and have put your own spin on this at Eastwood.
Tell us how you came to the place you are now, and how your own plan works?
[ Michael Robinson ] During the 1950’ s and 1960’ s, the electric guitar market exploded with thousands of new designs from Japanese firms like Teisco Del Ray, Norma, Silvertone, and European brands like EKO, Hagstrom, and many more. Most of these brands died off in the late 1960’ s, never to be heard from again.
For example, one of our first projects was the DEVO La Baye 2x4 guitar. I had been considering making that one for many years but was not confident there was a market for it, so it stayed on the back-burner.
With EWCS I thought if we could pre-sell 24 of them, it would be enough to go to market. To everyone’ s surprise, we pre-sold over 200 of them. With the old distribution model, I would have committed( reluctantly) to make 24 guitars, then crossed my fingers as I tried to sell them when production was complete. With this new model, it removes the risk for everyone, as we only require a small deposit from the buyers. If we do not hit a minimum target, we refund the deposits and simply do not go to production. Everyone wins.
We are in the business of re-issuing“ tributes” to many of these famous, and not so famous, designs from that era. Since we started in 2002, we constantly get suggestions from our customers and followers with ideas for new models to resurrect. During the first decade of operations, we would sift through the best of those ideas and bring them to market using the traditional distribution model.
With the popularity of crowd-funding schemes like Kickstarter taking root in the last few years, we started to explore using it to bring new models to market, essentially letting the customers decide which model we should make. We designed our own platform to facilitate this and opened Eastwood Custom Shop( EWCS www. eastwoodcustoms. com) in December of 2015.
It’ s simple: We post ideas of guitars we are planning to make and ask people for a small deposit to support the project. Once we reach a minimum number of supporters, we go to production, and 4-5 months later the guitars are ready to ship.
[ GTR ] That is amazing! Crowd sourcing guitar building. Smart idea.
When you shine the light on an old design and it gets a second chance as an Eastwood guitar, what do you see happen to those vintage guitars that you are making a“ tribute” of?
[ Michael ] Generally, our tribute models do not have an immediate effect on the original versions, other than raising awareness of them to those who were not familiar with them.
[ GTR ] Does their vintage value go up or down?
[ Michael ] The vintage value continues to go up, sometimes at an accelerated pace if people who were unaware now lust after an original. Most of the ones we make tributes to are thinly traded, so the more interest, the quicker the price will rise. We rarely see the value of any vintage guitar- any brand- go down, simply because there is a finite number of them.
Bruce Adolph: President + Publisher, Adolph Agency Inc.
GearTechRec. com
74 Sep � Oct 2017 GearTechRec. com