and play a Gibson, you can sometimes put
the noise canceling headphones on and say,
“Hey, I love my Gibson, what’s going on here?”
And then all of a sudden you get a change to
potentially join Gibson and all of a sudden be a
difference maker.
So, the very first thing that I listened to was, and
that I’ve learned over time, is nothing matters
more than doing what you say you do best.
And what we do best is make amazing guitars
that sound awesome through the artists that
play them. The famous and the not so famous.
This notion of, “Hey Gibson, pay attention
around quality and just listen and do what made
you famous in terms of some of the original
specs, but don’t forget about the modern guys,
and please don’t do anything novelty.” That
was out there before I even joined.
Day one when I was out there in the factory I
said we were going to pay more attention to
quality in the next few months than we had
in years, and we did. We’ve invested more in
quality in our factories in the last eight months
than we have in the prior eight years, that’s a
fact. We did a tour yesterday and people were
literally blown away.
We did things like declare war on dust, because
dust can get into a guitar so we completely
revamped that. We’ve put new lighting in,
we’ve changed the entire environment to be
one hundred percent focused on quality, and
with quality guess what you get? A better team
of craftsmen and craftswomen who are there
working hard to make the guitars. You all of a
sudden can look at the quality of the materials
that go into it, you can look at the quality of
respect that you can demand, and we’re seeing
amazing quality. Number one… listen, learn,
pivot… the quality has significantly improved.
Second, and this is more on the business side,
and I’ve heard many examples, we weren’t
easy to do business with. People loved the
Gibson brand, but they didn’t necessarily like
doing business with Gibson. I thought we could
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September 2019
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