Post
by Larry Mal » Tue Feb 20, 2018 4:58 am
I'm not smart enough to really know what Gibson's long term financial situation is and what changes will come. I like the company OK.
On the Gear Page, though, I've loosely participated in a thread about how can Rickenbacker stay in business, started since the original author of the thread has never seen a local band play a Rickenbacker so he figures that no one must be buying them at all.
A weak premise, but it does give one the chance to reflect on a company that is just quietly making guitars for sale at a medium price in an American factory like they've been doing for decades. They aren't trying to be a global company, they aren't trying to expand production of their instruments so that they can sell one at every level, there isn't a factory in dozens of nations.
It's pretty clear from both Gibson and Fender that the guitar market is incredibly oversaturated and will not really be able to support the companies that Gibson in particular perceives themselves to be.
If I have any hope for the future of the guitar, it's that these bubbles burst, and there is a large scale back to something much more closely approximating the Rickenbacker model. I think it's pretty inevitable. Gibson and Fender have been producing their products at a scale that would be more appropriate for something like beer or cell phones, items with a fixed life in which constant re-purchasing of the product is necessary.
But that's not true with guitars, so their current lineup in 2018 competes unsuccessfully with their lineup from 2014, which itself lost in the marketplace very often to their product in 2010 and so on. If your business model is predicated on the idea of constant expansion and growth like Gibson and Fender have done, that's going to lead to a product that is incredibly vulnerable to changing whims of the marketplace.
I mean, obviously the Les Paul has value and will always be made. Gibson will always be around in some form. Hopefully once the cruelties of the marketplace do what Gibson should have already done, we'll have a smaller, leaner company making very high quality- can you believe it?- guitars.
Back in those days, everyone knew that if you were talking about Destiny's Child, you were talking about Beyonce, LaTavia, LeToya, and Larry.