"Why We Fired Fender" - Fender Direct Sales controversy

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NY Chief
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"Why We Fired Fender" - Fender Direct Sales controversy

Post by NY Chief » Tue Jan 20, 2015 10:47 am

This should stir up some good debate....

http://www.msretailer.com/msr/fired-fender/
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Re: "Why We Fired Fender" - Fender Direct Sales controversy

Post by frenchie » Sat Jan 24, 2015 8:04 am

NY Chief wrote:This should stir up some good debate....

http://www.msretailer.com/msr/fired-fender/
seems like a natural evolution of the marketplace , selling big brands everyone know about direct from internet , and making people discover the new luthiers in small shops where they can actually get their hands on the stuff and see if it'll fly ... So far i'm always happy when the big corpos get a slap on the butt when they get too self conscious , too much confidence kills confidence ... i understand big brands want to stay profitable and since they have big factories to maintain and it means selling volumes constantly , but i still think they'd do it far better without the high dollars harvard sales reps , business plan managers , internet scouring trend sniffers and all the other members of the white collar team , who would be far better off selling junk bonds in wall street ... Quality speaks for itself , if you stick to it you do not need a rep of any sort , just word of mouth , each times a lot of old GEC tubes get for sale in the darkest faraway corners of ebay , it gets snagged in the millisecond ...

so my advice for fender ; lay of all the blabbering scammers , hire skilled luthiers in equal proportion , optimise optimise optimise every money hungry non-sens in your factories , and play on rarity more skillfully ( no one gives a shit about a 500 pieces special artist model if they can build themselves one with as good if not better parts scattered around , except for the gallagher wich is sooooo period correct ) ...Make a 80's fullerton style , custom shop style , really really well made super basic model of 64 strat ( only one neck shape made by skilled luthiers , and random alder body just with perfect neck pocket adjustment , that'll do , body's the least important of the two , one coat nitro and three colors only ) loaded with the right period correct cold rolled steel block tremolo ( which is a sale pitch in itself you didn't ventured on , whereas it's most fracking important ) , shitty pickups if you're in the mood to save bucks ( everyone change them anyway ) price it under 2000 bucks , don't advertise it , just throw them around with a post-it note on them like " try this stuff dude" , and see how it sells ....My little finger tells me , you'll have yourself an underground trend in less time you need to say dollar ....

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Re: "Why We Fired Fender" - Fender Direct Sales controversy

Post by mr.twistyneck » Thu Feb 12, 2015 2:31 pm

So why would Fender start up a direct sales model? Perhaps to try and stave off the eerie possibility of Guitar Center's collapse. The article below is long and quite in depth and states that GC is ~28% - 2.1 billion - of a 7 billion dollar industry. Whoooooo.

http://www.ericgarland.co/2015/02/03/end-guitar-center/

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Re: "Why We Fired Fender" - Fender Direct Sales controversy

Post by NY Chief » Thu Feb 12, 2015 3:08 pm

Re-reading the OP, it sounds like a pretty disgruntled music shop owner but Fender and the rest have definetly imposed too much of their will and the corporate greed thing fuked everythign up. I won't lose sleep over GC or the rest taking a beating....
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