Hi Chazmo: in 1962, my friend Fred and I rode the bench for Gene's Laundry and Dry Cleaners Pony League baseball team; no thanks to he and I, it was a really good baseball team. Johnny McG____ caught for the team and hosted the post-season party at his house. Because Fred and I had kept the bench warm and picked up the bats at practice without complaint, we figured we'd earned our Cokes and potato chips.
We were all out on the back porch including Johnny's very pretty sister and her friends and Johnny was doing his thing: blowing spit bubbles. I'd seen people blow smoke rings but never anybody who could form up some spit on his tongue and blow out a bubble ... like a soap bubble only smaller. I admit I was dumbfounded and the chicks ... they were all over Johnny because they'd never seen anybody blow spit bubbles either .... it not mattering to anyone that they popped a few seconds after floating around.
Nothing would please me more than to see Guild prosper making guitars ... acoustic, electric, jazzers, basses ... anything with a G-shield would be okay with me. I agree with you in these respects;
- FMIC is fully 'invested' in the Guild brand. Buying it and then hauling it around the country ... considering the apparent market success, so far that looks like more cash out than cash in.
- Whether they bought KMC specifically as a consequence of Guild's Tacoma financial slip-and-fall or it was just a timing coincidence, they acquired newer physical plant, committed people, and expansion capacity ... the ability to spread the overhead over more units.
I also think if there's anybody out there who can resurrect a product line, it's FMIC. In the late '80s, they started re-issuing Fender's Greatest (amp) Hits; '59 Bassman, Deluxe Reverb, Twin Reverb as well as 'refreshed' designs like the Hot Rod and Blues Deville models ... all of these for people who could do without the headaches and bugaboos of dated electronics and hit-and-miss technical support from scruffy-looking amp shops (they tend not to be especially spiffy places
)
There are a lot of vintage/re-issue S-100s, Bluesbirds, and Starfires out there and, unlike those murky tube amps, the electronics are simple and there's (I think) a tangible preference for the old/funky/'roadworn'/mojo-covered appearance. That is, I don't know why FMIC stopped making Guild leccies in the first place but so many older, well-made Guilds in the after-market has to act like a damper on sales. As a leader in its industry, either FMIC has a staff economist or has the money to hire one to track its own unit sales v. unemployment, the DJI, CPI, gas prices ... they model their own sales. Unless/until existing product lines meet/exceed expectations ...
Finally, any decision to market Bluesbirds, S-100s, and Starfires necessarily means competing with Les Pauls, SGs, and ES175s/ES335s; it isn't enough to be able to make high-value/moderately-priced guitars ... there's the matter of getting people to buy them and, respectfully, nobody at FMIC who wants to keep their job is going to point to how many people 'friend' Guild on Facebook as a reliable indicator of future sales.
It's a fact of life in large organizations that the people who work in small branch or district offices want to grow their business with the support of the home office; more budget, (in construction, more bonding capacity), new hires ... it's a healthy indicator of interest in advancing the company ... not to mention promotions, corporate visibility, better pay and office space, and better car allowances that go with commercial success. These 'pleas' for more investment are usually met with questions like: who is going to be responsible (translation: who is putting their job on the line?), how reliable are the growth predictions, and why can't the locals produce more profit from the work they have?
I admire Dave Gonzalez' commitment and enthusiasm and I think it's a very fine gesture on their part to entertain LTGers; I'm sure they find it encouraging that so many substantive people show interest in them and their products but, if or until the 'business' people at FMIC get the answers they want, respectfully the conduct of Guild reps as far as leccies go isn't much more than Johnny McG____ blowing spit bubbles.
