As a former Guild dealer (I managed a guitar store from '77 - '88) and one who has remained close to the retail environment since then, I have a few thoughts on Guild dealers, or the lack thereof...
Understand first, the Guilds have always been a fringe market overall in guitars. No matter who has owned them, they've suffered from poor marketing and a perception of being "not as good as...". When the guy I wound up working for opened his store in the area back in '69 and started selling Guilds in town, the Gibson dealer told people (who believed him!!) that Guilds were Gibson seconds that had been rejected by the Epiphone dealers. Outside of John Denver and Tommy Smothers (a great guitarist BTW, but not known for that) during the hey-day of acoustic guitar sales, Guild pretty much didn't register on the general public's radar. While Gibson had free advertising from Pete Townsend, Graham Nash, John Lennon, Emmylou Harris, etc. and Martin had the gods of acoustic music- Stephen Stills, Neil Young, David Crosby, Joni Mitchell, etc., Guild had very little to sell their guitars. Sure there was the shot of Clapton in his Cream days, but he was an electric guitarist. And besides, outside of the Guild ad, the only pictures of him with an acoustic were weird ones like the Zemitas and that funny Rick inside the cover of "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs". And Tom Fogerty used a SF V, but that was the "other" Fogerty, not John. Oh, they did have an ad with Graham Parker and the Rumor, but seriously, compared to CSNY that's pointless...
So here's why I think it's so hard to find Guilds in stores....
A. Guilds have to be sold. By and large, people don't walk into a store looking for a Guild. They want a Taylor, Gibson, or Martin. And given the ruthless Wal-Mart business model that's driving retail now, SELLING is a luxury most stores can't afford. You have to take time to show the instruments, to explain them, and to assure people it's not a knock-off like Arbor, Reynolds, etc.
B. In the late '90s FMIC loaded up Fender dealers with a ton of Guild products. Just stupid levels- the local store at one time had three of the big fat archtops, three Starfire IVs, two Starfire IIIs, two Bluesbirds, several D-40's, and three F-47CEs, plus a bunch of others. And the next closest dealers had similar levels of stock. Now in this market, having ONE X-500 was probably silly, but three of them??!!? Of course they didn't make any money on them, and they didn't re-order Guilds. Now the dealers are burnt on them. No matter how good the sales staff thinks the guitars are, they already know they're a hard sell and low profit...
C. Then FMIC moved Guild's production from Westerly to Corona. Given the mindless nature of a lot of musicians, the Corona ones were defamed even before the announcement was a day old, let alone before anyone had actually touched a Corona Guild. In the interim, they couldn't ship guitars anyway.
D. Then the Corona ones come out, some aren't as good as they could have been, and then they close Corona and move to Tacoma. Same story, but now confidence by dealers is further depleted. Also, FMIC has pretty much stopped advertising the guitars so it looks like they're disappearing.
E. Tacoma had some serious problems with QC, even before FMIC bought the company. Those seemingly persisted after FMIC's purchase of the company and the stigma is attached now to Guilds.
F. Now they've moved yet again. The economy sucks big time and too many people equate Kaman with plasitc guitars. Plus they still by-and-large make Fender dealers the Guild dealers. That's a problem because now most Fender dealers are used to NOT working a sale. People walk in wanting a Strat, a Tele, a Precision, or a Jazz. All the sales drone has to do is find out how much money they can extract from the customer. Chances are that sales drone is going to show people a Taylor acoustic before a Guild. They can show the poster of Dave Matthews, Taylor Swift, etc. playing a Taylor. Those guitar are seductively easy to play, and have that god-awful sound that people now think an acoustic should sound like. No sales technique needed here. But to sell the Guild the drone actually has to be able to talk guitars..
I don't know what the solution is, but it's going to take concentrated efforts by FMIC marketing and the individual sales reps to build trust among dealers, to find dealers who'll care and work at it, and to do effective media marketing. Without that, there's simply no way to get Guilds out to the general public.
John
