When Henry took over Gibson, really "saved" Gibson, he came in like the college preppy arrogant horses rosette that he is.
#1. In the beginning, Henry walks the floor, smashing guitars left and right, saying "THESE are not GIBSON GUITARS". When the dust settled, it was recounted and recalled that Henry in fact smashed up most of a custom order from the 2nd largest Gibson account, simply "for effect" to prove a point. The point was QUALITY must IMPROVE, whereas Quality had already improved, and what Henry really meant is that "quality shall get no worse, and you'll work your asses off to increase production to unreasonable limits, with fewer people doing more tasks".
#2. Henry demotes or dismisses the majority of the old time skilled staff, in an effort to weed out the rotten eggs who have seen crap fly out the door that shouldn't. Gibson's policy of "2" marked guitars has ended. GIBSON DOES NOT PRODUCE SECONDS! is Henry's claim. He is correct. Instead they push mistakes and down right fubars out the door as firsts and "just deal with it". The old time staff mostly migrates and navigates to Kalamazoo to produce The Heritage guitars, better than Gibson ever thought of doing in modern years.
#3. In an effort to train, retrain, dominate, subjugate, and intimidate the local Nashville work force, Henry unleashes a torrent of sub par "models" for his crews to train on.
#4. Henry instills the principle of forced price increases, with each one bearing some added benefit to The Company, in the way of reduced remuneration packages to the employees. The die is cast - do a good job, get screwed by the ownership.
#5. In an attempt to mirror CocaCola, Henry introduces the chambered Les Paul guitar. The Les Paul is no longer a solid body guitar, but now its a thinline! Yes in fact... its a thinline, and weighs under 7.5lbs for each model. The backlash by long time customers begins - online and offline. I myself predict that after one years time, the swiss cheeze Les Paul will return, or be offered as a model alternative. I am proven correct, with the adoption of the Les Paul Traditional guitar.
#6. Gibson is sold to a German outfit. Henry retains local control, but is subject to "higher authority". Once again, Gibson goes under the cloud of remote ownership and control....
BTW, Henry J sounds EXACTLY like Gump, Forest Gump. Just search him on YouTube.
