In news that will surprise no one, Gibson has financial woes

[ByteFrenzy]

The schemes also involve cost cutting. Which, if your company is losing money by the sackful, makes sense enough. Unfortunately, the cost cutting usually happens where the already crappy products come together and rarely in the marble and gold boardrooms. So quality goes even further down the drain while the net result of the cost cutting measures remains far from what was calculated.

 

[BigSteve22]

It's the dreaded front office. You get a bunch a guys with degrees in business management, sales/marketing and accounting together, and with no experience in or concept of the business at hand will, given enough meetings, golf, booze and titty bars, come up with myriad plans to make it all much, much better. They're always convinced those uneducated idiots who created the business in the first place had no idea what they were doing and are lucky they're not trying to live on cat food.

The schemes also involve cost cutting. Which, if your company is losing money by the sackful, makes sense enough. Unfortunately, the cost cutting usually happens where the already crappy products come together and rarely in the marble and gold boardrooms. So quality goes even further down the drain while the net result of the cost cutting measures remains far from what was calculated.

And it's not just business, that's the new paradigm for American life. Self important idiots, confident that their degrees qualify them to run operations they don't understanding, placed in charge of saving the world by those who don't even understand the problem. Then, when they inevitably fail, they blame the people in the trenches, who actually do the work and who had the nerve to point out the errors in their plans in the first place, for being "unsupportive" stumbling blocks to their success. The solution: Fire the workers, hire more idiots, make more plans, repeat as necessary, until it all goes to shiite!  :icon_jokercolor:

 

[Cagey]

How very slippery of you, agent 22!​

 

[stratamania]

It's a good job Henry is not in the business of selling wheels. Those things have been round and around since time immemorial and will be till the cows come home.

Sure there is innovation you can do, but the shape is still round.

I actually really like my Les Paul but clearly, the guy at the top seems out of touch somehow.

 

[swarfrat]

https://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/non-round-rollers

 

[mayfly]

And it's not just business, that's the new paradigm for American life. Self important idiots, confident that their degrees qualify them to run operations they don't understanding, placed in charge of saving the world by those who don't even understand the problem. Then, when they inevitably fail, they blame the people in the trenches, who actually do the work and who had the nerve to point out the errors in their plans in the first place, for being "unsupportive" stumbling blocks to their success. The solution: Fire the workers, hire more idiots, make more plans, repeat as necessary, until it all goes to shiite!  :icon_jokercolor:

wow Steve!  Time to retire! 

But in all seriousness, there is a lot of truth to what you say.  :-\

 

[BigSteve22]

wow Steve!  Time to retire! 

You got that right!  :icon_thumright:

 

[Wolfie351]

There is certainly a fine balance between keeping the purists happy and innovating.  Just looking through posts on this site you see people (sometimes the same person) chastising a company for using "60 year old technology" and then ridiculing something new like robot tuners.  Perhaps Gibson would have been better off using the Gibson name on the heritage line only and then using the Epiphone line or even a new brand for innovative products. 

 

[stratamania]

https://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/non-round-rollers

Those are rollers, not wheels.

 

[Blackouts]

I went into my local music store, an independent with over 30 years trading in the northern suburbs of Sydney, Australia, just because I was nearby with time to kill.

Although I've bought a few guitars there I'm not a gregarious guy and they probably recognise my face without knowing my name.

As I was leaving I made the casual comment that they seem to have greatly reduced their range of Gibson guitars on display.

The reaction was immediate and came from multiple employees, almost in unison - this isn't OUR decision !

There seems to be a supply problem from Gibson's Aust distributor.

So the problems at Head Office would seem to be playing out on the other side of the world - I'd be surprised if it wasn't worldwide.

 

[Cagey]

I've known a couple music store owners who could tell horror stories about Gibson for as long as you'd care to listen. Kind of a love/hate relationship on both sides of the business there, like a forced marriage sort of thing, where neither wanted much of anything to do with the other, but didn't think either had any choice.

 

[Sovereign_13]

There is certainly a fine balance between keeping the purists happy and innovating.  Just looking through posts on this site you see people (sometimes the same person) chastising a company for using "60 year old technology" and then ridiculing something new like robot tuners.  Perhaps Gibson would have been better off using the Gibson name on the heritage line only and then using the Epiphone line or even a new brand for innovative products. 

There's a distinct difference there, though.  The chastising of outdated technology is usually based on the fact that some guitar companies continue to use poorly-designed mechanical systems because of "vintage-correct" nostalgia.  When Fender continues to use six-screw trems on "vintage-spec" guitars " and then charges $2000USD for them, it makes some of us cringe.  It would be like NASA insisting on using Saturn rockets instead of Antares or Falcon rockets.

The "robot tuners" thing is a criticism of Gibson adding a poorly-executed feature that practically no one asked for.  It reeks of a marketing gimmick.  Guitarists tend to not want to pay for gimmicks that don't add any useful functionality.

So it's not really a two-faced thing.  There are features and options that make sense and are desirable, like chambered bodies and wood processes that improve a guitar's stability.  There are improvements that can be made to the mechanical designs, like the modern two-point tremolos and locking tuners.  It's possible to innovate without adding "new for the sake of new" features.

 

[swarfrat]

Robotuners, from an engineering/product development point of view are an unnecessary complexity of ridiculous proportions. You want to add 6 motors and gear trains with plastic teeth for WHAT?!?! That's just stupid. It's not simply vintage purists. It's kind of like Nike trying to sell a temperature sensor and fan module for sneakers.

Much like the 70's, we're living in an age where things which used to not be even possible, now are. Any time such a period of history is upon us, there are tons of people throwing crap at the walls to see what sticks. Most of them, even in their time, are seen for their ridiculousness. What's harder to see are the ones which are pure genious game changers. Which is why people do such crazy things expecting the vast majority to fail.

 

[Seamas]

Though for years when I first started playing, my biggest desire was for Les Pauls, SGs and ES335s, I have never owned one. (Closest I ever came was a mid ‘60s Epiphone Casino)
Most of my experience with Gibson was largely on their acoustic guitars.

Just about any visit to a guitar shop in any city for me was dedicated to mostly playing acoustic guitars--the more high end ones especially--Usual suspects: Martin, Larrivee, Taylor, etc.
I used to live pretty close to different Guitar Centers, Sam ash stores, etc, and would pay a visit every week or so, when one day all of a sudden the “good guitar” room set off from the rest of the acoustics had a whole new center rack dedicated to Gibson—and I was very eager to try them as I knew of many great old recordings with Gibsons and really always like the look of many of them.

I was actually taken aback by a couple things:

Sound quality (they all sounded like someone stuffed a t-shirt into the body) and I don’t mean a “dark” sound like a Martin, I mean a dull, lifeless sound.

Playability: not awful, but very uneven, and more than a few had serious fret buzz

Workmanship—I could see considerable amount of messy glue globs in the interior. And the finish looked really thick at the heel.

Price:  I  basically did rough comparisons to similarly spec’ed competition. The Gibsons were considerably spendier.

I also didn’t much care for a couple of the models that were going for some “vintage” throwback model, so they slapped on the vinyl tipped tuners that they had to use during -and maybe after-WWII due to metal shortages. I dunno, I guess there is a market for that kind of thing, but when spending a couple grand on a guitar, I expect good tuners.

This was about a dozen years ago, so I don’t know if things have changed. I am sure not all their acoustics were clunkers—I did play an amazing Hummingbird at a Gibson trailer at a music festival that was stellar sounding.

 

[aarontunes]

Robotuners, from an engineering/product development point of view are an unnecessary complexity of ridiculous proportions. You want to add 6 motors and gear trains with plastic teeth for WHAT?!?! That's just stupid. It's not simply vintage purists. It's kind of like Nike trying to sell a temperature sensor and fan module for sneakers.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Those have a glycol refrigeration system for cooling those hooves, lol!

 

[swarfrat]

Henry cuts 15 people who combined make probably 1/10th of what he makes, from the one part of his company that actually makes money  in vain effort to cough up $375 mil in debt payments.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/gibson-lays-off-staff-at-nashville-custom-shop

 

[DarkPenguin]

Henry cuts 15 people who combined make probably 1/10th of what he makes, from the one part of his company that actually makes money  in vain effort to cough up $375 mil in debt payments.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/gibson-lays-off-staff-at-nashville-custom-shop

Gonna hire them and start up the Dark Gibson line of guitars.

 

[bagman67]

Those 15 custom shop guys are not likely the most profitable workers in the company. They are senior employees, which means higher wages, higher benefits costs, and so on.  From a purely financial standpoint, it makes sense to let them go if your objective is to make the guitar division more profitable overall.  I'm certain a lot of other areas of the company are gonna feel the liposuction cannula pretty soon, too, assuming they are not feeling it already. 

It's just a damn mess, and if the rapacious financiers had a commitment to anything but profits, i.e., the preservation and promotion of a renowned brand and its employees, it might have been avoided.  Then again, it might not.  Competition from Fender and from foreign-built guitars is intense.  Fact is, they'll still be building custom shop guitars, but with fewer high-level managers overseeing it.  This will take years to play out, even if Gibson misses its debt payments and is forced to reorg under bankruptcy.  But they won't go away.

 

[swarfrat]

Seven pages later, it occurs to me that the thread should have been titled:

"Gibson takes a nose dive".

Seems appropriate for the company that never figured out strap button geometry in 116 years.