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oops sorry again no need to have clarified and thing moved on. cool.

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"It's a Tone Faerie thing"
"Da goal is to sharpen ur wit as well as ye Sgian Dubh"
"Sippin Loch Dhu @Black lake" ,Kirby O...

By the way the Guit-fiddle in my previous post is a Lindert, I suspect marketing the prob. they where produced 1998-2000 at Chelan Falls Wa. Then 2000-2002 Korea- (I think).

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"It's a Tone Faerie thing"
"Da goal is to sharpen ur wit as well as ye Sgian Dubh"
"Sippin Loch Dhu @Black lake" ,Kirby O...

Uh, well, things do get exciting round these parts eh?

Ok, I think the post by Brock a couple of points up there is definately one which is worth reading and re-reading. Fundamentally, marketing is exactly that. Understanding your market on a macro and micro scale, and furthermore understanding how to tailor the 'expereience' (to use your word, Brock) so that every individual feels you're doing it all for them.

In terms of branding - I'd say you have to be a little cautious, from experience, in jumpuing into creating a brand too soon in your businesses lifespan. Obviously I planned and ran a *lot* of marketing campaigns when I was running that business, and one thing that was almost universal to all the smaller companies who came to me was that their own perception of 'what sort of company they are' was often very different to both their average prospect's perception and furthermore the perception that they needed to be giving in order to maximise their sales.

The result was that many had committed to a brand which wasn't giong to work for them very early, and subsequently ended up having to switchi things around a bit which generally defeats the object of a brand (and effectively meant wasted marketing spend before they worked with me).

It's impossible to write in a forum everything you need to consider when looking to adopt a branding strategy, as it's entirely individual to each business, but what I will say is that the benefits of adopting the right brand have proven time and again to provide very good returns on the initial investment of time and money.

If I had to give a bit of blanket advice to all smaller luthiers who were looking to make a reasonable living from a lutherie business - it would be pick a very good marketing consultant or company, and be prepared spend a fair bit of time up front working with them.

In terms of picking a good one, well I have to say, at least in the UK, that comes down to money too. Better companies and consultants command larger fees for the same reasons as in luthierie - reputation is king. If the consultant can pretty much guarantee to double your profits whilst maintaining your core objective of no compromise on your processes (and this could be done equally by increased guitar turnover - more guitars = more oppurtunities to buy bulk = lower costs; or by improving your reputation so you can simply charge more to each customer) then I'd say that money spent with them is probably money well spent.

However, not every consultant or company will be the right one for you - make sure that when you meet them you are answering a lot of questions and by the end of the meeting, the company/consultant can pretty much summurise and restate your entire business model back to you. If you have read good references for them, and they can pick up your business model well, then they'd definately be worth getting a proposal from at least, I'd say.

As much as I understand that great passions are at work in luthierie, as with any craft; as my old dad used to say about my short-live 'music career': you can't feed your kids on passion, and he's right.

Trying to run a business without marketing is a little like trying to run a car without buying gas. It can be the best car in the world, with a finely honed engine, but if you rely on what petrol drips in from time to time, it's going to stall eventually.

Just my $0.02 of course, as that's all I can offer.

I have the greatest respect for everyone who's posted here so far, even if I am one of those people with day jobs who can afford to spend 400 hours on one guitar ;) (Although, I understand what Rick's saying here compeletly, one thing which used to irritate me no end when I ran the marketing company was armchair marketers who learned their chops from some film or another, I like to think it was professional pride...)

Good point John How, I agree
Let's get back to the discussion

Mike
White Oak, Texas

Now we're getting somewhere...

And don't ever forget that Leo Fender did not have Jimi Hendrix in mind when he designed and started marketing the Stratocaster!

You may find unintended markets, and when that happens, you'd better jump on them...

This has been an absolutely awesome thread. I have learned a great deal from it. Thanks to everyone that has added value to this topic and to Rick for thinking (out side the box) so to speak and starting it with a "Perspective"

I only wish I had something to add.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

I enjoy seeing other people's perspectives. One of the most interesting sessions at this year's ASIA symposium was Kevin Ryan's. He described many of the jigs and procedures he uses in his shop to make his guitars quicker and still maintain or improve quality. After he described a jig that saved 2 minutes on a 4 minute step it was pointed out that he went through all that work just to save 2 minutes. His response was that it wasn't 2 minutes it was 50% and if you do that with every step in the process you can make a guitar in half the time.

He also showed how he was using CNC to slot his fret boards. It showed how you have to change the way you think about a problem when you get a new tool. The CNC made the fret board faster because he made the fret slots stop before the edge of the board so he didn't have to bind them. The CNC made the fret boards better because he could cut the fret slot so that the bottom of the slot followed the curve of the radius of the board. This made the fret board much stiffer and less likely to curl when the frets were put on.

He also showed a laser cut binding that bent in both the X and Y dimensions. This made it easer and faster to mount the binding on the guitar. Again, it was only by a few minutes but it was a few minutes that could now be spent on other operations or removed from the total construction time.

Julius Borgius has over a dozen routers pre setup with different bits and template guides. He told me it can take 1/2 - 1 hour to set up a router to the proper depth and make the bit perfectly centered in the template guide. Which means that having a separate router will pay for itself the 3rd or 4th time you use it.

As I guy who builds one or two instrument a year, these techniques didn't have much relevance to me but it did cause me to revisit many of the techniques that I do use to see if there is a better way. The lesson I learned was to continuously reexamine what I do and why and to make adjustment wherever appropriate.

Back to the original topic. Rick is right in that there are a lot of guitars being sold and a very small percentage of that business is still a lot of guitars. So the full custom builders have a large pool of possible customers. The trick, of course, is to find a way to reach them. The classical world might be the best place to start.

Consider that no self-respecting "serious" classical guitarist would consider using a factory made guitar. It is not part of the culture. $12,000 for an instrument is not considered out of line. Unfortunately there aren't very many touring classical guitarist. But there are a bunch of retiring dentists who have worked hard and now want to reward themselves with the same quality of instrument that the "real" guitarist use.

I wish we could find a way to instill the steel string players of the world with the idea that they aren't a "real" guitarist unless they have a custom instrument. Perhaps we could send our "posses" out to the folk, rock and blue grass festivals to not-so-subtly sniff contemptuously at those guys still banging away on their D28s. I'm joking, of course, but that is how marketing is done in the Rap world. Rap artists send their loyal fans out to rap concerts and the street. where they talk up the artist and trash talk other artists. "Oh man! You still listen'n Kool J? Where you been for the last year?"

Maybe we should all make violins. A $12,000 violin is still in the "student violin" range.

[QUOTE=Hesh1956]
And with no disrespect intended since I do marketing consulting as well calling in an outside consultant to tell you why you have value can be a pretty risky thing to do unless the internal advocates of the organization really understand, accurately, their own value prop AND will communicate it to you.
[/QUOTE]

No disrespect taken whatsoever :)

However, I probably didn't make it clear enough in my first post - I'm not suggesting you tell the marketing company/consultant who your market is or what your USPs are. I believe a good marketing consultant will do their (your) research and by the time you reach a campaign planning stage be telling you this themselves.

I've actually dug deep and come up with an old document I used to use for at an early stage of planning a campaign.

It's a template for the key topics I would cover with a prospect/client when planning a campaign with them. Now what I'm telling you guys/gals and I *didn't* tell the prospects/clients at the time is that all the subjects relating to what they desire as their message and what they believe their image to be are a combination of 'feelgood' to make sure I didn't bruise too many egos in the early stages, and also an internal guide as to what resistance I would likely run into within our own client's company if what the market percieved and allowed their proposition to be wasn't actually what the client thought it was.

Now, I'm not saying this document is a good boilerplate for custom guitar sales as this is only 1 example and I would, of course, tailor them to the specific proposition and need of each client prior to the meeting, but it's not a bad document from which to take a 'subset' which would be appropriate. It perhaps will give an idea as to the scale and depth to which things should be thought through in order to approach marekting.

[QUOTE=Planning meeting document]Company History:- Origins, Need Seen, Patterns of Growth & Competition (Strength & Weakness Analysis)

     Company Future:- Where do you feel you will be in 1, 3 & 5 years time?

     Personnel:- Available Skills, Experience, Specialities etc.

     Products & Services:- All relevant elements for the campaign in hand

     Working Practices:- How delivered, Support Services, Added Value Elements

     What you DON'T do:- (that you are frequently asked to do)

     Promotional History:- Where and through what media have clients heard of you (including PR exercises)

     Corporate Image:- Historic, Current, Desired

     Client Portfolio:- List plus brief Case Histories

     Target Market:- Geographical Area, Identifying Indicators etc.

     Key Creative Takeout:- The message you want left in the prospects mind at the end of the call

     Incentives/Hooks:- e.g. Samplers, Discounts, Open Days etc,

     USPs:- Listed as Features & Benefits, Increase, Improve, Reduce, Save and Gain.

     Decision Makers:- How to Identify / Locate etc.

     Objection Handling:- Frequently encountered, industry-specific Objections, Structuring the Decision Tree                        
     Databases:- Ours? Yours? Cleanse? Build ?

     Qualified Meetings:- Criteria for Respondent Types, etc.

     KPI’s:- Key Performance Indicators for evaluating the campaign

     Info. Backup:- Criteria for, Logistics – brochures discreet website pages links and letters

Administration:- Points of Contact, Information Flow, Reporting, Completion of Service Agreement subject to scheduling, Managing your Diary.[/QUOTE]

Obviously, this was an internal document which I developed for an early stage of the process. If there are any terms anyone wants expanding upon, just ask I'll do my best.

What we would do after this was plenty of research based around the answers we got and produce a 40-50 page 'Briefing Document' which summarised what we'd learned from the planning meeting, and then from that, we'd inevitably end up with a few 'Focus Meetings' which allowed us and the client to, surprise surprise, focus the campaign down to very specific realistic agreed objectives.

Anyway - hope that old document is useful to you, took me long enough to settle on a distilled list to be expanded upon, but there it is...

PS - I would pay particular attention to the KPI section; as recognising if a campaign (or technique) is working for you early and often is key to being able to change your approach to maximise your return for the effort and money expended. Never cross your fingers and hope something works - get numbers and know it does... (or doesn't)

 i have made upwards of half of a guitar

 as far as i can see

  if they keep reprinting jeff buckley cds

  guitars will be sold

Sigh

Long gone are the days when all I had to do was ask politely to stop the nonsense.
Now is seems my requests go unnoticed.
Its as if my word is worthless here.

Sigh...

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com