Fender - a new company model that would work

[SanDiegoHarry]

Yeah, +1,000 on the cheesy Eastern Euro stuff. Those WERE from the Bizarro world. And the Japanese space-age instruments were about the same. Funny about the Japanese product. They
went from making very bad pre-lawsuit copies or originals in the sixties to very good lawsuit copies in the seventies to very VERY good original-design instruments up to around 1985 and now back to mostly making P and J copies (along with dang near everybody else. Did Fender's patents and licenses expire, or did they just let them lapse?) I personally am wearied just by the over-saturation of Fender-ish basses.

A friend of mine had a nearly new Dan Armstrong. The weight was off-putting, and there was nothing else about the bass that to me could redeem that. And yeah; Magnatones, Supros, Voxes,
and Ekos (and Fender, of course) excepted, "muddy" pretty much was the order of the sixties. My second bass was a Vox Cougar, third was an Epiphone Newport with the chrome mudbucker;
my fourth was a first-generation EB-2 with the black pickup and banjo tuners and --surprise! -- no mud at all with that one. Yet on YouTube is a demo of a first-generation Newport with that same pickup, and the sound is jaw-droppingly muddy.

I have no experience of the Peter Tork Gretsch but have three of the bigger old models as well as two 5540s. The big Gretsches are immense and therefore have stage presence to the max as well as usable tones. But they don't age well, especially in terms of binding and neck set.

I think Marko may be onto something with Fender letting go the subsidieries. I don't see a lot of profit being made there. I wonder how much of Fender's "business model" over the last quarter-century would have been Leo's model? I doubt he was temperamentally suited to be a corporate CEO.

I have a very clear memory of the store where took my first lessons in 1976. Albert's Music City in La Mesa (no longer there, sadly). Hanging on the wall was a selection of Fenders, Gibsons and Ibanez's. The Ibby basses were just obvious Fender clones - no one respected them, only "losers" played them... but the Ibby guitars were something else. Back then they started doing this CRAZY inlay work on their guitars - they were gorgeous, and guys at the store insisted that they were top notch - and all wondered when Ibby would start doing the same with basses...

But back to Fender: Us mortal all might assume they have a coherent plan there in Fullerton, but as someone who has worked for big companies, I can tell you that this just might not be the case. Divisions compete, VPs backstab, grand-visions are often sidetracked - what I think we are seeing at Fender is a complete and utter LACK of vision. They are just shotgunning stuff and paying zero attention to what's over the horizon. Poor leadership = chaos. Tell me Fender does not look like a company in chaos right not?

 

[lavmonga]

But fewer models would allow them to carry more of each. I just think if they slimmed down the numbers, quality would go up, prices down, and more stores could carry them. All I ask in return is fewer cosmetic options, and getting rid of low selling models.

I think that if they slimmed down the numbers, quality and price would both go up due to a smaller supply.

 

[buldog5151bass]

Quality up, but why price? Less varied inventory means less cash outlay. Same way GM cut down on lines/models to save money.

 

[stuntbass77]

playability is the main thing, i shouldn't have to buy a new bass and then need a neck shimming and nut work to have a good player with medium action

I agree! Fenders MIA stuff is much better now but you still have to play a couple to get a good one. So glad I have never found a shim under a bass/neck I purchased. At the MIA price point (which goes up all the time but still not as bad as Warwick prices) only thing you should have to do is adjust the truss rod for your climate. I love fender basses or should I say Leo's designs, so I'm not trying to knock them. It's said that the MIM's are not made as well as Some other basses at that price point. I do wish they would offer more colors but it really is more important that it sounds good. I wanted a burst jazz with a maple board and ended up with a black body with a rosewood board (sound quality won out).

 

[blue4]

I don't really think there would be an increase in quality. If they are really cutting to save money, they're not going to put that money back into quality. They'll just run the same lines with the same people and pocket the savings. And no one is going to care about any improved quality if they've done away with the models or options they want.

 

[tripp2k]

Three points to add or enhance: (1) the relic thing has achieved market saturation....kill it when it becomes a joke, (2) TB and TGP for guitarists represent a fraction of the addressable audience...even though us forum members' caches might be over saturated with 4+ gits, there are other markets constantly opening up as economies grow and (3) consider the manufacturing time differences between a poly and nitro guitar...I will only have nitro on my Strats, but I love poly on my EBMM Sterling Classic (whodathunkit?).

To the OP, great thread and healthy discussion has indeed resulted.

 

[MovingPitchers]

Soo...the other thread closed...

 

[buldog5151bass]

Hate to say something in their support, but don't blame Fender if a tech at a store is not yp to snuff.

 

[Malak the Mad]

I don't really think there would be an increase in quality. If they are really cutting to save money, they're not going to put that money back into quality. They'll just run the same lines with the same people and pocket the savings. And no one is going to care about any improved quality if they've done away with the models or options they want.

Blue has a very valid point that has been backed up by way too much history. Quite often, when a company makes massive cuts to it's cost-per-unit business model, those costs are not always (I want to say "rarely", but that's not always the case) passed on to the consumer. Usually, those additional profits end up getting rewarded to the CEO/President/Board of Directors in the form of pay-raises and bonuses.

• e.g.: In the '80s, Roger Smith closed down three Michigan GM Auto plants while opening up three in Mexico, but with no significant decrease in the cost of GM products for American consumers.

However, unlike in the above example, we consumers of Fender products actually do see the savings…something to the tune of $700 or more, if you look at, say…the relative costs of current Jazz basses. Certainly, there is the "sliding scale of quality control, materials and features", which helps further delineate the differences between models and their manufacturing country of origin. But I believe that is what allows us to have more and more options to choose from, and I think it's a good thing (see my previous post).

In closing, given how some companies run their profit structures, we Fender consumers actually have it pretty good. We pay less for items that cost the company less to produce and more the the ones that cost more. And if Fender or any other manufacturer wants to use their profits to "go out on a limb" with either a new signature model, a some new spin on a classic design, a vintage reissue (where the "real deal" would be prohibitively expensive), or something innovative R&D cooked up that would cost me a small fortune to have built (with no guarantee it would even work properly) I'm all for it.

And I'll say it one last time, but a little differently…if Fender were to limit what they produce to a fraction of their current lines, they run the risk of becoming a niche market of Jazzes, Precisions, Teles and Strats only. Anyone wanting something with a little innovation would have to, and probably will, go somewhere else. Plus, there's no guarantee those extra profits (re: history lesson above) would make their way down to the consumer level.

 

[buldog5151bass]

In the 1980s, and beyond, GM was bleeding money profusely. Doing what they did stemmed some of the bleeding, but they were still losing money ( finally resulting in the bankruptcy, even after the bailout). There were no saved profits to pass on to the customer.

Fender, by any comparison, is scads more profitable.

 

[Matthew_84]

Fender's signature models, while most of them are simple colour variants of similar models, not only do they help sales in the present, they help retain Fender's place historically. I think models like the Geddy Lee signature is a good example, when I picture Geddy playing, I see hims playing the black 70's Jazz, though I have to think about it to recall that I prefer his tone with the Ric. When I picture Tony Franlin playing, he's playing the Fender PJ with an unlined fretless ebony board, even though the most I've seen him play was in an 80's instructional video where he was playing either a Yamaha or an Ibanez (can't recall which one).

 

[Malak the Mad]

In the 1980s, and beyond, GM was bleeding money profusely. Doing what they did stemmed some of the bleeding, but they were still losing money ( finally resulting in the bankruptcy, even after the bailout). There were no saved profits to pass on to the customer.

Yeah, I think we can both agree, as many in the financial reporting business does, that Roger Smith and his reign was a pox upon the automotive industry. Earlier I left out how he, along with other heads of the U.S. Auto Industry, with Pres. G.H.W. Bush (#41) leading the charge, went to Japan and, figuratively and literally, vomited a mass of blackmail trade-negotiations to reduce the number of Japanese cars coming into the States. Rather than sparking another trade war, like the one we started in the 1920's with the economically-recovering Europe (spoiler alert: no country profited from that fight), the Japanese conceded and lowered their export numbers (then bought some new pants).

Instead of using the using this opportunity to increase their market share against the lower-cost import cars, American cars spiked upwards in price, putting them out of reach of the average, middle-class consumer and definitely unobtainable by, say, a new family-starter who just got out of college. Yet again, more money got voted to the top management tiers of G.M. for their "brilliance". But, ultimately, it didn't give them the expanded market share they should've aimed for in the first place.

[/HISTORICAL RANT]