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Fender MIJ series gets little/none promotion?

#22
Gorn said:
I don't get it. Did Fender Japan stop production at some point in the last few years or did that never happen?
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tbird42 said:
The vintage MIJ brand was a venture with Fender and Japanese guitar companies starting in the 70's who were making strats and strat copies in order to get more shares of the overseas market in Japan. It 'ended' when Fender took over all the shares. Ironically, they were made in the same factory as the copies were, but they're generally regarded as high quality instruments. It's just confusing why they'd not use some of the clout the old Japanese guitars had to boost sales.
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Paulabass said:
I was always under the impression that other than a handful distributed by FMIC, the Japan instruments were distributed by a seperate company with no affiliation to FMIC.
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In/around 2015, FMIC dissolved their joint-venture with the Japanese end of Fender-Japan, a firm called Kanda-Shokai, and took over the production, marketing and distribution of Japanese-made Fender instruments.

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Apparently, FMIC has finally decided to make some of their MIJ products available here in The States. Overall, I call that a "good thing". Personally, looking at the sitch strictly as a consumer, I still think the designs put forth by Kanda-Shokai were some of the coolest Fender products available and were waaaaaaay more imaginative than most (but not all) of the North American variants of the past twenty-or-so years. :cool:
 
#34
tbird42 said:
I for one am really thrilled by the new MIJ series from Fender. The basses look very cool (and relatively affordable) and I'm excited to finally be able to purchase a Mustang in pink with the phase switching on it. But why the lack of hype from Fender about this series? I almost didn't notice the first release until I saw it unexpectedly on the site one day a few months ago. Any ideas as to why they'd say almost nothing about it?
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Plenty of good talk about this one during the past few months.
One of the few Fenders I have my eye on, especially since the limited edition is not that limited and they'll be available late next month at Guitar Center where you can save yourself 15 to 20%.
Hey, even at the full price of $799.99 they sold out at all the stores I frequent.
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#36
phillipkregg said:
Isn’t the Aerodyne PJ made in Japan too? Didn’t see that one on there.
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All Aerodynes are made in Japan…no exceptions. However, the most commonly found variant…the one with the Stratocaster jack…is referred to as an "Aerodyne Deluxe Jazz Bass", but is more colloquially called an "Export Edition" since it's made for every market except Japan. If you check the Deluxe Series instruments, you'll find it. ;)
 
#37
If you think about it from Fender's point of view, where do they fit MIJ into their sales strategy? The broad product range of the past would heavily overlap with MIA and MIM (which overlap with each other anyway) and maybe cannibalise sales. Probably better from their perspective to make new MIJ export instruments lower volume and more specialised, perhaps even "niche", resulting in a lower marketing profile.
 

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