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Signs of trouble. On the heels of acquiring Cakewalk and then killing Sonor... and in debt over half a billion dollars, Gibson will not be at NAMM show! I downloaded the 2018 iOS NAMM Show app and confirmed they are NOT in the list of exhibitors! Wow!

Whoah. Debt and acquisitions is one thing. But for one of the Big Three (I guess I'd include Ibanez) to NOT show up at Winter NAMM? That's ugly.

Their big focus is on consumer electronics (Philips, TEAC, Onkyo etc.) nowadays so this is not a huge surprise. I suppose they're thinking that Les Pauls will sell themselves—maybe they will.

2019 will show whether this was a prudent decision or not.

All parallels to CF Martin from 1970–1986 are probably correct right about now. CFM pulled out by focusing on the core product so this will be interesting.

I wonder how much of that debt is from Guitar Center/Musicians Friend? That's where most of Fender's huge debt is. GC hasn't collapsed and neither has Fender—yet?

Years of questionable business decisions have taken their toll on one of the world’s great guitar brands. Sad to see.

I've heard Gibson is hemorrhaging about $10M a month. I'd hate to see an iconic American brand go under, but you simply cannot lose money forever. I think many of Henry J's decisions have been questionable. My first feeling that they were losing sight of their core business and losing touch with their core customer was when I saw the demo of the robo guitar. Plus their QC has been spotty in recent years.

mikehalloran wrote:I suppose they're thinking that Les Pauls will sell themselves—maybe they will.

Perhaps, but sooner or later you have to back up the brand name with real quality and value again. They're charging premium prices for what is often just an average product.

Then there's the goofy product ideas: studio monitors with sunburst guitar finishes on them, etc.

This is not happy news. I was hoping to hang out with Gibson for a good while next month.

I mean, c'mon. Gibson of all people?

GIbson.

Frodo wrote:This is not happy news. I was hoping to hang out with Gibson for a good while next month.

I mean, c'mon. Gibson of all people?

GIbson.

Hey! It's sure good to see you around here. By the way, your avatar looks broken but I changed board settings so you can upload your avatar directly now.

James Steele wrote:I've heard Gibson is hemorrhaging about $10M a month. I'd hate to see an iconic American brand go under, but you simply cannot lose money forever. I think many of Henry J's decisions have been questionable. My first feeling that they were losing sight of their core business and losing touch with their core customer was when I saw the demo of the robo guitar. Plus their QC has been spotty in recent years.

True this. Losing sight of their core competencies (to veer into corporatespeak) is killing them, because Henry has an insatiable desire for acquisition. Probably because he formerly worked as a specialist in mergers & acquisitions, so it's one of the few areas of the business where he seems comfortable. Unfortunately for Gibson, he's got lousy radar when it comes to choosing what to acquire.

FWIW, Tascam just announced a new Dante multi-channel interface today with great fanfare, so I guess Gibson isn't set to kill ALL of the brands they gobbled up alongside Cakewalk a couple of years back.

It appears that Gibson will be focusing on AES instead of NAMM, which seems contrary to their push towards consumer entertainment vs. pro audio. But when has Gibson ever been consistent?

mhschmieder wrote:FWIW, Tascam just announced a new Dante multi-channel interface today with great fanfare, so I guess Gibson isn't set to kill ALL of the brands they gobbled up alongside Cakewalk a couple of years back.

It appears that Gibson will be focusing on AES instead of NAMM, which seems contrary to their push towards consumer entertainment vs. pro audio. But when has Gibson ever been consistent?

I'm not sure that's "Gibson logic". Cakewalk just released Momentum (https://momentum.cakewalk.com) 2 weeks before they closed.

It even had options for buying yearly subscriptions.

So it doesn't seem that Gibson really cares what a company has done recently. They just drop the axe at will.

There is some extreme irony going on there, that a product called "Momentum" was still-born.

James Steele wrote:My first feeling that they were losing sight of their core business and losing touch with their core customer was when I saw the demo of the robo guitar.

Typically, I've noticed that creating a crazy high-end product is more a symptom than a cause of business collapse. I've known several companies who create some kind of crazy high-end device only to fail soon afterwards, and often thought it was a cause of the collapse, but when I've researched around, typically it's other things that are the real factors, but often times the R&D department sees the writing on the wall and decides to throw all in some last-ditch effort to gain a foothold. That's what Alesis did with the Andromeda A6. I talked with an Alesis employee later, asking whether it was the A6 that did them in, and he set the record straight that the A6 was fine, but other areas hemorrhaged.