In a previous blog I mentioned we are in another Golden Age of Guitar building. I share this observation in the context of a point I was making that guitar players have benefitted from competition among overseas manufacturers to build guitars for sale in America, contributing to quality and affordability that we haven’t seen before. A lot of guitars are manufactured in the Far East and have been for decades. The trial and error phase is really in the rearview mirror and I’m confident in selling guitars to customers who ask about country of manufacture as a litmus test for quality. However, quite a few guitars are made much closer to home and as the title suggests, here’s what I have to say about that.
When the impact of NAFTA on manufacturing is discussed by pundits, economists and people smarter than me, the auto industry is often the most cited example. Most of us drive cars, ours is a road culture, and most Americans have to buy and own a car even though increasingly, the U.S. population shifts to urban areas. Even a city dweller that uses mass transit gets it when the discussion of free trade in North America is framed this way. Raw materials are sourced here, shipped there, components are built in this facility, assembled in that one crossing borders all the while; we get that there are a lot of working parts in a motor vehicle and the manufacturing process is as complex as the myriad widgets that make it go vroom-vroom.
Obviously guitars are less complex than cars by orders of magnitude but there are similarities to the systems in place that contribute to manufacturing products in a cost-effective way that allows for price competition in the open market. Right off the top of my head I can think of three major American guitar companies that have large operations in Mexico: Fender, Martin and Taylor. These are not only American brands; these companies bear the family name of the products they manufacture, going back to the one entrepreneurial dude that started the whole thing from nothing. In their way, each really does represent the pursuit of the American Dream. They’re iconic in the musical instrument or, MI retail and manufacturing industry and they are closely associated with the musicians who play them. These American manufactures offer models made in Mexico (MIM) product because if they only had U.S.-based manufacturing not only wouldn’t they be competitive, they probably couldn’t stay in business. Period.
Now, there are quite a few “boutique” guitar companies that only make guitars here in the U.S. but by definition they are small, expensive and cater to a very small segment of the market. These builders benefit from the entry-level guitars that bigger companies make for beginners that understandably want to spend as little as possible since they’re just testing the waters so to speak. MI manufacturing and sales is maybe $2bn in annual sales so it’s very small relative to other industries that rely on global manufacturing and international supply chains. Guitar sales are a small part of the MI retail market and I compete for the “entertainment dollar” part of people’s discretionary income so you can see where this is going. My passion for selling guitars is predicated on the free-trade that NAFTA regulates, enforces and encourages. Without this agreement the small-business and entrepreneurship I engage in would be next to impossible to do. Furthermore, the joy and satisfaction I achieve in my line of work, helping people become active participants in the making of music, communing with the emotional component of song and enriching their lives through artistic pursuit would be closed to me.
I mentioned three big players off the top of my head when I started writing and now that I got going I remembered Godin Guitars. They have a family of companies, maybe you’ve heard of the Seagull brand of acoustics. So in reverse, here’s an example of a foreign company that employs domestic U.S. workers: Godin manufactures necks and bodys in La Patrie, Quebec and assembles them in Richmond, Quebec and Berlin, New Hampshire.
The therapeutic benefits of learning to play an instrument are well documented. With music education, children learn better in school and the aging brain stays sharper longer. My chosen instrument and area of MI retail, guitar sales, has growth potential at both ends of the human life-span. Baby Boomers make up the largest segment of the population with the time and money on their hands to learn to play and young people are still exposed to the music of Boomer’s youth through popular culture. By selling guitars and encouraging people of all ages to play them I help perpetuate a cultural legacy that goes back to American roots music, came from the Old World like everything else in America on an instrument whose lineage dates back to Antiquity. The post-WW II Pax Americana and our global influence is not waning, there’s still rock in America and we show the rest of the world you can rock too!
Alright, I got on a riff at the end there, feeling the groove so to speak but look, I know I’m no expert on the subject of global trade but as professional I do have insight and experience into my little sliver of the economy. Also as a student of history I know as a nation we’ve been down this road before: up until the 18th century 80% of the workforce was in agriculture and now it’s 1%. Neither am I an apologist for trade policies I know I don’t fully understand, but I can say with certainty any transaction be it the sale of one guitar or the complex negotiations between sovereign nations there is an element of compromise. By looking out for our shared interests and recognizing that inter-dependency and cooperation are not a zero-sum game of absolute winners and losers, we can continue to make better guitars and hopefully a better world. Keep on rocking in the free world.
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