Ian Elson guitars (new UK brand)

xscaramanga

I've been getting messages on Facebook from this guy Ian Elson who's trying to promote his new guitar company. I wasn't sure about the look of his guitars but I decided to watch the video this morning. The pricing is strong (from £750).

I think the video on his site, although obviously low budget, comes across well. I like his approach and what he's trying to do. I hope he succeeds. The idea of a handcrafted, high quality instrument at a low price is obviously appealing, but after the struggles of Gordon Smith, he'll have a challenge. Not to mention the fact that most of us want guitars with familiar silhouettes (although from this page I get the impression there are quite a few custom options).

Iamnobody

Well I'm on lunch so haven't got time to watch the whole vid.

However I disagree with his opening statement...

"Quality guitars have become too expensive and out of reach for the majority of working guitarist."

Absolute rubbish...

Guitarists have never had it so good. The quality and quantity of options for guitars under £500 or even £300 is getting better.

Straight out the box or even with a £50 setup. Quality guitars are getting cheaper I'd say.

Luxury guitars and big brands might not be cheap but decent quality working guitars are plentiful in a wide price range.

For this reason (and his showcase design isn't the prettiest) I'm out.

I applaude commerce and enterprise etc but his opening statement and the fact he thinks others should fund his pipe dream has not endeared him or his business to me.

That said I do wish him well. Another UK builder can't be a bad thing can it?

xscaramanga

It depends a bit what we mean by quality guitars, doesn't it? Certainly USA Fenders, Gibsons, and anything with any significant amount of hand crafting are currently stormingly expensive (and not necessarily particularly great quality).

So a lot depends on how good his guitars actually are. I hope they're great.

Sassafras

I wish him luck but it's a bit of an ugly duckling.

Adamski

Hey I got a USA Gibson for £280 ;-)

Jackobean

It all looks a bit shonky, from design to execution. If he can't even be arsed to spring for squarespace or a similar service, I can't be arsed to take him seriously.

Adamski

Yep. Terrible marketing. You don't even need a website these days - for that level of business, a Facebook and Twitter page + YouTube and forum presence is all you need. This is very old school, especially the video which looks like its been taken with a Nokia phone from 2002 and made in Microsoft moviemaker

Rave

Looks like a Travis Bean but with an awful headstock.

IanElsonGuitar

The showcase design, as you put it, has to do a few things. Show off the quality of the one-piece body, highlight the ebony fingerboard and draw attention to the custom pickups...cynical marketing or common sense? I'm not a businessman, I just make guitars. Not everyone will like a design, you expect and live with that but the idea of copying someone else's designs and ideas isn't something I want anything to do with. I don't mass produce, I don't do beginner's guitars. There's no point.

So about my opening statement...what do I mean by quality? These guitars are aimed at working guitarists, not rich or endorsed guitarists who can have anything they want, but gigging guitarists. You might have a LP or Strat but at the prices they are currently going for, it's  nervy take them on the road in the back of a van to do pub and club gigs....so what's wrong with having a British made option? Not everyone lusts after Fender and Gibson shaped guitars...I never have. I think some of them are good but I've got an open mind about style and design. My guitars have no shipping duties, no shop mark up, no import taxes to be factored in to the price...you pay for quality parts and good craftsmanship...that is all.

Why go through Kickstarter? Unfortunately no bank or local council is lending at the minute...just not happening. Plus Kickstarter gives people a choice of whether to help or not...there's no pressure, no begging, just an honest pitch and then see what happens. Some like it, some don't but most guitarists like what I'm trying to do and get the idea of trying to keep the money in Britain to be reinvested in a British industry...idealistic and naive maybe but I'd rather be that than cynical and money-grabbing. This isn't about revolutionising the guitar world...too many people still need a "name" guitar for that to happen. This is just about having a genuine option that delivers

english_bob

IanElsonGuitar said:

The showcase design, as you put it, has to do a few things. Show off the quality of the one-piece body, highlight the ebony fingerboard and draw attention to the custom pickups...cynical marketing or common sense? I'm not a businessman, I just make guitars.

 

 

Not everyone will like a design, you expect and live with that but the idea of copying someone else's designs and ideas isn't something I want anything to do with. I don't mass produce, I don't do beginner's guitars. There's no point.

 

 

So about my opening statement...what do I mean by quality? These guitars are aimed at working guitarists, not rich or endorsed guitarists who can have anything they want, but gigging guitarists. You might have a LP or Strat but at the prices they are currently going for, it's  nervy take them on the road in the back of a van to do pub and club gigs....so what's wrong with having a British made option? Not everyone lusts after Fender and Gibson shaped guitars...I never have. I think some of them are good but I've got an open mind about style and design. My guitars have no shipping duties, no shop mark up, no import taxes to be factored in to the price...you pay for quality parts and good craftsmanship...that is all.

 

 

Why go through Kickstarter? Unfortunately no bank or local council is lending at the minute...just not happening. Plus Kickstarter gives people a choice of whether to help or not...there's no pressure, no begging, just an honest pitch and then see what happens. Some like it, some don't but most guitarists like what I'm trying to do and get the idea of trying to keep the money in Britain to be reinvested in a British industry...idealistic and naive maybe but I'd rather be that than cynical and money-grabbing. This isn't about revolutionising the guitar world...too many people still need a "name" guitar for that to happen. This is just about having a genuine option that delivers

 

Just saying.

Lewy

IanElsonGuitar said:

You might have a LP or Strat but at the prices they are currently going for, it's  nervy take them on the road in the back of a van to do pub and club gigs....so what's wrong with having a British made option? 

I think that might prove to be a bit of a flaw in your thinking actually. I think the majority of what you term working guitarists - so either pros or semi-pros - very happily take £1k+ guitars out on the road, and in most cases hobby players can't wait to play live with their aspirational guitar. And the ones who wouldn't do so for fear of damage/theft etc would gravitate towards cheaper guitars than you are offering as their "road dogs", perhaps with upgraded pickups/hardware etc.

Good luck to you though!

TTony

IanElsonGuitar said:

I'm not a businessman, I just make guitars. 

Please, please, please, get someone with some business experience to give you some business guidance/advice.

There are far too many guitar builders around who are great at guitar making, but useless at the business side of things.  There are way way way more former guitar builders who are great at guitar making but were absolutely useless at the business side of things.

And welcome to theFretBoard.

xscaramanga

I do gig with all my guitars, some of which are really valuable, but I'm lucky to have such a collection of guitars and also in a position to be able to insure them. I get the impression that a lot of forumites here are also in a fortunate position. The number of new guitar day/new amp day posts for serious kit is pretty impressive.

Maybe there are serious guitarists who aren't so fashion conscious who who want a hand-made instrument but don't have the budget. Whether there's enough of them to sustain an entire guitar company... Well, I doubt it, but I haven't done the market research because I'm not starting a business. 

underdog

Iamnobody;881565" said:

Well I'm on lunch so haven't got time to watch the whole vid.

However I disagree with his opening statement...

"Quality guitars have become too expensive and out of reach for the majority of working guitarist."

Absolute rubbish...

Guitarists have never had it so good. The quality and quantity of options for guitars under £500 or even £300 is getting better.

Straight out the box or even with a £50 setup. Quality guitars are getting cheaper I'd say.

Luxury guitars and big brands might not be cheap but decent quality working guitars are plentiful in a wide price range.

For this reason (and his showcase design isn't the prettiest) I'm out.

I applaude commerce and enterprise etc but his opening statement and the fact he thinks others should fund his pipe dream has not endeared him or his business to me.

That said I do wish him well. Another UK builder can't be a bad thing can it?

Can't argue with that, even the big brands offer great guitars at affordable prices from squire to mim fender, epiphone to lower end Gibson's, that's before you think not vintage brand etc. £500 offers you a hell of a lot of guitar these days.

guitargeek62

@IanElsonGuitar - Hullo & welcome, I can't view the vid at work but I'll have a look later on.

 

I would echo TTony's sage advice completely, but I'm sure/hope you've considered this side already.

 

Otherwise, the forum's not really here to talk about your business model (though feel free, we also have a Made in the UK sub-forum to showcase your work & updates etc). I'd hope that the collective will steer the thread back to your designs and thoughts on the product, rather than how it's advertised  & funded etc.

 

FWIW, best of luck with your venture!

octatonic

Hi Ian, 

Welcome to the forum.

I have a couple of questions and observations.

I'm a builder as well- we aren't competitors though, I mostly build acoustics.

I did the Musical Instruments Degree at London Met and now started my own workshop in rural Oxfordshire.

I'm probably a lot older than you so I came in with the capital to build a workshop.

Even still, I couldn't build instruments for the prices you are selling your instruments for.

At the prices you are offering I would be losing money to the order for at least £300-500 per guitar.

When you price your instruments how have you arrived at the value of your time?

My builds (remember acoustics) take at least 100 hours per instrument to build.

Some of them take closer to 150 hours.

I've built electrics though and they take at least 50 hours a piece.

At around £12 an hour (which is fairly modest considering the skill set needed) a guitar that takes 100 hours has about £1200 worth of labour built into it.

You are selling guitars for around £750 and I estimate at least 1/3rd of that will be material costs- it could be a half but lets assume it doesn't.

That gives you £500 per instrument above material costs to build an instrument.

I don't see how it is in any way sustainable to build an instrument for that factoring in the cost tooling, rent, electricity, heating and tax as well as paying yourself for your time.

You would be basically either working for free or losing a large amount of money.

So... why do I care?

Well, potential customers come to guitar builders usually with a competing offer.

If you are selling your guitars for this and undercutting other competing building (again not me... different market) then two things happen.

Firstly, you cannot sustain building in this way for more that a couple of years so you either raise your prices or you go under.

This is very, very common- most guitar builders quit in the first 5 years of building when they realise how hard it is to build sustainably.

Secondly your old prices become the new maximum price that some folks will pay for an instrument.

So, you sell a guitar for £750 and that brings the entire value of what a handmade custom guitar is down to £750 and other builders have to then go to considerable lengths to explain to their prospective customers how and why it isn't possible to run a sustainable business for that price.

Or they don't do this, they take the work and build guitars cheaply and then themselves lose money and go under.

I'd be curious as to how your business plan accounts for these various issues, should you choose to make this public.

I'm having this discussion here because I firmly believe that in 2015 it is important that potential customers to understand why a custom made instrument costs more than a factory made instrument.

Some folks will never buy a custom instrument from someone like me or you- they are happy with the guitars made by large companies, and in many ways the consumer has never had it so good.

But there is a market out there for custom guitars though.

If you are curious I actually wrote my dissertation on the topic of lean/mass production and how to apply these principles to the craft production of instruments without losing the 'hands on' personal approach to building.

benmurray85

" Unfortunately no bank or local council is lending at the minute...just not happening"

Wholly inaccurate. Most banks are under immense pressure to lend to personal customers and small businesses as part of a commitment they made to the government. Not trying to "pile on" at all and wish you all the success but your claim is simply not true.

ETA in fact I actually quite like the guitar shape. Paint it purple and turn it 45 degrees and it looks like a winking octopus. That can only be a fucking good thing! Sounds well on the video as well, albeit low quality.

Nerine

Best of luck and I echo other sentiments in this thread, but that guitar isn't a looker to me. Regardless of whether it flaunts the construction and materials.

I can sort of liken it to music. If you've got really amazing lyrics (content), but a poor melody (the vehicle), it's not likely to be a hit.

Obviously it isn't as black and white as that, but you know what I mean.

In my opinion, for the little it's worth, I'd consider a different body shape that is less "difficult" as a main show piece/focal point of your advertising.

It's in the eye of the beholder and that, but it reminds me of one of those Danelectro things with added wang.

Heartfeltdawn

IanElsonGuitar said:

The showcase design, as you put it, has to do a few things. Show off the quality of the one-piece body, highlight the ebony fingerboard and draw attention to the custom pickups...cynical marketing or common sense? I'm not a businessman, I just make guitars. Not everyone will like a design, you expect and live with that but the idea of copying someone else's designs and ideas isn't something I want anything to do with. I don't mass produce, I don't do beginner's guitars. There's no point.

So about my opening statement...what do I mean by quality? These guitars are aimed at working guitarists, not rich or endorsed guitarists who can have anything they want, but gigging guitarists. You might have a LP or Strat but at the prices they are currently going for, it's  nervy take them on the road in the back of a van to do pub and club gigs....so what's wrong with having a British made option? Not everyone lusts after Fender and Gibson shaped guitars...I never have. I think some of them are good but I've got an open mind about style and design. My guitars have no shipping duties, no shop mark up, no import taxes to be factored in to the price...you pay for quality parts and good craftsmanship...that is all.

Why go through Kickstarter? Unfortunately no bank or local council is lending at the minute...just not happening. Plus Kickstarter gives people a choice of whether to help or not...there's no pressure, no begging, just an honest pitch and then see what happens. Some like it, some don't but most guitarists like what I'm trying to do and get the idea of trying to keep the money in Britain to be reinvested in a British industry...idealistic and naive maybe but I'd rather be that than cynical and money-grabbing. This isn't about revolutionising the guitar world...too many people still need a "name" guitar for that to happen. This is just about having a genuine option that delivers

-'Working guitarist' generally means "I do some pub gigs". It's a phrase much used by a popular guitar luthier who specializes in abortion guitars custom necked guitars and sounds stupid coming from him and stupid in this instance. 

-Kickstarter: ouch. And you want £11k. Double ouch. 

-You talk about the Britishness of the guitar and complain about foreign companies. I'm currently looking at you advertise on those popular British companies known as Facebook, Twitter, and Wordpress. Being all parochial on the WWW = makes you look like a tit. By all means promote a Made in the UK product but bitching about overseas companies makes you look childish. Would you turn down overseas investors based on their non-Britishness? 

-Fair enough, you're not cynical and money grabbing. But you are looking to make a profit, yes? I'm not seeing anything in your advertising to suggest a business plan beyond 'Back of a fag packet'. Is there a level of profit that is acceptable and a level that is money grabbing? If you sell one £750 guitar, what's the profit on that? How long does making one guitar take? What's your anticipated earnings for the first year? 

-Your article here has one extraordinary paragraph:

"The modern generation of guitarist has two primary concerns - price and quality. This can be neatly compacted to value for money. The backlash against some of the major companies happening as we speak is testament to the anger and disappointment of the players. More so in the UK where the lack of "Britishness" has been causing unrest for longer. Now it is rife in the US as well."

More of this Britishness talk and now the scary word 'unrest'. Frankly it comes over as sounding like a Britain First press release minus the rainmacs, grunting, and weird bird with big tits (for the uninitiated, Jayda Fransen. 

-Another article here: 

"We left 1/4 of all space on our various platforms free to sell as advertising space. We think our deal is exceptional value. "

Why is it exceptional value? You have no name, no history, and I can't imagine your website traffic is exactly huge. You said earlier in this article that nobody was lending yet in the article above it says you were offered government funding. 

fretmeister

I don't like the look of the guitar at all. It is not similar enough to famous shapes to be a credible alternative and it is not different enough to be seen as unique.

But ignoring that, it might be the very finest playing guitar for the price. And on the used market the value will plummet to far below the used prices of name brands selling at a similar RRP.

That may not be fair based on the quality of the product, but that is reality, and people do think about used values for anything other than high end custom builds. Many makers of hand built instruments will (incorrectly and arrogantly / naively) think the buyer won't ever want to sell. Tastes change, circumstances change etc, and a sub £1000 guitar is not going to be viewed in the same bracket as other "custom" builds. It will be compared to Partsocasters. That is likely to be unfair, but it is also the reality.

That guitar, irrespective of how good it plays does not, to me, have any "wow factor" at all. The competition does. If the product doesn't appeal to the eye then it stays on the rack in the shop even while the possibly inferior but blingy name brand instruments fly out the door. In the modern market a product doesn't just have to be worth a sum it has to LOOK like it's worth the sum as well.

For only a little bit more I could buy a Caparison C2 ANG. Who the fuck are they I hear you ask? The answer - built in the rightly famous Fugijen Factory in Japan. All of a sudden I'm interested because of pedigree. And that's before I've even seen it. And when I've seen it, it LOOKS the money too. My brain knows that the maple cap is only a veneer and is adding nothing to the tone, but gear lust is a funny thing, and it's not very rational.

All of these issues are nothing to do with the quality of the guitar, these are to do with business acumen and realising the reality of probably the most competitive price bracket in guitar sales.

Manufacturing businesses of any scale have to be the very worst idea for anyone who "isn't a business man."

I run my own business. I've been open for 7 years now and I'm doing well. But my first attempt at a business plan was shocking. 

Good intentions will not help your business one little bit. But naivety will kill it stone dead faster then you ever thought possible.

Do a business plan. Take it to a bank with a view to getting a business loan (even if you don't actually want to get one) - if they refuse to consider a loan then you need to change your plan. Keep doing it until they are happy to lend you money (even if you don't take it). If that final viable version is not a plan you want to follow then don't do it at all. 

In the price bracket you are aiming for, you are like a 6th Form Student trying to compete with Apple.

Iamnobody

Welcome Ian - kudos for putting your head above the parapet and saying hello.

Banks will lend but are risk averse. They will be looking for a sound business model.

As said on my post I wish you the best but TTony makes a lot of sense above.