Gibson vs Fender - Back From the Brink | 5
Business Wars
Audible
4.6 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's the early 1980s, and for the first time in 30 years, the U.S. guitar market has gone cold. Bands are switching to synthesizers and kids are ditching their garage bands for computers and video games.
A group of employees has bought the Fender brand but not its factory. Now they need to find a place to keep making guitars — fast. And Gibson has new owners, too — who bring plenty of rock 'n' roll attitude to the job, but little experience. Can these new stewards of guitar's most hallowed brands save their companies from the scrap heap?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, prime members, you can listen to Business Wars Add Free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:04.6 | Download the app today. |
| 0:07.0 | It's February 1st, 1985, at the annual trade show for the National Association of Music |
| 0:19.0 | Merchants, or NAM in Anaheim, California. |
| 0:23.2 | Dozens of reporters are waiting for Fender President Bill Schultz. |
| 0:27.1 | They're expecting a major announcement about his struggling guitar company. |
| 0:30.8 | In the meantime, they speculate wildly. |
| 0:34.6 | I bet some Japanese company bought it. |
| 0:37.1 | My money's on Yamaha. |
| 0:39.2 | I hear they couldn't find a buyer. |
| 0:41.0 | I wouldn't be surprised if this turns into a wake. |
| 0:44.6 | In 1985, Fender is still one of the world's most iconic guitar brands. |
| 0:49.8 | But two decades of mismanagement by its parent company CBS have left it in shambles. |
| 0:55.5 | And for the first time in 30 years, guitars have fallen out of fashion. |
| 1:01.8 | Viewer teams are commandeering their parents' garages to turn them into practice stages for |
| 1:06.2 | their bands. |
| 1:07.4 | No, they're hovering over video games, personal computers, and the decades trendiest instrument, |
| 1:13.7 | the synthesizer. |
| 1:16.8 | Photographers jump in front of Schultz as he walks into the Hilton Hotel Ballroom. |
| 1:21.0 | He's in his late 50s, round faced in Jovial. |
| 1:24.2 | He was brought in to get Fender back on track and he's well liked by employees. |
| 1:29.5 | He's an amateur musician with an MBA and an engineering degree. |
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