Yamaha acquires Guild

[scotchnspeed]

Originally Posted by janinep7

I stand corrected; a small company being gobbled up by a larger company. Foreign or domestic. The problem is the same. The redundancies favor the acquirer, not the acquired.

What is the problem and why is this bad?

[fpuhan]

When I was studying for my MBA, one of the lessons I learned were the reasons for an acquisition. There are three:

1. To add technology/engineering/management experience to the acquring company.
2. To leverage the customer base of the company being acquired.
3. To put the competition out of business.

The last is illegal on the face of it, but if you don't believe it happens, you have no place in the business world.

One of the prime examples of this could be Oracle Corporation's acquisition of Sun Microsystems which closed in January, 2010. Some may recall that Sun was a major vendor of hardware, operating systems (Unix), and software. Oracle's strength was in its ever-growing database software. This should have been an ideal merging of two disparately focused companies, right?

Thirteen years later, what has become of the Sun legacy? Oracle isn't setting the world on fire with its hardware. Unix is dead. And the only remaining product that came out of Palo Alto is the Java programming language, which Sun created and gave away. What now?

After the ten year post-acquisition time expired, Oracle has turned Java into another commercial product. What??? Oh sure, there's the "free" version available, but Oracle Java is now a for-pay product.

Yamaha's acquisition of Cordoba/Guild might ultimately signal the death knell for products under those names. Although the name on a guitar's headstock often carry a lot of purchase weight, we may still see them. One thing's certain: Nothing will stay unchanged.

Originally Posted by scotchnspeed

What is the problem and why is this bad?

Less competition; more monopoly. Fewer choices for consumers. Consolidates too much power in too few hands. People will likely be losing their jobs.

For starters.

[J Buck]

I guess time will tell. I am a fan of both Yamaha and more recently Guild. My hope is that they will mesh together nicely and maybe with some extra cash, invest in improving/building up Guild manufacturing and presence in the market. I have a pre-owned recent vintage Guild F 250 Deluxe and my particular example is a pretty fine instrument as it is. It hits that $ sweet spot for me. Not too "cheap" and not over $1k. I can't really justify spending much over that for an instrument. I ain't near that good a picker..,.lol....And I don't think I have enough years left to get that good!

[scotchnspeed]

Originally Posted by janinep7

Less competition; more monopoly. Fewer choices for consumers. Consolidates too much power in too few hands. People will likely be losing their jobs.

For starters.

Is Guild being canned? The name has been purchased *MANY* times before, and choices did not seem to diminish. It seems Yamaha will revamp and improve the brand and add choices? Seems far from a monopoly or job loss...

[Stomp]

I hope that Yamaha recognizes the provenance of a US-built Guild guitar.

There are only six guitar brands pictured on the cover of Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars.

One of them is Guild.

[Aahzz]

Nevermind...

[zmf]

With all the love that's been displayed for particularly entry-level Yamahas on this forum, and given the stability of the company, I'd be inclined to think that this is a good place for Guild to land.

What would Yamaha have to gain by diluting the cache of Guild?

[Whit51]

I'm a long time Guild fan. You hear people say "I'd like to try a Guild but I can't find them in shops." Maybe Yamaha can improve on this situation. I hope they keep a U.S. factory open.

[BoneDigger]

This is interesting. I didn't know that such a purchase was in the works. Yamaha makes great instruments. They do have their own sound, so I am hoping they will allow Guild to retain it's own unique voice.

[savannahmay]

i think its good. Yamaha is kick arse, with electrics and acoustics, and ampeg is pwned by them, and its a good amp line.


I remember all the old cats in the guitar store I used to hang out as a kid, trashed Line 6, it was a n00b, el cheapo SS amp, but look at them now under Yamaha, they have the Helix, which is super popular, and their amps are considered good bang for the buck . . .

[ghostnote]

I wouldn’t get the vapors over it - lots of hand-wringing going on in this thread, when nobody actually knows anything about the future. I have a Guild that I love, and here’s hoping that 20 years from now people are raving about their 10-year-old Yamaha-era Guilds.

[L20A]

This has a potential for a lot of great things to come.
I owned a 1981 Yamaha L-20A hand built guitar for many years.
It was a fantastic guitar.
I have also owned several Guild Guitars over the years.
The Guilds were all stellar with most being 12 strings.

It will be interesting to see if any new guitar models come from this merge.

I also wonder how the Guild Warranty will now work?

[SpruceTop]

I predict Yamaha will do well for Guild.

[Jeff Scott]

Originally Posted by JPCary

they can't do worse than fender

Well spoken truth here!