Fender Lays Off Hundreds

Are we in a recession? The old joke goes, "A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job." (Some go one step further and say, "A recovery is when <name politician here> loses his job!"

Guitar.com is reporting that Fender has laid off 300 employees at their Corona facility. And it isn't just employees. Some high-ranking executives were also given the boot, including the plant manager and assistant manager, and a number of the quality control team. This would appear to reduce the factory's output by 200-250 guitars per day.

One end result of this I suspect, is that Fender guitars will go up in price. Again.

Smells like a recession to me.

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Originally Posted by OldStrummer

One end result of this I suspect, is that Fender guitars will go up in price. Again.

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That won't help Fender move product in a market that's already saturated with overpriced instruments.

Basic law of supply and demand.

This means cheaper prices on existing stock
https://media.giphy.com/media/dFf0MERFSuocE/giphy.gif

It seems as though FMIC discontinues most the things I'm interested in.

All of the good "Pure Vintage" accessories are gone, OOP since 2020.

It’s interesting to remember that when I bought my American Standard Strat, nearly a decade ago, I had a feeling that I was having my moment of purchasing an instrument of one of the last Fender iconic series, with most of its classic features still ok.

Soon came the Pau Ferro era, they discontinued the Am Std series renaming it Am Professional and changing it like every two or three years, and launching a bunch of “new” (and ephemerous) ‘vintage inspired’ series regularly, each time less ‘correct’.

Now I have verified that I possibly did indeed buy a strat of the very last iconic, lasting series Fender made.

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Originally Posted by phantomman

It seems as though FMIC discontinues most the things I'm interested in.

All of the good "Pure Vintage" accessories are gone, OOP since 2020.

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:wow I didn't know that. It's not good news. Time to stock up on that stuff when you see it on Reverb

Fender made some acquisitions recently and appears to have redundancy in staffing.

I'm certain those "redundant" staffers would enthusiastically agree with FMIC's strategy.

After all, who needs quality control when you're the 600-lb gorilla?

:wtf

How many employees does Fender have? 3000 Worldwide? I mean, it's a pretty small enterprise to lay off "hundreds". I suspect if they laid off "hundreds" of people the company would be liquidated.

Fender is owned by Servco Pacific which as far as I can tell is basically an automotive enterprise so I suspect it's a "hobby" type of capitalization. They've (Fender) been whacked for 4.5M Pounds for price fixing too so that hasn't helped the cause either.

Chuck