Issues at FMIC?

[Liam1963]

Just caught something over the wireless that Fender laid off 200-300 folks, last week, supposedly rampant quality issues, extends to the Charvel and Gretsch lines as well. Anyone else hear anything about this?

 

[JOLLY]

I've read all kinds of things over the past 2-3 years or so about quality issues with new Charvels.

 

[Mincer]

I head about that news last week, too. Dunno if it is true or what the reason was.

 

[Chris Pile]

It's called business as usual.

 

[Warmart]

It's all over TGP, 300 people - very sad.

 

[Securb]

Guitar sales were through the roof during the lockdown. Everyone wanted to learn guitar, and guitars were on months-long back order. Sales have leveled off or dropped since the lockdown is over, and people have lost interest in the instrument. I imagine at least half of those fired were hired in the past two years to keep up with pandemic demand. I would also surmise most of the recent quality issues came from hiring anyone off the street to get products out the door during the pandemic.

 

[Aceman]

I can't think of one negative post on a Charvel or Fender quality wise in the past couple of years.

Are they as bad as Gibson yet? Call me when that happens.

 

[NegativeEase]

Well, they had a huge almost unprecedented demand in 2020 and 2021 -so wouldn't a market contraction after that spike by natural -especially since this Fender move is based on less demand on US MADE products - i mean, a lot of this is just standard business fluctuation I bet.

The sky is not falling at Fender

 

[JMP/HBE]

Its Corporate America doing what it does best, killing jobs and paying no taxes.
My wife & I haven't had a tax return since the tax cuts in 2016-2020 because we now subsidize Billionaires.

 

[Mincer]

While we aren't going to get into what taxes are or are not owed by corporations in the US, I wonder if the people laid off were from one department or across the whole company. I will say within corporations, the survival of the corporation is more important than the livelihood of all these people. These kinds of decisions are made every day within many companies, but I hate to see this in our industry.

 

[NegativeEase]

While we aren't going to get into what taxes are or are not owed by corporations in the US, I wonder if the people laid off were from one department or across the whole company. I will say within corporations, the survival of the corporation is more important than the livelihood of all these people. These kinds of decisions are made every day within many companies, but I hate to see this in our industry.

I think the layoffs where primarily related to the 3rd shift (Overnight) at the US factory -which is the shift most affected by fluctuating guitar sales.