OC Business Journal Article Featuring RIC

[rickenbrother]

Check it out:
http://www.ocbj.com/industry_article_pa ... ID2=126781

Rickenbacker chief executive and owner, John Hall, calls his guitars the Porsches of the industry.

That's great, I love it!

The link I've posted brings you to a log in page.
Do a Google search of, "orange county rickenbacker article" and you'll find it in an Orange County Business Journal Online link.

[deaconblues]

Guitars

Santa Ana-based Rickenbacker Inter-national Corp., whose electric guitars were made popular by the Beatles, is among the older local manufacturers.

Rickenbacker falls into the small, specialized category: Its factory with 80 workers churns out about 10,000 guitars a year.

That’s nothing compared to big rivals Fender Musical Instruments Corp. of Arizona and Gibson Guitar Corp. of Nashville.

Rickenbacker chief executive and owner, John Hall, calls his guitars the Porsches of the industry.

“Three of the Beatles were using our guitars,” he said. “It had a tremendous effect on us.”

Hall said he’s not interested in moving to cheaper places.

“We could save as much as a third of our costs going to a place like Post Falls, Idaho,” he said. “But I’m a ninth generation Californian. This is my home.”

Rickenbacker’s guitars, which sell for $2,500 each on average, are hard to produce, Hall said.

Painstaking production has brought a two-year backlog of orders for Rickenbackers, creating a headache for dealers, Hall said.

To quell some demand, Rickenbacker raised prices twice in the past two years. After the first 10% increase didn’t work, it raised prices an additional 20% this year.

“It’s too early to say if it will work,” Hall said.

Rickenbacker is one of a handful of guitar makers in the county, including Huntington Beach-based BBE Sound Inc.’s G&L Musical Instruments in Ful-lerton.

[1965]

Are paragraphs passe? What's this sentence, space, sentence, space junk? Pretty weak article, nice little bit of promo though I guess.

[johnallg]

Are paragraphs passe? What's this sentence, space, sentence, space junk? Pretty weak article, nice little bit of promo though I guess.

Its the OCR, come on... oops, better be careful, we're owned by the same group.

Interesting aside - I found this when Joey's Google search suggestion didn't work.
http://www.the-remnants.net/hall.htm
At the bottom - I now have the 4001S cursor.

[ken_j]

I found these three Ricks for sale in that Google link: http://orangecounty.kijiji.com/c-For-sa ... dZ59289630

[cmuk]

To quell some demand, Rickenbacker raised prices twice in the past two years. After the first 10% increase didn’t work, it raised prices an additional 20% this year.

“It’s too early to say if it will work,” Hall said.

Interesting.

And I was under the impression that prices had gone up due to increase in costs and not to 'quell some demand'?

I thought RIC worked on a costs + margin basis and not a market-related figure.

Maybe I've got this wrong? Regardless, it's really none of my business, eh? Fair play to them!

[simer4001]

Guitars

“We could save as much as a third of our costs going to a place like Post Falls, Idaho,” he said. “But I’m a ninth generation Californian. This is my home.”

No offense John, but Post Falls is a heck of a lot prettier than Santa Ana.

[guitar-murph]

The most interesting thing about this article is the statement that Rickenbacker has some 80 employees and produces around 10,000 guitars per year. This is about in line with what I suspected. Rickenbacker will not release production numbers, and I have long felt that they were making more than some people realized. Nonetheless, as the article states, it is not enough to keep up with demand.

[shakey_slim]

Awww....

I live 15 miles from Post Falls. JH could have had another loyal employee by moving up here.

Thanks for crushing my dreams!

[rikk]

10,000 guitars per year not counting weekends and plant shut downs is about 40 guitars a day. Not a bad run. The price increase may take a few years to have an effect because if they are at 24 months backorder, they probably didn't raise prices on orders already taken.

[johnallg]

10,000 guitars per year not counting weekends and plant shut downs is about 40 guitars a day. Not a bad run. The price increase may take a few years to have an effect because if they are at 24 months backorder, they probably didn't raise prices on orders already taken.

Don't forget to subtract for 2 weeks vacation time. They were just closed for R&R.

[fatcat]

they probably didn't raise prices on orders already taken.

That hasn't stopped some derlers from immediately raising their prices.