What's the future hold for the Rickenbacker company?

[1968shelbyman]

Anyone know what's going on with the state of business with Rickenbacker these days?
Last time I checked there've been no news or marketing updates in over a year on their website and production of their guitars seems to be relatively low. Also, I've not seen anything innovative in a guitar being produced by Rickenbacker in like - forever. Has the company grown in terms of number of operating facilities, employees, production over the last 10 years? Is the company even profitable??
I just checked the Rick.com website for Latest News and got this server error, which is an issue on their end......

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e4d'
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Login failed for user 'RIC-SQL\IUSR_RIC-SQL'.
/news.asp, line 35


Why isn’t Rickenbacker marketing the company more effectively, why aren't they more creative in terms of new product offerings and why do they seem to be difficult to do business with in terms of customer / parts support??
The company seems to have changed with the passing of Frank Hall many years ago. The company's been around for like 80 years and I'm wondering what's preventing them from being more active and evolving as an instrument manufacturer.

[clementc3]

Ooooh, I think you have just put your hand on the "third rail" of Rickenbacker discussions!

All of your questions are interesting but since Rickenbacker is a privately-held company we can only make educated guesses at the answers. RIC marches to its own drummer, and more power to them for that. They appear NOT to be intent on taking over the (music) world, so their strategy and tactics are different from the mega-manufacturers.

All production is in Santa Ana, CA - no overseas outsourcing, except for the occasional imported part (tuners, bridges?). The factory appears to be running at full capacity - their backlog is somewhere between months and years long - so the economic need to "innovate" is probably low. They have done some special model runs for the Japan market, which has a particularly strong affinity for Rickenbacker products.

"Innovation" in the music industry is a tricky thing - see Gibson's recent Firebird X and Jonas Brothers-signature edition guitars. The comments that are posted on the company's own website would be enough to make me disable the "comment" feature if I ran the website! Some of RIC's own forays into innovation in the past have met less than resounding market acceptance (like the 230 - 2030 models), while their reissues are backordered, so it makes sense for them to focus on what the market wants.

The good news is that the quality of their instruments is consistently high. I am sure that each of us has a list of changes that we would like RIC to make (such as re-issue the Capri). However, the company is undoubtedly "profitable enough" so that they can make decisions based on what they think is right, and based on what they want to do - a luxury that many other companies don't have.

I am just glad that they are (as far as I can tell) thriving.

[libratune]

I thought this topic -- past, present and future -- was thoroughly covered here a few weeks ago: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=384939&p=482623#p482623

[winston]

Their current management is doing just fine managing the companys bottom line.

Rickenbacker cerainly does not need the assistance of people outside of their business who feel they have a better solution for running the company. In fact their business model seems relatively impervious to factors that generally affect the economy in North America.

Why are you more or less asking the same questions again btw?

[1968shelbyman]

I'm only on this site a few times a year. Rickenbacker (or most any business) can manage their bottom line effectively if the strategy is to maintain the margins via cost reduction without growth. Just seems like there's been no innovation, no marketing updates on their website and focus on customers is consistent with what it's been for years. Has there been any Signature Ric's launched in the last couple years? Seems like the most popular line of their guitars are the reissues and they've tooled back on producing those as well.
I do notice when these types of questions get asked many folks respond with frustration toward the person asking the questions. lol These are valid questions I know a lot of people are asking. I'm not interested in managing a small guitar company, rather just see Rickenbacker continually evolve to meet customer needs.
I'll check the outcome of the string from the other posting.
Thx.

[cjj]

Rickenbacker (or most any business) can manage their bottom line effectively if the strategy is to maintain the margins via cost reduction without growth.

Sounds like MBA-speak...

This might be true if your market is saturated and you can't sell enough of your current products. But RIC is in a somewhat unique position where orders far outstrip their production capacity. They can set their margins wherever they want just by adding whatever percentage they desire to their costs. Of course, if they go too high, they'll lose customers, orders, etc. This is just what they tried to do with their last price increase, as it was stated that they were trying to reduce demand to help with the backlog. They've also reduced the number of models produced for just the same reason.

As for innovation, what's the point of adding new products when you can't make enough of your current line? They have made significant changes to their production efficiency by adding CNC automation, etc. Not so much to reduce costs, but to increase capacity.

Of course, they could always go out and build more production facilities, even go off-shore to reduce costs, like everyone else. But apparently, they aren't interested in growth to that extent. One must assume they are doing just fine business/profit-wise since they could easily grow to meet the demands, but choose not to do so.

I think RIC's future looks just fine and they'll be around for a long time...

[rickenbrother]

Anyone know what's going on with the state of business with Rickenbacker these days?
Last time I checked there've been no news or marketing updates in over a year on their website and production of their guitars seems to be relatively low. Also, I've not seen anything innovative in a guitar being produced by Rickenbacker in like -
Why isn’t Rickenbacker marketing the company more effectively, why aren't they more creative in terms of new product offerings and why do they seem to be difficult to do business with in terms of customer / parts support??
The company seems to have changed with the passing of Frank Hall many years ago. The company's been around for like 80 years and I'm wondering what's preventing them from being more active and evolving as an instrument manufacturer.

RIC is quite busy and the state of the company is very well with a back log of of at least two years on most models. RIC is not trying to be Fender. They are happy to be the small family run company that they are. It works well for them and the greater majority of of Rick players.

[jdogric12]

Anyone know what's going on with the state of business with Rickenbacker these days?

Yes.

Last time I checked there've been no news or marketing updates in over a year on their website and production of their guitars seems to be relatively low. Also, I've not seen anything innovative in a guitar being produced by Rickenbacker in like - forever. Has the company grown in terms of number of operating facilities, employees, production over the last 10 years?

Why should they?

Is the company even profitable??

Laughable. Your *** is showing, sir.

I just checked the Rick.com website for Latest News and got this server error, which is an issue on their end......

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e4d'
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Login failed for user 'RIC-SQL\IUSR_RIC-SQL'.
/news.asp, line 35

So? This really has nothing to do with the rest of your questions. Sounds like you're just picking a fight you can't win.

Why isn’t Rickenbacker marketing the company more effectively, why aren't they more creative in terms of new product offerings and why do they seem to be difficult to do business with in terms of customer / parts support??

Again, laughable. Your *** is still showing.

The company seems to have changed with the passing of Frank Hall many years ago. The company's been around for like 80 years and I'm wondering what's preventing them from being more active and evolving as an instrument manufacturer.

Why should they when they're obviously doing just fine?

I recommend logging on to this site a little more often than you have, and getting up to speed yourself. I'm certainly not NEARLY as in-love with Rickenbacker as most people on this site but even I couldn't let this one go without posting.

[Clint]

Why do people assume that if a company isn't gobbling up other companies or rolling out new web pages and inane news updates every few days, that they are in trouble? It turns out that there are ways to run a business othet than slash and burn.

[cjj]

Why do people assume that if a company isn't gobbling up other companies or rolling out new web pages and inane news updates every few days, that they are in trouble? It turns out that there are ways to run a business othet than slash and burn.

Because in business school, they teach you that the only way to be successful is through continual growth, which tends to drive your stock price up, make shareholders happy, etc., etc.

[Clint]

Thanks, I had almost forgotten the inmates had taken over the asylum.

[ram]

I think the 'stock holders' are happy... the last picture I saw of John Hall - he was smiling. They have added some tweaks to the product line (neck thicknesses, push pull swiches, finish changes...etc.) and are doing the Rickenbacker business model. Demand is high and production is happening and quality has not suffered. Plus there seems to be a re-discovery of the instruments by newer bands. So I don't see any issues. Rickenbacker is just chugging along quite nicely.

[Grey]

Actaully, I have to agree about the website. I posted similar feelings on their official Ric forums and was blasted for it.

It's very clunky and obviously dated, I run into SQL errors frequently when trying to use sections of the site or visit the forums. The forums.... are just a mess, but if you say anything about it you're met with "it's perfectly fine as-is, it dosen't need to change to try and be 'hip' or 'cool'" even when we're just talking about basic performance features. As forums, they're very un-friendly to new users, and I don't mean the people there I mean the software.

You can't embed pictures, you can't post hotlinks, you can't sort by new posts, you can't search by category, you can't have custom user avatars(minor, but still noteable), you can't view who posted in a topic last and when without going into it, and there's no icons for new posts, so it's impossible to tell what topics have new activity unless you look at every single one every day, because there's no thread subscriptions either.

The people there insist that it's fine and don't want it to change, but there's a reason why the official Rickenbacker forums get about 5 new posts a day and the RickResource gets well over 100. The color scheme is cold and unfriendly and it lacks any features typical forum-goers use on a daily basis. Both the site and the forums could use an overhaul, but I know full well that isn't going to happen.

[johnhall]

Given that the 2009 results were the best year in the company's almost 80 year history, during a down economy, and the facts that we're producing more instruments than ever and literally have more business than the company can handle, I don't think I need to waste any more words on the topic.

Regarding the website- you should be aware that Register.com, the registrar for many of our domains and, of course millions of others, was hit by a massive Distributed Denial Of Service over the weekend. That totally disrupted Domain Name Service worldwide over the weekend ; we were just one victim. Fortunately, our site is actually built on multiple domains and fortuitously (but not planned!) some portions were on different name-servers allowing most functions to continue. In any case, the DDOS seems to have subsided and/or Register.com has figured out how to deal with it and our website is again fully functional.

Am I the only one that finds it odd that someone who's only posted 4 times in two years- and started with an almost identical negative post- has again stirred the pot with misinformation? (San Jose factory, under-staffed, excessive pricing, controlling demand, company profitable, Frank Hall, etc.)

[johnhall]

The people there insist that it's fine and don't want it to change, but there's a reason why the official Rickenbacker forums get about 5 new posts a day and the RickResource gets well over 100. The color scheme is cold and unfriendly and it lacks any features typical forum-goers use on a daily basis. Both the site and the forums could use an overhaul, but I know full well that isn't going to happen.

While I disagree with many of your comments, since they are related to taste and therefore subjective, you'll need to eat your words because a webmaster-designer was hired last week and a full site redesign is already underway. (Actually, the planning and prototypes for the redesign were started over a year ago, but now it's moved from drawing board to the execution.)

The new forum, which has every feature this one has, is already operational and being tested. The main challenge is how to load it with the existing forum content. There are also certain features that you mention which may not be suitable for a corporate-owned forum due to legal issues and we're still studying those points.