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I got curious and did a bit of searching since I couldn't really think of anything. Apparently Fender (guitars) was originally amazing, was sold to another company and really degraded in overall quality, and then was purchased back by some of its engineers and returned to a better quality. Pretty nice to see that people who were actually passionate about something regaining control and saving something they loved.
https://www.soundunlimited.co.uk/blogs/articles/fender_timeline
This is similar to how many of the big names in the video game industry were built. Disgruntled designers leaving companies like Atari to start their own company. It's how Blizzard got their start, and I believe Ubisoft, EA, and at least a couple of the other big names were founded the same way.
Then, of course, the bean counters started taking over and it all went downhill from there once they went from keeping the designers on task with realistic goals to maximizing profits.
Newman's own seemed on track to go through the same thing, but the original family bought it back before things got too far.
They then proceeded to not innovate at all for a couple decades and now they're serving cease and desists to any builders making guitars remotely similar to the Stratocaster with demands to recall and destroy sold guitars.
Fender is dogshit ass like Gibson. Both companies have behaved like entitled nepo-babies for decades. These companies deserve to die as punishment for their hubris.
Relevant link.
Ironically, they are now sending cease-and-desist letters to guitar manufacturers that build guitars with the s-style that their stratocasters have, and they are public enemy number one in the guitar community right now.
https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/electric-guitars/fender-cease-and-desist-lsl-instruments
Sadly though with the recent cease and desist stuff they've been involved with it seems like they've turned scummy.
Disappointing :( It seemed like their overall production quality is what made them popular and revered, so going after someone who won't be able to source the same materials and match the same production scale does seem super low.
Could be that they don't want people selling knock off shit as real and tanking their reputation. Or it could be assholery.
Their Stratocaster shape is public domain in the US. They won a court case in Germany for copyright of it and immediately went after any builder selling to Germany.
It was a total asshole scumbag move. No silver lining, just finance bros destroying a brand.
I could so understand that! I'm not super familiar with their products beyond looking into things for this post, but I feel like their branding would be on their official products 🤔 If another company is making something similar and using their branding, that would be pretty disastrous.
That was a nice read, thanks for sharing