Quote:
Originally Posted by ewalling
One thing I've wondered about 'Taylor' and the oddly pompous 'R.Taylor' (probably his mother used to call him 'Robert' when he left his tools all over the living room floor ...) division is that in my mind, the presence of one diminishes the credibility of the other. By this I mean that when someone thinks of a quality luthier, are they likely to turn to a maker whose claim to fame is uniform factory models? And for someone looking for a top quality factory model, will they feel that a common-old 'Taylor', whose maker is 'Bob' in his overalls on the shop floor, is now the poor relation of the splendiferous 'R. Taylor', whose maker is now a beatified version of himself bearing the loftier title of 'Robert' and who makes a far better guitar than poor old common 'Bob'?
But they clearly know what they're doing. It does surprise me though that they can pull this one off.
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You have to look at it from marketing perspective. I am pretty sure most owners of R. Taylor are ex or present Taylor owners. Let's face it: if you own a Taylor, especially more than one, you are not a poor guy. You can cry all you want about high mortgage cost and unaffordable car insurance, but the bottom line is with a very few exceptions people who own a few Taylor invested at least 3K-4K into guitars.
So, who not capitalized on this market? Some of these die-hard Taylor fans would rave if you offer them yet another Taylor, but glorified! Now, of course it has to be a wonderful guitar, not just name! But Taylor already has captive audience... So, it's not contradiction and not diminishing, it's maximizing your profits. At least this is what it's called in sales. If you have a client, make sure you sell him everything you can offer. It's a lot cheaper to sustain a client, that hunt for a new one. Taylor already has such client - anyone who loves Taylor :-)