[Alistair Hay]

I havent had much time recently to post on the forum but I'm sitting on the bus on my way to the airport to catch a flight to California for the NAMM show. Finally time to relax and reflect a little.
Firstly thank you all for your continued support, encouragement, ideas and inspiration. This community has always been a great source of discussion and debate which helps us better understand the needs of our customers and continually challenges us toward constant innovation and improvement.
I dont get a lot of time to read the forum but from time to time i do pop in.
The past year was another amazing year at Emerald and one of careful growth and refinement in every area of our business.
We are very aware that growth can lead to problems and so for that reason most of my energy went into training process improvement and quality control last year. I can definitely say we have seen great improvement in most areas of the construction process. Small little details that may not be apparent but when added together lead to a better and more consistent guitar. That is not to say we get everything perfect but as has always been our philosophy we face the problem head on and do everything to resolve the problem and learn from it.
Now as we move into this new decade we are very excited about what lies ahead. I feel like we have created a very solid foundation to grow from with a highly skilled and motivated team and a manufacturing process that allows us to build great sounding and ergonomic guitars with the freedom to customise and innovate.
From this foundation we will continue to grow and spread our guitars around the world, i will be working on some exciting new designs and i have just hired a second videographer for our team who will be giving you all a deeper insight behind the scenes at Emerald.
Its been an amazing journey over the past 22 years and as i read the book that Staci Blevins has so wonderfully written telling our story all i can think of is how blessed i have been. This truly is the greatest job in the world and I get to do it every day.
Happy New year to you all
Alistair