25% Emerald Discount - Again

[RP]

Just when you thought you'd missed out on great discounts from Emerald, they've reinstated (well sort of) their 25% discounts, but this time it's on add-ons when you use 3D Builder...

[A62]

Thanks for the heads up!

Too bad I just placed my order a few days ago

[Groberts]

Originally Posted by A62

Thanks for the heads up!

Too bad I just placed my order a few days ago

I would contact them and ask if they can honor the discount for you. What did you order?

[Groberts]

Originally Posted by RP

Just when you thought you'd missed out on great discounts from Emerald, they've reinstated (well sort of) their 25% discounts, but this time it's on add-ons when you use 3D Builder...

I priced out a guitar using the 3D builder with the discount. It's better than no discount but the overall cost was still about $500 more than the 25% off sale on "In-stock" guitars. That said, it's nice to get a discount where you used to pay full price.

[tbeltrans]

The 25% off in stock guitars was an incredible sale and many of us benefited from it. For those who want a customized guitar, I am sure this current sale will be beneficial, but it probably won't generate the same level of interest that the earlier sale did. That said, I am very impressed with the quality of Emerald's guitars and any discount on these instruments is certainly welcome.

Tony

[RP]

Originally Posted by Groberts

I priced out a guitar using the 3D builder with the discount. It's better than no discount but the overall cost was still about $500 more than the 25% off sale on "In-stock" guitars.

As Tony said many of us benefitted from the 25% discount on in-stock guitars, but that shouldn't be the standard against which all subsequent discounts are measured. Speaking for myself, that was probably a once in a lifetime discount on Emeralds.

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

The 25% off in stock guitars was an incredible sale and many of us benefited from it. For those who want a customized guitar, I am sure this current sale will be beneficial, but it probably won't generate the same level of interest that the earlier sale did. That said, I am very impressed with the quality of Emerald's guitars and any discount on these instruments is certainly welcome.

Tony

I agree...

[A62]

Originally Posted by Groberts

I would contact them and ask if they can honor the discount for you. What did you order?

I ordered an X10 with a shorter scale and inlays- so that deal would have helped me a little!

[tbeltrans]

Just one more thought...

Somebody has a thread subject elsewhere i these forums called "the deal of a lifetime". While I have not read that thread, to me that 25% off stock sale was a "deal of a lifetime". I don't know that I would have taken the "risk" buying my Kestrel at full price, but at 25% off, it was a significant savings and I learned that long distance dealing with Emerald really isn't a risk at all. That Kestrel has become my daily go to guitar, wile the rest just sit idly by.

Maybe for some here, this 25% off on a custom build could do the same. Though Alistair said he wasn't planning on another sale like that 25% off stock sale, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he does it again in some form in the future.

I can't think of a better way to get his product into many hands, especially since all purchases are factory direct so you can't just walk into a local guitar store and give these a try. Getting product into many hands can easily translate into exposure to even that many more people as others become curious about these instruments and want to try them when they see us playing them (Hey, can I try your guitar...?).

He got me to buy and I have NEVER bought a guitar long distance, sight unseen before. I have posted my views on that many times around here over the years. In the latest shipping video, he commented on the huge success of that sale, so I would think it would be hard for him as a business owner to ignore that intense level of interest forevermore.

Tony

[RP]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

...Though Alistair said he wasn't planning on another sale like that 25% off stock sale, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he does it again in some form in the future.

My 73 years won't allow me to be as optimistic as you, but if I did swallow that pill, might a Black Friday similar sale be in the offing???

[Aspiring]

Originally Posted by RP

My 73 years won't allow me to be as optimistic as you, but if I did swallow that pill, might a Black Friday similar sale be in the offing???

The current 25% sale is only 25% off the options chosen in the builder it does not include 25% off the base instrument price.

I ran the numbers quickly and for my custom x20 which included a neck change and a veneer, inlay and vibrant back color that ended up being about the same overall cost as the 10% off full instrument custom Black Friday deal I picked mine up this past year.

The 25% off stock instrument resulted in a much better price overall for sure.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by RP

My 73 years won't allow me to be as optimistic as you, but if I did swallow that pill, might a Black Friday similar sale be in the offing???

I am 70 and the changes that age brings on seem to be becoming reality faster than I thought they would. A part of that for me is due to seeing now the results of exposure to Agent Orange from my time in Vietnam, but a lot of it is just old age.

Currently, I am in the process of getting focused on what I still want to accomplish. A large part of that process for me is getting rid of a lot of stuff I now know I will never use and also buying a few things that I definitely will use.

One thing I don't want to do is burden those I leave behind with a huge pile of stuff they would have to get rid of. I have seen that happen all too often and it is very hard work for those who end up stuck with it all.

All that said, I have no intention of taking advantage of another such sale. All I wanted for another guitar from Emerald was my Kestrel. I got that at the 25% sale and am truly grateful since it has become my primary instrument. Having gotten that, now makes deciding which guitars I want to keep and which to let go of, and there will be a lot of those.

Tony

[Captain Jim]

There's a lot of that "70 stuff" going around. The Virtuo I bought on the Anniversary Sale is an amazing guitar, a real delight to play. It won't replace my acoustics, but is a nice addition. As an admitted Emerald fan, I would be surprised to see Emerald offer any kind of comparable sale in the future... I have seen 10% off sales, and a 15% off sale years ago for returning customers... this 25% was truly unprecedented.

These guitars are unique enough, and so well built/designed, that I think they are a real value at their full price. It would be a shame to miss out on getting to experience one because a potential buyer is "waiting for a sale."

From a purely business standpoint, businesses that rely on "a sale price" to get customers to buy often find themselves in a diminishing return situation. This 25th Anniversary Sale may have been that "once in a lifetime"... there is no doubt that the Emerald team was surprised by the number of guitars that sold in such a short time. The fact that they had so many guitars in stock leads me to believe this was planned far in advance... the other side of that coin is they needed to reduce inventory. Either way, it would be a nice influx of cash, but that isn't the same as an increase in profit. Cash flow is important, but every business needs net profit to survive.

For the typical consumer, the thought is "I just paid $3,500 for that guitar - look at all the money they made!" If Emerald is netting 25% profit on every guitar sold (and Alistair would be a business wizard to have that kind of net), every dime of that purchase would have gone into covering expenses (payroll, cost of goods/materials, rent/mortgage/overhead, insurance, etc, etc)... doesn't leave anything for actual profit. That means that potentially, this sale could have been close to a year's worth of output for little or no profit. Or, with their new streamlined production, I could be off-base and they made a tidy profit. All speculation.

But, if Alistair could have spent the money on updating facilities and equipment, built up inventory, then had the most successful sales event in the history of carbon fiber guitar production, AND made a huge profit... he belongs on the cover of Fortune magazine.

When a business "trains" their customer base to wait for a sale before making a purchase, it is generally a downward trend in profitability... just look at Guitar Center as an example. Or the branded pizza business... who here hasn't bought a $7.99 pizza from Domino's? We all know how inflation has increased every time we go to the grocery store, yet those pizza places keep having "in store specials" and online coupons. $7.99 was a good deal on a pizza 5 years ago... but those businesses have trained their customers to see who has the best price this evening when it's "your turn to cook."

At my age, I have thought that each guitar I bought in the last 5 years was probably my last guitar. I want to see Emerald around for a long time, to set the standards for what a quality carbon fiber guitar should be. Who knows when I'll need my next last guitar?

[tbeltrans]

As is typical for you, another astute post. I didn't want to quote it due to its length, but did want to follow up with another long post.

When I worked for a well known company that makes routers and switches, They ran into a problem for a while in which they were competing against themselves because there was a very healthy used market of their products while they were trying to sell new product. That could easily happen to a company such as Emerald or Rainsong or other small carbon fiber builders.

Another problem some companies run into, especially if they are in a niche market, is saturation (i.e. when everybody who wants one, has one). I have no idea what the growth rate of new customers entering the carbon fiber market is. I do know that most people I know have never heard of carbon fiber guitars. So I don't know what the growth potential is for Emerald or any of the other makers of carbon fiber guitars. In these forums, I see the same people buying guitars from Emerald over and over and maybe a few new people trickle in.

Of course, the wood guitar market has its issues too. There seems to be a custom small shop builder on every street corner these days and I see such guitars being sold used with names I have never heard of at far below what they probably cost new. The "big three" (Gibson, Martin, and Taylor) seem to do fine though.

Every company I worked for as an engineer seemed to always have pressure to get things done fast and get to market as quickly as possible, if not sooner. There was always financial pressure and I recall very few times when the "higher ups" in the company would report good financial news so we could relax even just a bit. It was always a grind, though fortunately the work was always interesting.

Layoffs typically occurred every 3 - 4 years. For me, this worked in my favor because it forced me to live debt-free and to keep my skills marketable. Having the same job for 25 or 30 years could make a person overly comfortable and drift into obsolescence, which could ruin a career if there was a layoff suddenly when the person is middle-aged. Contrast that to the fact that I was never out of work more than a week between layoffs and am still in demand long after retiring.

We have no idea what is going on behind the scenes at Emerald or what their margins are, but I suspect that your comments are probably accurate. If they are, then I would imagine that Emerald's employees are usually under the gun, so to speak, to push revenues as much as possible. One thing we do know by now is that building carbon fiber guitars is very labor intensive work. It isn't automated where carbon fiber material is shoved in one end and out the other comes guitar after guitar.

My Kestrel was built a year ago, so it has been sitting around in stock for that time. Here in the US, a company would have been paying taxes on it all that time. If there was a lot of stock hanging around that long, that could be a problem. I don't know how things are done in Ireland, though as an engineer, I did work with people there but finance is a whole different area. On the other hand, I get the distinct impression that the Kestrel isn't one of their more popular products, but this is typical for any company to have a couple of "cash cow" products such as the X20 and Virtuo, and the other products sell here and there, but serve to broaden the product line.

In my personal opinion, I think that Emerald really has something special across their product line that truly stands out from the carbon fiber crowd, and I sincerely wish them all the best.

I have three Emeralds which cover everything I want for my musical interests. As a result, I am gearing up to unload a bunch of guitars that I no longer need. As far as acoustic guitars go, I am about to go completely carbon fiber. I only have one wood steel string acoustic remaining at this point and it will likely be gone this week.

At this point, I do intend to keep my wood archtops though despite the fact that my primary guitar is now the Kestrel. My Kestrel wasn't an impulse buy because of the 25% stock sale. I have been watching these for some time, but at that sale price, I knew it was time with that sale, and I am so glad I purchased it. My other Emeralds were purchased used from a friend and local AGF member. But what does "used" really mean for a carbon fiber guitar since it will remain "like new" for life by virtue of its construction.

Tony

[RP]

I'd love to find out how many Emeralds were sold during THE BIG SALE and what % of those went to AGF members. My gut feeling is that there's a healthy carbon fiber guitar market (compared to the output of carbon fiber guitars, not compared to how many Martins or Taylors are sold) outside of AGF. How these people find out about Emeralds or Rainsongs when they have no dealerships is beyond me. But I do think that we AGF members tend to think of ourselves as a much bigger piece of the carbon fiber guitar pie than we actually are, but that again is just a gut feeling...

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by RP

I'd love to find out how many Emeralds were sold during THE BIG SALE and what % of those went to AGF members. My gut feeling is that there's a healthy carbon fiber guitar market (compared to the output of carbon fiber guitars, not compared to how many Martins or Taylors are sold) outside of AGF. How these people find out about Emeralds or Rainsongs when they have no dealerships is beyond me. But I do think that we AGF members tend to think of ourselves as a much bigger piece of the carbon fiber guitar pie than we actually are, but that again is just a gut feeling...

Yes, there is that phenomenon of us thinking we are it.

Anyway, I hope you are right and we are only a small part of the picture. It does seem, watching the shipping videos, that the majority of the instruments in those videos go to folks here in the US. Outside of these forums, I do wonder how they find out about these guitars in enough detail to GAS for them. Maybe they know forum members or maybe we aren't as influential as we like to think we are. Who knows?

I do intend to get my Kestrel into the hands of a few archtop players around my area. Unfortunately, such players do seem to be quite traditional though. I would be too if I hadn't already been introduced to carbon fiber guitars back in the old MacNichol and CA Guitars days. I still enjoy a Gibson archtop though.

Tony