The Calder Guitar Case Story Ch 6 Nashville Lights Pt2
The images of the Calder Guitar Case that Michael Mailling and his associate John Wright sent me were right on the button. This time I had been right to trust that all would be well.
My first meeting with a major US distributor went like a dream. The guy lapped up the images - wanted to know more - was confident his company could sell our cases and bags...provided I kept the price right. This meant that a modest premium was ok - but above a certain point retailers would reject the product as un-sellable.
Elated, I decided I must make my hotel room look a bit more rock n roll and so headed down to George Gruhn's guitar store and brought myself a black Les Paul Standard. An essential business expenditure I convinced myself.
So that as well as images I had something that people could touch and hold in my presentations I went out a bought a slick looking bicycle helmet and some amazingly lightweight Crocs beach shoes.
The props worked well - everyone picked up the guitar and admired it. And when I explained the construction of the hard case would be similar to that of a cycle helmet - showing one added conviction. The Crocs shoes were a big hit - people were amazed at how light they were. The story to go with them was this was the sort of state-of-the-art type material we would be including in the Calder Case.
Apart from a challenging Nordic distributor (who told me I was a crazy dreamer) all the meetings at Nashville went well. New contacts were excited, Frankfurt contacts were impressed and we clearly became more credible.
One big shot distributor wanted two meetings and I began to feel this was really going to happen - someone out there might actually pay us money....
There were sobering words along the lines that being so innovative would be a big challenge for retailers. The story was that retailers/dealers were used to seeing gig bags and hard cases as a neccessary evil - something to make a few bucks on. Something that was stored back of shop or hidden in a corner. To get them to believe that a case could be as exciting as a guitar that such a case would sell more and make them more money - that, I was told, was going to be the big job.
I was getting the picture - between distributors and manufacturers there was a kind of respect...but retailers...well the story from the other guys seemed to be they were conservative, curmudgeonly and dammit - downright greedy.
And Nashville itself - hot hot days, hot hot nights and some of the best music bars I have ever been to - it was hard to go to bed with so much music around.
At all the meetings I said that I would have an advanced protoype ready by the Fall when I would make a tour of potential US partners. Now that was a promise...
categories: early development
Calder blog homepage
Calder website homepage
My first meeting with a major US distributor went like a dream. The guy lapped up the images - wanted to know more - was confident his company could sell our cases and bags...provided I kept the price right. This meant that a modest premium was ok - but above a certain point retailers would reject the product as un-sellable.
Elated, I decided I must make my hotel room look a bit more rock n roll and so headed down to George Gruhn's guitar store and brought myself a black Les Paul Standard. An essential business expenditure I convinced myself.
So that as well as images I had something that people could touch and hold in my presentations I went out a bought a slick looking bicycle helmet and some amazingly lightweight Crocs beach shoes.
The props worked well - everyone picked up the guitar and admired it. And when I explained the construction of the hard case would be similar to that of a cycle helmet - showing one added conviction. The Crocs shoes were a big hit - people were amazed at how light they were. The story to go with them was this was the sort of state-of-the-art type material we would be including in the Calder Case.
Apart from a challenging Nordic distributor (who told me I was a crazy dreamer) all the meetings at Nashville went well. New contacts were excited, Frankfurt contacts were impressed and we clearly became more credible.
One big shot distributor wanted two meetings and I began to feel this was really going to happen - someone out there might actually pay us money....
There were sobering words along the lines that being so innovative would be a big challenge for retailers. The story was that retailers/dealers were used to seeing gig bags and hard cases as a neccessary evil - something to make a few bucks on. Something that was stored back of shop or hidden in a corner. To get them to believe that a case could be as exciting as a guitar that such a case would sell more and make them more money - that, I was told, was going to be the big job.
I was getting the picture - between distributors and manufacturers there was a kind of respect...but retailers...well the story from the other guys seemed to be they were conservative, curmudgeonly and dammit - downright greedy.
And Nashville itself - hot hot days, hot hot nights and some of the best music bars I have ever been to - it was hard to go to bed with so much music around.
At all the meetings I said that I would have an advanced protoype ready by the Fall when I would make a tour of potential US partners. Now that was a promise...
categories: early development
Calder blog homepage
Calder website homepage
posted by Nick CC at
9:48 PM
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