vic wrote
Can somebody on this forum perhaps give us the real info why Gibson "fled" the country ?
There are stories going around as to the reason/s of why Gibson cancelled its "distribution rights" with some "agents" in SA
It's been covered in depth before, but basically we can't move enough of the Gibson stuff locally to meet some rather unrealistic targets. Epiphone does well, but the Gibson guitars don't (understandably, IMO). They've gone through quite a few agents in the last decade, and most get into it with the best intentions, but after the initial large order, struggle to move enough product to keep Gibson happy.
What's happened here is similar to the way Gibson cut off a lot of stores in the states because they could or would only move either Gibson or Epiphone (like cutting off Wildwood Guitars for not wanting to stock Epiphone, in keeping with their upmarket stockholding) or couldn't move enough. I suspect (unverified) that Gibson didn't want to sustain the infrastructure to supply hundreds of small stores - they wanted to supply only a few large ones so they could simplify and cut back on their own distribution network.
There has also been some stupidity through the years. A&A Terry had the agency for over a decade (I got my Gibson certification while doing warantee repairs for Terrys) and Andrew Terrywould move lots of Epis and a few Gibbys a month - and made sure that all the major stores had at least a few Gibbys in stock. Then Melodys (the furniture chain) made some pie in the sky promises about moving thousands of Gibsons from their own stores and Gibson almost fell over themselves in their eagerness to drop Andrew Terry. Melodys own stores were mainly in or near lower income areas and their sales were mainly credit, so you can imagine how that went. They also immediately lost all the business from the proper retail music stores because they had absolutely no product knowledge - they used to do things like send an Epiphone in place of a Gibson Les Paul custom, and then say, "but aren't they the same?" (happened to me) and had absolutely no backup.
