Opaque
So, what it boils down to is that Gibson is screwing everybody, refusing to reveal their important financial information, abusing management and workers, distancing themselves from their traditional small dealerships, and operating as a private, secretive company, without a board of directors or public stock holders and getting away with it.
Gibson has been practicing unethical business practices that have made the headlines recently and the fact that they hid the design and manufacturing process of weight relieving and chambering the bodies of the Les Pauls while advertising them a "solid body" electric guitars, is particularly unsavory. While a lot of people are happy with their chambered LPs the fact is that Gibson did it to make them lighter and make them appear to be constructed of the superior and rare light weight varieties of mahagony that are now becoming difficult to acquire. Gibson uses heavier mahogany that is cheaper and easier for them to get - they lightened it up using secret "proprietary" manufacturing methods, and sold it to a blind public as if it was the same as in the "good old days", when they knew it wasn't. Mysteriously, Gibson has a lot of happy customers and even those who praise the chambered body guitars.
Personally I'll take a heavy, honestly solid Agile LP copy before I'll buy a bottom of the line chambered Gibson LP studio. This is just my opinion. I had an SG Faded solid body that I liked a lot but my Epiphone SG copies sound and play just as well.
After reading the article it seems that Gibson is considered a good risk to the lenders who seem pacified enough to put up with the opaque financial disclosure situation and the supreme command structure of the top managment.
I won't buy a Gibson because I respect Gibson or think they are a superior guitar; I'll buy one for sentimental reasons or the status of brand recognition. I have no respect for Gibson as a company. Less and less guitar players are probably buying Gibsons, but a probably predominant number of professional guitar players you see in DVDs and on TV and at shows are playing Gibsons. It gives the impression that Gibsons and Fenders are the guitars of professionals and, therefore, professional level guitars.
So you can get a professional level Gibson and ignore the business paradime and the suspected and overt unethical practices and just enjoy your guitar, oblivious to all that. After all, all we want is good guitars and we don't care what the companies are doing, Chinesse labor exploitation not withstanding. But we don't want to feel "ripped off" and that is how a lot of people feel about Gibson's pricing, especially during hard economic times.
At least Fenders are affordable and are supporting the small dealers, while making high quality guitars.
That was a good article, from the perspective of business professionals and their analysis of Gibson as a business entity, looking from the outside in. From what it sounds like, you can't even think about seeing inside the company's financial core: it's a private corporation and does not have to disclose all of its records, profits, worth, etc. If the current regime runs it into the ground very few will know or see it coming until it's too late.
