15
was a great year
for creativity,” reflects Bob Taylor
from his office on a late November
afternoon, assessing a year that
other manufacturers might be less
keen to dwell upon. Despite 2009’s
economic slump, Taylor fared well
relative to the MI industry as a
whole, buoyed by product develop-
ment efforts that led to a bounty of
exciting new guitar offerings. The
year saw the successful debut of
the semi-hollowbody T3, the formal
launch of a fully loaded Build to
Order program, and an expansion
of the SolidBody electric line to
include an optional tremolo, new
colors, and “plug and play” loaded
pickguards. The Nylon Series wel-
comed the NS24, new artist signa-
ture models were born, and several
series of limited editions, including
spring and fall LTDs, culminated
with Taylor’s bold and inspiring 35th
anniversary collection. That creative
surge delivered a parlor guitar, a
baritone, a 9-string, and, in another
breakthrough moment, an 8-string
baritone.
In plenty of ways, the year was
hardly business as usual, but as Bob
points out,
every
year — whether an
up or a down year — brings a unique
set of challenges. And within those
challenges lie unique opportunities
for creative companies.
“When you’re growing, you tend
not to focus on small-selling items,”
Bob says. “You focus on the big
tickets. You might spend your tool-
ing or design money on making the
factory efficient so you can produce
and sell more of your top-selling
models. If you’re not growing, you
might think, we need to get where
we need to be one guitar at a time,
which means that 35 9-strings might
be welcome, where another year we
wouldn’t have time for that.”
While creativity has never been
lacking around the Taylor complex,
the key, Bob says, is to apply it to
the right projects. “In 2009, we
were willing to look at guitars we
wouldn’t necessarily sell in high
volume. But out of that comes some
pretty cool stuff.”
Having built Taylor into a suc-
cessful company that has become
synonymous with innovation, Bob
shares his thoughts on the underly-
ing Taylor philosophy that continues
to guide the company’s efforts mov-
ing forward through 2010.
A Manufacturing-Driven
Approach
“I think life is about 10 percent
ideas and about 90 percent imple-
mentation,” Bob says. “Once an idea
is out there, you have to figure out
how to make it real. This is where
most people or companies fail, and
this is where we excel as a company.”
What helps Taylor implement
ideas better than other companies,
Bob feels, are vision and passion.
“We are a builder-driven com-
pany, not a sales-driven company,”
he elaborates. “Companies that lack
innovation, I believe, are run by their
sales force. And the sales force really
wants the best-sellers at a lower
price. We’re a company driven by our
love of the guitar. If I say we want
to make something, we start making
it. I can add enough excitement to
a project and release the funds to
do it because we believe that this
thing needs to live and breathe. We
can hear an electric pickup and go,
‘I guess we’re in the electric guitar
business.’ That’s not a sales-driven
decision. It’s like it’s our destiny. We
have to now put a design shoulder
to the task of making a cool guitar so
these pickup ideas can live.”
The same mindset was applied
in 2009, and as a result, three mod-
els — a 6-string baritone, an 8-string
baritone (a spinoff from the 6-string
baritone and a 9-string) and a 12-fret
Grand Concert — inspired enough
excitement that they were added to
the Taylor line for 2010.
“I’ve fallen in love with that 12-fret
GC,” Bob says. “It’s that pure and
wonderful. We’ve got something in
our lineup that affects me that way,
and it all sort of happened because
my building team and I got excited
about them and I was able to pull the
trigger on them. There are excited
builders at other guitar companies,
but often times, nobody in that group
has the authority to pull the trigger.
That’s the difference.”
After last year’s 35th anniversary
embrace of more niche-oriented
guitars like the parlor, 9-string and
baritone, the question on the minds
of Taylor enthusiasts for 2010 might
be, “What’s next?” Not surprisingly,
requests for other specialty instru-
ments that Taylor has never made
before continue to trickle in, like a
mandocello (see “Ask Bob”) and a
tenor guitar.
“Give them an inch and they’ll take
a mile,” Bob laughs. “As far as the
more obscure guitars go, a lot of
what we chose to build this past year
was based on steady requests over a
pretty long time. It would make more
sense for us to develop the bass
next. People are also dying for us to
make ukuleles.”
But he’s not ready to promise
either.
“I think 2010 will be a bit different
than 2009 in that we will find our-
selves needing to make more guitars
from Taylor’s standard line,” Bob says.
“We ended up selling well in the
stores this year, so there will be some
inventory pipeline we’ll want to fill to
keep the right amount of inventory in
stores.”
Bob concedes that the year won’t
pass by without Taylor introducing
something entirely new. In fact, there
are a couple of development proj-
ects in the works that Bob and his
team are very excited about, but it’s
too early to make an announcement.
However, the company was plan-
ning to bring some prototypes to the
NAMM show in January, so it won’t be
long before the word starts to get out.
More Custom Capability
Alongside the standard Taylor line,
an emerging theme that delivers even
more possibilities in 2010 is model
customization. In 2009, the ability to
order a custom guitar through Taylor’s
Build to Order (BTO) program quickly
caught on with dealers and custom-
ers. Hundreds of BTO guitars were
ordered last year, and now that the
program is well-established and more
dealers are hip to the ordering pro-
cess, the program is poised for more
growth in 2010.
“We could potentially become the
world’s largest custom guitar com-
pany,” Bob says. “People are getting
used to the idea that these guitars
are available, that it’s not so exclusive
“it
“We are a builder-driven company,
not a sales-driven company. Compa-
nies that lack innovation, I believe,
are run by their sales force.”
or difficult to order one, and that you
don’t have to wait forever to get one.”
Taylor’s BTO program expands
its menu options for 2010, including
the ability to order a custom 9-string,
12-fret or baritone acoustic, as well
as an optional armrest or backstrap.
The T5 can be custom-ordered with
binding of maple, koa, or ebony. (See
our BTO spread on pages 48-49.)
Meanwhile, greater customization
is a driving force behind this year’s
expanded line of SolidBody electrics.
Customers will have more color
choices for the Classic, and numer-
ous pickup configurations will be
offered for the Classic, Standard and
Custom. The Standard and Custom
are also available with a pickguard
this year, and a new Vintage Alnico
(VA) humbucker also joins the mix.
(See our SolidBody coverage on
pages 38-43.)
Raising the Bar on
Customer Support
As passionate as Taylor is about
guitar making, the company is equally
committed to being a full-service
resource that helps people with virtu-
ally every aspect of their relationship
with guitars.
“I think it’s about time a guitar
company gives service like we expect
from other companies that we buy
things from,” Bob says. “If you buy a
Canon camera, you want someone
at Canon to back you up. If you
buy a car, you want service. When
I first started, guitar company ser-
vice meant fixing your guitar under
warranty if something went wrong.
That’s how it was defined until we
started to change it and make it more
‘service’-like — a combination of pre-
sale info, tech support, straight-up
repairs, and referrals to authorized
people in your area who can get you
taken care of really fast. For us, ser-
vice might be answering questions
about care of the guitar. It might be
answering questions about your next
purchase and how that guitar might
be different than your others. It might
be answering questions about the
tone or specific applications.
“People just want to feel like
they can call and get support,” Bob
continues. “So we offer that. We
have six people on the phone, just
answering calls, talking with people
about guitars all day long. That’s big.
I’m sure it helps us sell guitars, but
that’s not really the point. The point is
to treat someone who already bought
a guitar as well as you treat someone
who might buy a guitar. That’s really
what service means to me. Because
in reality, you’ll roll out the red carpet
for someone who’s thinking of buy-
ing. Why not roll out the red carpet
for the person who already bought?
If you can treat the person who
already paid as well as you treat the
person whose money you want, I
think you’re doing a good thing.”
You can read more about our
Customer Service department in our
Guitar Guide on page 52.
