How I view endorsements

A proper endorsement is where an artist uses a product, based on the fact that they enjoy using that product and enjoy it sufficiently to tell others that this is the case.

There are cases where an artist has grown up using a product or has had a working relationship with a company for some time and as the artist has grown to a position of prominence, there has been a degree of Kudos for the company whose product he or she is using.
The first step of that process is that the artist has bought the product either new or secondhand.

When you read in magazines that a famous artist is now using brand X or brand Y, it is often easy to tell whether the artist has really developed an affinity with that product or whether they will play whatever is given them for free.

Some artists are a bit “endorsamatic” - different brand each year – depending on who is willing to supply
This actually harms the whole endorsement process as it makes us all a bit sceptical about it.

We actually take a similar stance to that taken by Marshall amplifiers amongst others.....
We don’t give away any product – all products are paid for, which actually gives meaning to the endorsement process
However they may do an artist deal/special price based on the realistic exposure that it would provide

As a small company this is very important as to give away guitars would mean that someone (and that would be ME) has to go without wages for several months- so that is a route that we would not chose to go.

But we are very interested in developing real professional relationships with artists and we have in the past offered Artists Deals, where an artist getting a lot of exposure pays a better price for the instrument based on the realistic exposure that it would provide for our company.