I suppose we should have seen the evolution coming.
The Gibson brand proudly built their legendary status instruments for 80-something years in Kalamazoo, Michigan -- Epiphones, as well, since they acquired that company in the early 60's... but then sold out and moved on to be Gibson Nashville, Gibson Memphis and acoustics made in Bozeman, Montana. Then they built and launched (2004, I think) their own factory in Qingdao, dubbing it 'Gibson China' and exhiling a team of Gibson USA management to run it 'the Gibson Way' and teach their crew of Chinese how to build various Epiphones. And control costs and profits that had grown too high for them doing it otherwise.
Having top quality Epis built for them by Samick in Korea from about 1983 - 2002, with Saien, Fine, Un Sung, Aria, Peerless and a couple of other Korean factories hanging on a couple of more years, til Korea got too expensive, turning more and more to subcontracting to Chinese factories such as Dae Won, Sae Jung and Muse since 2002, the pace picking up since 2004, even as Gibson China was starting up...because the initial QC in Qiangdao sucked.
So perhaps this new hot rod, priced like it's a USA Gibson but manufactured at MIC costs, is the harbinger of the ultimate shutdown someday, perhaps sooner than we may realize, of Nashville, Memphis and Bozeman, just like they did Kalamazoo.
Gibson's eroded market share and sales that's transpired over the past 30 years, as more and more quality guitar makers/brands got into the game has forced them to adapt and find ways to squeeze more profit out of selling less guitars so they could sustain growth and satisfy their investors.
What better way now than to just take it all to China?
EDIT: Syo makes a good point in his post following this one of mine...so NOW, no longer assuming that MIC is a factual statement as this thread alledges through the opening posts, I go to the link for the Firebird X on the Gibson site and it IS shown as a Gibson USA product....where did the basis of the MIC allegation come from?
Regardless...I stand by my theory that Gibson China was not built to be an Epiphone factory forever. Gibson will simply do what so many American manufacturers have had to do to survive, and did it long ago...companies like GE, RCA (that's a hoot....Radio Corporation of America...I have an RCA TV...made in China): pull up stakes and take their manufacturing elsewhere.
Last edited by wingsdad; October 29th, 2010 at 08:49 PM.
^^
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