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Unsolicited advice for anyone who thinks they are gonna buy the Hamer name


polara

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The "Last call for Standards" thread and being home sick today got me thinking. I still feel the Hamer product was sound and they went seriously adrift with the brand and promotion of the brand, repeatedly, for most of the company's history. It's armchair quarterbacking of their senior management team but since I'm in senior management at a company bigger than Hamer was, I'll take the slings and arrows.

So, HFC entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, take note, with a BIG ol' grain of salt. And add your favorite dos and don'ts as well.

DO:

  1. Figure out your unique selling proposition
  2. Decide what Hamer stands for and then stick with it
  3. Remember the key of successful promotion: consistency and frequency, and the less the frequency the more you must focus on consistency
  4. Find an unmet need in the market and then response to that need. If you cannot respond to that need in a way that is clearly better than others, you should not be in business
  5. Make it crystal-clear to the buying prospect what you offer
  6. Arm your retailers with the knowledge needed to make the sale
  7. Give your retailers meaningful incentives to make the sale
  8. Follow through on promises
  9. Use endorsement deals wisely, and don't hide them away

DON'T:

  1. Rhyme with "Hammer." It confuses people.
  2. Confuse the prospect with overlapping product that share names and configurations but have different countries of origin, different price points, and different target markets. It confuses people.
  3. Try to be all things to all people. It confuses people.
  4. Make "Gibson copies" It confuses people.
  5. Make "Fender copies" It confuses people.
  6. Make (ugh) "PRS copies" It confuses people.
  7. Make shredders, then vintage-styled Fender copies, then wacky cartoon guitars, then understated high-bucks hollowbodies. It confuses people.
  8. Name your premium product the Standard, your plainest product the Special, the one with binding the Sunburst, some of them with car names, some with arcane numbers, and some with meaningless names such as Artist and Studio. It confuses people.
  9. Be a pricey boutique builder, a working-man's instrument builder and a mass-market builder at once unless you have the market penetration to have all segments represented at all times. When people hear about "Hammer's killer PRS copies" and pick up a Slammer in a Guitar Center...repeat after me... It confuses people.

It sucked to see such talents and history fall apart because by the time Hamer decided to be "vintage modern," that space was long since clogged in the market by others who were inspired by Hamer. I'm looking at my PRS as I type this, thinking that COULD have been Hamer's market.

</rant>

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That said.....boomerangs tend to return. Seagulls eventually shit all over you, even if you feed them.

So, perhaps, art will imitate life, if there is enough sand left in the hourglass.

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Good read, good points of discussion.

Not sure what to do about the name; if lunkheads out there pronounce it like the tool even though there's only one M in it, then I suppose selecting another name should have been considered as an option. But you run the risk with just about anything you'll pick that it'll be mispronounced, misunderstood (isn't Fender a car part?), what have you.

I agree that they probably should have stuck with the "modern vintage" ball that PRS picked up and ran with, but I'm not sure the timing would have made it sustainable. Hamer was in full bloom in the '80s, whereas PRS didn't really get massive traction until the end of that decade, when a return to traditional values began to set in. A more successful plan of attack for Hamer might have been to do the Ibanez thing: abandon the Gibson influence, embrace the shred era and go toe-to-toe with Jackson. No one can dispute that Hamer made some of the best shred guitars ever, which is why I often wonder whether they regret being so good at it (or at all the other niches they've delved into over the years).

In short, they were schizo, which is something out little group loves, but the marketplace clearly didn't.

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Name your premium product the Standard, your plainest product the Special, the one with binding the Sunburst, some of them with car names, some with arcane numbers, and some with meaningless names such as Artist and Studio. It confuses people.

Concur. This still bugs me.

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DON'T:

  1. Make shredders, then vintage-styled Fender copies, then wacky cartoon guitars, then understated high-bucks hollowbodies. It confuses people.

</rant>

Probably good advice, but I am grateful to have a shredder, Fender copy, and a high-buck hollowbody all of Hamer quality.

Also, how many of you immediately knew what </rant> meant - completely. As I did and it made me feel old and nerdy all at the same time.

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To clarify my post above, what I meant by "embrace" was "make it the company identity and stick with it" as Ibanez has done. Clearly Hamer embraced the shred era and kicked butt (or rocked hard, if you will).

And I'll once again flog the endorsement horse. Hamer was great at this in the '80s, but not balls-out great like Ibanez and Jackson (and later, PRS). When the word "hero" is often added to "guitar," you need to put your product in the hands of as many of those heroes as possible. At (almost) any cost.

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"Fender----A car part......."

Reminds me of when I posted a Fender Jaguar for sale and a heavily middle eastern accented man would not take no for an answer when I declined to sell him a classic sports car for $300 (not unreasonable price for a well used guitar in the 60s)

Another DO.....Distance yourself from Arm and Hamer Baking Soda.

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Part of the problem with the whipsaw following of market trends is that they should have kept at least one shredder when they switched to Fender-style, and kept the shredder and Fender-style when they switched to Modern Vintage.

Meaning, change the emphasis, not the whole line of the company with each change of intent regarding market niche.

Maybe another part of the problem was Hamer was following instead of leading?

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So what if someone decided Hamer was a dead brand, but hired 2-3 of the best former-Hamer artisans and started doing guitars that had the same build quality and any non-trademarked elements they could?

Would the Hamer Fan Club embrace them? Or is the "Hamer" name a prerequisite?

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Hamer fans didn't even embrace Hamers.

My short and uninformed opinion based only on my own patterns - except for the few truly devoted (thank you all), why would anyone buy a new Hamer when mint condition used ones came up often enough at less than half of the new price?

It takes a lot of new buyers to stay afloat, but we all know that already.

I once had the idea of a custom order, suffered from sticker shock and shelved it. I'm really glad there are people that supported the brand - I wasn't one of them though. :(

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To clarify my post above, what I meant by "embrace" was "make it the company identity and stick with it" as Ibanez has done. Clearly Hamer embraced the shred era and kicked butt (or rocked hard, if you will).

And I'll once again flog the endorsement horse. Hamer was great at this in the '80s, but not balls-out great like Ibanez and Jackson (and later, PRS). When the word "hero" is often added to "guitar," you need to put your product in the hands of as many of those heroes as possible. At (almost) any cost.

I just can't believe that THESE GUYS weren't selling the crap out of Hamers, back in '89

http://pointyguitar.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/ad-eddie-martinez-stevie-salas-jeff-thall-tommy-williams-for-hamer/

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why would anyone buy a new Hamer when mint condition used ones came up often enough at less than half of the new price?

You could say the same thing about Fender, Gibson and PRS, although the relative market price for used stuff versus new from those brands does seem to be a bit higher.

Why do people buy new cars when they know full well that they're worth a fraction of what they just borrowed the nanosecond they drive off the lot? Some people just prefer it.

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Good read, good points of discussion.

Not sure what to do about the name; if lunkheads out there pronounce it like the tool even though there's only one M in it, then I suppose selecting another name should have been considered as an option. But you run the risk with just about anything you'll pick that it'll be mispronounced, misunderstood (isn't Fender a car part?), what have you.

I agree that they probably should have stuck with the "modern vintage" ball that PRS picked up and ran with, but I'm not sure the timing would have made it sustainable. Hamer was in full bloom in the '80s, whereas PRS didn't really get massive traction until the end of that decade, when a return to traditional values began to set in. A more successful plan of attack for Hamer might have been to do the Ibanez thing: abandon the Gibson influence, embrace the shred era and go toe-to-toe with Jackson. No one can dispute that Hamer made some of the best shred guitars ever, which is why I often wonder whether they regret being so good at it (or at all the other niches they've delved into over the years).

In short, they were schizo, which is something out little group loves, but the marketplace clearly didn't.

Lunkhead number one here. One of my first posts I spelled it Hammer..you guys were gentle. Is the pronunciation different? Hey mer not hammer? I'm serious..

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To clarify my post above, what I meant by "embrace" was "make it the company identity and stick with it" as Ibanez has done. Clearly Hamer embraced the shred era and kicked butt (or rocked hard, if you will).

And I'll once again flog the endorsement horse. Hamer was great at this in the '80s, but not balls-out great like Ibanez and Jackson (and later, PRS). When the word "hero" is often added to "guitar," you need to put your product in the hands of as many of those heroes as possible. At (almost) any cost.

I just can't believe that THESE GUYS weren't selling the crap out of Hamers, back in '89

http://pointyguitar.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/ad-eddie-martinez-stevie-salas-jeff-thall-tommy-williams-for-hamer/

O.K. that's funny.

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why would anyone buy a new Hamer when mint condition used ones came up often enough at less than half of the new price?

You could say the same thing about Fender, Gibson and PRS, although the relative market price for used stuff versus new from those brands does seem to be a bit higher.

Why do people buy new cars when they know full well that they're worth a fraction of what they just borrowed the nanosecond they drive off the lot? Some people just prefer it.

I agree with this. I know that I am far from a typical customer so I tried to disclaim it a bit. I buy and sell like a madman and often buy for all the wrong reasons, but I figure I'm not alone on the used value hit worry. I could be though.

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Good read, good points of discussion.

Not sure what to do about the name; if lunkheads out there pronounce it like the tool even though there's only one M in it, then I suppose selecting another name should have been considered as an option. But you run the risk with just about anything you'll pick that it'll be mispronounced, misunderstood (isn't Fender a car part?), what have you.

I agree that they probably should have stuck with the "modern vintage" ball that PRS picked up and ran with, but I'm not sure the timing would have made it sustainable. Hamer was in full bloom in the '80s, whereas PRS didn't really get massive traction until the end of that decade, when a return to traditional values began to set in. A more successful plan of attack for Hamer might have been to do the Ibanez thing: abandon the Gibson influence, embrace the shred era and go toe-to-toe with Jackson. No one can dispute that Hamer made some of the best shred guitars ever, which is why I often wonder whether they regret being so good at it (or at all the other niches they've delved into over the years).

In short, they were schizo, which is something out little group loves, but the marketplace clearly didn't.

Lunkhead number one here. One of my first posts I spelled it Hammer..you guys were gentle. Is the pronunciation different? Hey mer not hammer? I'm serious..

That was the point of one of the "don'ts". Hamer screwed up by having a Hamer Slammer pickup and then introducing the Slammer by Hamer line.

Fame by Hamer would have been better.

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Yeah, I'm not going and buying any Heritage guitars.

But that is because my current impression is they just make nearly-exact LP clones. I'd prefer a Hagstrom SuperSwede for better cost/value ratio.

But if they make anything like a Centaura or Diablo, I might reconsider.

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The other reason people buy new is called H.P. to us (Store credit to you lot) and/or just credit in general.

Thats how my first decent guitar was bought, (thanks Mum) and I wanted a new one because I was a dumb kid who thought a shiny new one would be better in the same way a new car was better than an old one.

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It is pronounced HAY MURR

Got CRS can't remember shit...I did read that once and forgot.

And that reversed Special / Standard thing is odd.

Nathan, Heritage makes a bunch of other types other than LP style. Really the other stuff is their specialty. Semis, hollow bodies etc. They do make some nice LP types though. Good used deals, kind of like Hamer. My first guitar was a Hagstrom solid body around '71. Glad they are still alive and kicking, need to try one some day.

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