UPPER NAZARETH TWP., Pa. — Guitar manufacturer C.F. Martin and Co. cut the ribbon Tuesday on a new “custom shop experience center” in its Upper Nazareth headquarters, part of a push to build and sell more of its top-of-the-line instruments.
Demand for Martin’s custom shop instruments — premium guitars made to the specifications of Martin dealers, its customers or musicians — has steadily grown for years. The company currently sells “thousands” per year, Chief Executive Officer Thomas Ripsam said.
“We wanted to do more. We wanted to improve the experience,” Ripsam said. “That's what this is all about.”
With the new space, “we’re not running around the factory all the time to find stuff. It’s here.”Martin Guitar Executive Chairman C.F. Martin IV
To respond to growing demand, the company reconfigured part of its factory dedicated to custom shop guitars, boosting production by “double-digit units” per week, he said.
Martin Guitar also turned some office space above the company’s museum into a pair of acoustically treated, comfortably furnished rooms where customers can choose from samples of exotic tone woods, see inlay options or try out different body styles.
The new center will not be open to the general public. Instead, it mainly will cater to Martin Guitar dealers and distributors looking to order custom models for their stores; they typically buy 10 to 90 custom guitars at a time.
“Before, for those people, there was no quiet place to go," Martin Executive Chairman C.F. Martin IV said.
"We’d bring you down on the [factory] floor, we’d show you some stuff — we'd open up a book and show you some pictures, or we’d run around and grab some inlay.”
With the new space, “we’re not running around the factory all the time to find stuff,” Martin said. “It’s here.”
Laid back and refined
In the new center, individual customers work with a dealer to place a custom order and may be able to arrange a visit through the dealer with whom they have partnered.
“We wanted to create a space that's warm and comfortable, where people are relaxed and inspired, but where they literally can go through the whole process all the way from getting inspired to ordering a spec’d and designed guitar."Thomas Ripsam
One larger room, lined with previous custom shop creations, lets someone test a guitar in a more reverberant environment. The second, smaller room is treated to dampen reverb and keep out outside noise.
Both are designed to feel simultaneously laid-back and refined.
“We wanted to create a space that's warm and comfortable, where people are relaxed and inspired, but where they literally can go through the whole process all the way from getting inspired to ordering a spec’d and designed guitar,” Ripsam said.
Critically, Martin said, the center’s two rooms are kept precisely the same temperature and humidity as the production floor. That way, the guitars’ wooden parts won't expand or contract between the time they are built and when put on display.
“Once you take the guitar out of that climate-controlled environment, it can move around and not always in a good way,” he said.
“I want to be able to say to our dealers and distributors, ‘This is the kind of environment you really should have for your Martin Guitar display room.’”
