That’s what happens when you’re owned by the capital arm of a car company and listed as a turnaround investment. Servco is going to do what it can to squeeze every last drop even though they were a pretty good steward and partner for decades. They are also forcing high minimum buys for stores, leaving a bunch of Mom and Pop shops in the cold and trying to get you to buy direct because there’s more margin if you buy from fender directly instead of guitar center.

They also rebranded Studio One to try to create the whole ass fender ecosystem, launched a big ass flagship store in Japan, and are bringing Pac-Man and Godzilla to the electric guitar world (who was asking for that exactly?).

It’s the PE playbook without the PE name. Eventually they’ll sell the goodwill fender built, saddle it with piles of debt, bankruptcy, and someone else will pick it up. I think fender is too valuable a name to let rot but I would have said the same thing about RCA so what the hell do I know?