Access Backstage Pass
When Guitar Center announced that it’s well on its way to launching its own in-house guitar brand, CEO Gabe Dalporto admitted, “We are about to do something insane.”
The forthcoming brand’s unique selling point? Asking customers and gearheads to share their designs and feedback, even going as far as to set up a fresh sub-Reddit, r/GuitarLab, for the experiment.
Some commentators, however, have gone on to criticize a company as big and established as Guitar Center for seemingly using fans’ ideas without any financial compensation – especially for a project that will definitely be monetized in the future.
From its end, Guitar Center preempted this conflict by including a legal statement in its TikTok video that clearly states that, by submitting “your idea, design, suggestion or feedback… you assign, transfer, give and relinquish to Guitar Center all right, title and interest in and to the Idea or any material based upon or derived therefrom for no consideration,” and, most importantly, “without any payment or attribution obligation of any kind.”
Now, Dalporto is tackling these criticisms head on and explaining Guitar Center's position on the matter, as well as why the team decided to reach out directly to its customer base before launching a brand-new product.
“Please, if you don’t want to contribute to this product, then don’t participate,” he says of the T&Cs furore. “Nobody is forcing anyone to contribute anything, and we very transparently posted that anything they contribute is voluntary, and we may actually listen to them and use their suggestion.”
He continues, “Beyond that, would you rather we didn’t listen to customers? That we just hide in our offices and listen to some corporate shirts pontificate on pickup choices and make uninformed decisions in the pursuit of mediocrity?”
Instead of opting for what he calls “a lousy way to build an instrument,” Dalporto states that the team “decided to do something novel. Listen to customers and have a two-way conversation with them. And give them exactly what they want.”
Guitar World’s full interview with the CEO will be published in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, Guitar Center has appointed Reverb founder David Kalt to its Board of Directors as an independent member – a move that continues to reflect the ongoing changes spearheaded by Dalporto.
