Post #77873 by PucksFool on the US Policy board

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https://watchingtheherd.substack.com/p/fender-the-...

Amid all the other troubles of the world in 2026, a corporate battle over branding, pricing and manufacturing strategy in the realm of musical instruments barely registers as a blip on the radar, even with hundreds of millions of dollars involved. However, a legal skirmish between American instrument maker Fender and a Chinese firm no one has heard of named Yiwu Philharmonic Instruments (”Yiwu”) recently morphed into what can only be described as an insane, scorched earth, pre-emptive attack by Fender against a large portion of the entire guitar industry.

Analzying this case involving Fender is useful because the competitive wind shear triggering Fender’s altered flight plan affect any company operating globally while attempting to balance seemingly contradictory demands on its strategy:

balancing an iconic product history and traditionalism against a need to innovate
reducing labor costs while maintaining or raising quality
protecting legitimate intellectual property across hundreds of countries
adjusting product and selling strategies in a potentially shrinking global market
Fender’s recent actions also illustrate problems management teams routinely encounter learning from prior failures -- both internal failures and those of competitors. More broadly, Fender’s strategy decisions illustrate how firms expecting to leverage a long-standing brand and “legacy” to squeeze ever wider profit margins from its own dealers and customers can find that brand utterly destroyed worldwide nearly instantly, eliminating the very foundation of the firm’s poorly considered strategy and accelerating its decline. The errors recently committed by Fender aren’t unique to Fender in business history but they perfectly epitomize a pattern of management “own goals” characteristic of big corporations in general and American firms in particular. For that reason, Fender might be the quintessential American company right now. In every negative sense of the word.

https://youtu.be/0hLeQCnTGq8?si=aDWuU_re9dK7gmKc

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