Venture capitalist?

I received an e-mail stating that we have forgotten to update this blog, Facebook and Twitter. The person was absolutely right.  I have been lazy. However, I think I had a good reason:

During the last year we have been very busy in developing the product line and planning our future marketing. We made huge progress in the product line and I am now convinced that the concept works. The products we have developed are just as good as we hoped for. However, we realized that our process is far too slow for international market. In order to enter the international market convincingly we need to be able to create a much broader product range - and do it fast. Otherwise we will become just another butique brand.

We decided to look for investors so that our product development could work full time for new things. We even managed to convince Tekes. However, none of the venture capitalists we met.

It seems that manufacturing is not a sexy business. We would have to sell something for the internet. What bothers me the most is the common "finnish" thinking that we are no good in manufacturing and marketing. For decades finnish economy was based on traditional industry, paper, ship-building, wood industry and clothing industry that were based on government help - not on real competiveness. Every time we had problems in exports, the finnish mark was devaluated and the business was saved. Now those days are gone. it is time to do some re-thinking.

We decided to continue relying on organic growth. Hopefully we are able to convince potential investors. Seeing is believing or should I say hearing is believing.

Tauna Tuokkola

We met this wonderful lady at the Frankfurt music show. She works as a sales manager for TV Jones and guess what, she is half finnish! What a coincidence. I am sure we are going to do a lot of business in the future. We also met Tom, the man behind TV Jones and he gave us some valuable technical information on guitars and pickups. We joined the TV Jones pickup fan club....

Musik Messe experience

Back from the first trade show! Westend Guitars had a joint booth with another finnish brand called Kantare Guitars. Since I have no experience from previous music shows I cannot tell anything clever about where the music business is going. That much I can tell that the noise in electric guitar and drum section was terrible.

However, it only makes me more convinced that we have the right concept: Who the h... can play so loud at home? Most of the guitars did not sound much anything until the knobs of the amp were pointing south east. Luckily we were in the same hall with acoustic guitars that enabled us to present our guitars with our new Westend Tube 15 amp. Westend Deluxe Jazz with TV Classic pickups and the amp master volyme at 3-4 produced a sound to die for (without breaking the listeners ears). We also made an great discovery: Esa, the sales manager for Kantare guitars tried out this combination. He did not recognize himself as an electric guitar player but boy, did he produce a great sound with that guitar! He only played with his fingers but the sound was everything I had hoped for and then some. He only proved the old truth that the sound is in the players fingers. Yet, I want to say that the guitar and the amp had something to do with the sound.

Here some pictures on our booth.

New Specs for Jumbo

We changed the specs of Jumbo! After intesive testing of our Jumbo model, we finally decided to go for a 13 fret neck and a short 24,75" scale. Why? This configuration enabled us to move the bridge just a little towards the center of the lower bout. The improvement of the sound is incredible. Jumbo now excells in gentle fingerstyle play and we believe it is one of the best acoustic guitars at any price.

Kari Kasanen

Kari is the founder and senior partner of a Talent Partners consulting company. His guitar is the first production sample of Westend Deluxe Blues with Seymor Duncan humbuckers. Kari is a very nice and smart guy. No wonder he has successful company. This is what he wrote to us about himself:

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Jussi Lampela, jazz guitarist, composer

The man behind our first studio session is Mr. Jussi Lampela. Jussi has graduated from the jazz faculty of Helsinki Sibelius Academy as Master of Music, electric guitar. He has also studied in Musicians´s Institute in Los Angeles and Kungliga Musikhögskolan in Stockholm. Jussi has played in several jazz bands, made music for TV and has also toured with several artists. Today he spends most of his time composing music, making arrangements for larger productions and some teaching, too. Jussi is a co-founder and a partner of a music studio called "Neomusic", where we made our first recordings.

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Interested in buying a prototype?

During our product development process we keep getting different kinds of samples. In the end there are so many, that we need to get rid of them. If you are interested in buying a one off guitar that is one way or the other different from our regular models, pls. contact us. The prices are VERY attractive as we have no intention to make money on these prototype guitars.

Frankfurt Musik Messe 2010

If you intend to visit Frankfurt Musik Messe 2010, come and see us at our booth H92 in hall 3.1. We are there with another finnish company, Kantare by Liikanen guitars. Kantare guitars are classical guitars with very interesting internal structure. Worth checking! The booth is not big but is is a start of our international sales. 

Guitar playing and Flow experience

I received a great story today from friend of mine. Decided to share the story with you. Here goes:

We are born with five senses. They  say that women have the sixth sense also, but who knows. During our childhood and the entire life our brain collects millions of pieces of information from the world outside us during every second. This information is gathered and understood in the inner parts of our brain. We can enjoy and experience the world by tasting, smelling, feeling, seeing and hearing.

In a rare moment of Flow we are able to forget the outside world, focus only on what are doing and experience a great moment on peacefulness and emotion.  To most of us Flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a tasks.

Music has been in my life from the beginning. My father was an first class concert violinist in Viipuri ( St Petersburg ) . So probably I heard a lot of music already before I came to this real world. As young I was wild and sporty, so I was forced to attend  flute and music lessons in one the most valued schools in Finland, Tapiola School. Nominated Professor Erkki Pohjola as my music teacher. I did not have the talent of rare music virtuosos like many children in our school. But by hard work and training I grow up as a good and humble amateur musician.

My first instrument was and is flute, with 45 years of playing I consider myself as a good flutist. Few years ago I started to play piano, or Grand piano in fact,  which filled our living room. I hoped this would motivate our young son Jesper  to play music. I ended up training piano myself and my son having still more time in the golf courses.

Guitar came to my life four years ago. Already at school my wish had been to play guitar, so I thought finally my flow in music would come with guitar playing. My guitar hero was Mark Knopfler. Even with plenty of mathematical studies at the Technical university I was first shocked by the millions of variations and choices on how to play guitar.  I am on my road learning new every week. The great pleasure of life at this age is that you afford to have the best of equipment and toys. This also meant that my guitar has to be the best available. So I trusted my old school friend and holiday house neighbour Heikki Holvikari. Heikki’s Westend guitar makes my every guitar session an enjoyment and Flow experience.

Kari Kasanen

On the road to the secrects of guitar playing 

Raasepori 14.12.209

Social media

Yesterday evening I made a test to see how social media works. There is an internet site for music people in Finland called Muusikoiden.net. I put a announcement of birth of a new brand Westend Guitars on the discussion forum. For those who underestimate the power of social media: hit rate on our web pages made a huge jump from approx. average 50 page views to 1500 page views.