Fender Guitar Lessons

I caught this little tidbit on Fender’s future plans from a recent Forbes article:

Most ambitious, perhaps, is Fender”™s plan to launch a subscription-based guitar learning system in late spring which will include 500 hours of theory and guitar practice content for any device, priced at $19.99 per month. Says Mooney: “When we looked at the overall market, what”™s interesting is the lessons side of the business is roughly double the size of the sale of new instrument business. You couple that with the fact that 90% of guitarists abandon the instrument in the first few months, if not the first year at the latest. We felt there was a commercial opportunity to develop the brand in the digital learning space because clearly the trends in learning are heading towards digital, as are many other parts of life.”

Mooney? Oh, yes. I remember now. Fender hired Andy Mooney as CEO back in 2015.

He had spent 20 years with Nike where he ultimately rose to the senior ranks as chief marketing officer and head of Nike’s global apparel organization. In 2000, he was made chairman of Disney Consumer Products. He left Disney in 2011 and had a bit of a mixed experience with Quiksilver. Well, to put it in clearer language, he was fired from Quiksilver. Something about the stock falling from $9 to $2 under his leadership.

And now, he is the CEO of Fender. I think the Edge sits on the board of the company as well. Fender is privately owned so it is a bit hard to peer into the corporate side of the business.

I love my Fender guitars. I hope Mooney takes good care of the company. He has about 50 Fender guitars so he must like the brand.