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A bad Christmas present turned out to be one of the best
things ever given to Bruce Weber. |
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It was in 1996, when the Gibson guitar company announced it was
moving its Flatiron mandolin division from Belgrade to Nashville,
Tenn. Weber, 40, was then manager of the 32 employee plant, and was
offered the same position in Tennessee. |
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But Weber decided against Nashville, even after he flew there to
help Gibson set up the new factory. He and five other key employees
accompanying him decided they wanted to stay in Montana, and came back
here without jobs. |
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"We decided it wasn't for us and we came home," Weber said. "It was
one of the hardest times of my life." |
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Flash ahead three years, and how times have changed. Weber is now
the owner of Sound To Earth, makers of hand crafted stringed
instruments. He employs eight other people, three of whom worked at
Flatiron, in his new Belgrade shop. Even Weber's wife and business
partner, Mary, works as a detailer in the shop. His last name is
beautifully inscribed on the tailpiece of each instrument he makes,
and the Weber name is becoming synonymous with quality. |
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"I have the cream of the crop in mandolin makers in the country,"
Weber said. |
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Before moving to Bozeman in 1982 to manage the local Army-Navy
store, Weber dabbled in woodworking and pottery. He wandered into
Flatiron one day looking for strings for his mandolin. He didn't even
know Flatiron was based here, but once inside, he knew he had to work
there. |
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"The aesthetics drew me into mandolins," he said. "It epitomizes
the beauty of stringed instruments." |
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When Gibson, which bought the Flatiron name and company from owner
Steve Carlson in 1987, relocated the mandolin division to Nashville,
Weber said it changed the market for the instruments. (Gibson also
relocated its dobro--an acoustic guitar with a metal resonator usually
played on the lap--facility from California, forming a "bluegrass
division"). The consolidation enabled other manufacturers to start up
while Gibson was building its facility. |
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"The market really opened up when Flatiron moved," said Weber. "It
(Gibson) lost a lot." |
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Ren Ferguson, who worked at Flatiron with Weber and is now the
master luthier -- a maker of stringed instruments -- at Gibson
Guitar's Montana division, said he was "absolutely floored" when
Gibson pulled out but understood why the company did so. |
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"It was a financial decision, a dollars and cents issue," said
Ferguson. "It had nothing to do with Bruce's ability to manage. It
just wasn't profitable." |
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He also acknowledged that the number of mandolin makers has
skyrocketed since then. |
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"Where there was one giant, now there are probably three dozen," he
said. "And Bruce's is one of the larger." |
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Ferguson referred other questions to Gibson's Nashville
headquarters, but attempts to reach a spokesman Friday were
unsucessful. |
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Gibson's loss was Weber's gain, essentially, when Sound To Earth
was started. Weber's reputation as a craftsman was already growing,
and the fact that he was keeping his facility in Montana, as well as
some of the same employees, sat well with potential buyers. |
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With some help from First Security Bank and a Block Development
Grant from the city of Belgrade, Weber was able to finance the start
of the company. |
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"I walked in the bank with orders (for mandolins) in hand," he
said. "We had a good product and a great reputation." |
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The company did about $300,000 worth of business in its first year,
1997. Last year was even better, at around $500,000, and Weber hopes
to hit $750,000 in 1999. About 600 instruments, which sell from $800
to more than $5,000, are made per year. |
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"The response has been tremendous," said sales and marketing
manager Paula Lewis, who has worked with Weber for more than eight
years. "We've taken what we did best at Flatiron and improved on it
here." |
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What that includes, said Lewis, is customer service. The company
provides lifetime warranties on every mandolin, mandola (a larger
mandolin) and bazouki (a still larger, eight or ten stringed
instrument) it turns out. |
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"We're a smaller shop, with much more personal interaction," said
Lewis, adding that dealers were eager to continue working with Sound
To Earth because of Flatiron's good reputation. "We're very attentive
to the needs of the dealer and player." |
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The Sound To Earth shop looks more like an art studio than a
production facility. Each employee has their own work station, covered
in sawdust and surrounded by intricate tools. With the exception of a
computer-guided machine that carves logos and other things, almost
everything is done by hand. |
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When the wood arrives -- spruce, mahogany and maple-- "it looks
like firewood," Weber said. It sits on a shelf and ages until the
moisture content is just right. Each employee works on a specific part
of the instrument until it is finished, put in a hardshell case and
shipped off. |
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"It's the little details that make the instrument special," said
Weber. "We try to make it unique." |
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One of the benefits of having a smaller shop is this attention to
detail, said employee Joe Schneider, who works on the necks and
tailpieces of the instruments. |
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"If there's a glitch in production, you just have to walk around
the corner," Schneider said. |
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Another benefit is not having a major corporation dictating what
can and can't be done, said Schneider, one the employees Weber kept
after Flatiron left. He said at Gibson, "tradition dictates," and the
company was hesitant of any structural changes to the instruments. |
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"(Here), the quality goes up because we have the freedom to do what
we want," he said. |
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An example is a new ebony bridge that Sound To Earth engineer Vern
Brekke recently developed. The same bridge design developed by Gibson
has been used since the 1920s, said Weber, one that uses two small
brass screws to adjust string tension. But the new bridge (dubbed the
Brekke Bridge, with a patent pending), is made without the screws,
instead using ebony wedges that Brekke said makes adjusting string
tension easier and allows better "tonal transmission" from the
strings. |
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"Bruce is very willing to try new things," said Brekke, another
former Flatiron employee. "Gibson tended to do what is traditional." |
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The bridge is revolutionizing the industry, Weber said, and Sound
To Earth is starting to let other manufacturers use it as well. Weber
said a new tailpiece design is also in the works. |
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Looking toward the future, Weber said he hopes to add six employees
by the end of this year, and soon plans to begin production of his own
line of guitars. He also wants to open a luthier school in the next
few years teaching people the art of mandolin-making. |
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Sales are going well, as the instruments have global appeal, and
about 50 dealers are in place. |
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"This year the international market has taken off for us," he said,
noting that Weber mandolins have been shipped to Japan, New Zealand
and Switzerland. |
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Weber wants to keep the small shop's attention to customer and
employee satisfaction intact no matter how big it gets. |
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"We don't want to get too big," he said. "When you get too large,
you lose something." |
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Most of all, Weber just wants to keep making music with his hands. |
| "What more
could you ask for?" he said. "We're building mandolins in Montana." |
