Not good what I'm hearing. I was at a different shop today, one where the owner has so far held all the rumors surrounding Gibson to be "sour grape gossip from dealers disappointed with Gibson's lack of support in recent times". He looked concerned this time (he sells a lot of Custom Shop models) and said:
1. He's heard from a Gibson source that Gibson will not have a booth at Winter NAMM
(only at Summer NAMM and the Frankfurt Fair) and was genuinely shocked about that. A press statement regarding this and explaining it as a cost cutting measure is supposed to be imminent.
2. Chinese producers, Schaller (for hardware) and German wood wholesale companies (apparently, the majority of wood used by Epi has been bought from German wood wholesale companies for years, even the stuff used in Asia) have all stopped making deliveries to Epi for unpaid bills. (He laughed when I said that Epi has perhaps been less than honest about wood species in the past and said: "They claim their Les Pauls to be mahogany, fact is the last mahogany Epi LP I saw new from the factory was 12 years ago!")
3. Apparently, the core business - Gibson and Gibson Custom Shop - is sound and making money, but all the other brands aren't. A typical corporate scenario where you buy loss-making companies cheap in hope of turning them profitable and then marvel years or even decades later that they are still making losses. (See GM's Saab investment which never since the acquisiton decades ago earned one cent for the group.)
