There's a very interesting story about Epiphone in the current edition of British guitar mag 'Guitar & Bass Magazine.' It's about the history but also about present Epiphones. Also an interview with Jim Rosenberg.
In short Jim tells us that a in the nineties, Epiphone were just a sub brand making Gibson clones. Containers of bad instruments came to the US, a lot of guitars weren't passing quality control, so they had loads of bad instruments and nobody knew what to do with it. Rosenberg started to make Epiphone like a real brand and he started with having an office in the far east, checking factories, checking quality control. They made a lot of improvements, but the bad thing was that those factories also built guitars with other brand names and they used the improvement for the 'competiting brands' too. After a while Epi started some own factories. Jim's very proud of the new Epiphones (Wilshire and so) and they really used Lennon's old Casino to make the reissue.
At the moment they also have their own R&D and PR people.
