Ovation Plants Reopening

Good news and a good background story about Ovation guitars; http://www.courant.com/business/hc-ovation-guitars-reopening-new-hartford-20150830-story.html

I'm getting a paid subscription requirement to read the story.

Got a Cliff Notes version for us?

Yeah....I had the same problem at first. I finally did a back door...searched for (news) 'Ovation reopening plants' and that got me into the story.

Part 1:

August 30, 2015, 7:39 AM




NEW HARTFORD — Darren Wallace's co-workers thought he was foolish, spending hundreds of hours of his own time, early mornings and Saturdays, mucking around at the Ovation Guitars plant that closed in the summer of 2014..

He thought if the factory looked like it wouldn't take much effort to restart, a future owner might return to make musical instruments there.

"I live really close to here and didn't want to give up," said Wallace, who has worked with Ovation for more than 20 years under three corporate owners.

After the plant closed, he worked in sales and marketing for the brand, which kept its Asia production.

"Man, you're wasting your time," he recalls his colleagues at KMC Music saying. "It's not going to happen."

But, against the odds, it did. Last winter, a California company bought the Ovation brand, liked what it saw in Connecticut, and decided to re-open the factory, with Wallace in charge.

"Thank God, [the naysayers] were wrong," said John Budny, who started working for Ovation in 1973 and was one of the handful who wasn't laid off last year.

This week, Wallace re-hired two men who worked at the factory. Along with Budny and two others who had stayed on to do repairs, the crew will start turning out new guitars in just a few weeks.

The story of factories leaving Connecticut because products can be made more cheaply elsewhere began more than 100 years ago. In fact, the Greenwoods Co., which built the complex where Ovation operates, left New Hartford in 1901 for Alabama, where it could make heavy cotton for ship sails, mailbags and tents more cheaply and with fewer restrictions on child labor.

Reborn factories are far more rare, although New Hartford is home to another, Hitchcock Furniture, which was revived twice, in 1946 and 2011.

Ovation Guitars was founded in 1966 by Charlie Kaman, more famous as a helicopter pioneer. The plant had been in New Hartford for 47 years and was owned by Kaman Corp. until Fender bought Kaman Music in 2007.

Weeks after the factory closed, Wallace tried to tag machines that Ovation would need if it ever re-started in New Hartford. But that didn't stop the company from selling them at auction.

Roughly 80 percent to 90 percent of the equipment was sold off after the closure, between machines going to Córdoba Guitars' factory in Oxnard, Calif., and a later auction. Córdoba bought the Guild guitars line from Fender.

After that, Wallace and the repair guys who were still in the plant started moving machines from what he called "random piles" and arranging them in what looked like a production line.

Even though there was no announcement, he expected Fender Musical Instruments Co. to sell Ovation.




Sure enough, Oxnard, Calif.-based Drum Workshop bought five drum brands and Ovation from Fender in December.

On Jan. 9, CEO Chris Lombardi came out to see what there was at New Hartford. Lombardi had told a trade publication that he thought whatever equipment and tooling were left would be packed up in boxcars.

"His intention was to move it to Oxnard," Wallace said — most likely contracting with Córdoba to make Ovation guitars, mandolins and ukuleles.

But, Lombardi told the trade publication, once he saw the equipment laid out and met the local staff, "the decision was easy."

When asked about how seeing the line swayed Lombardi from the thought of moving production to California, John Bagan, chief operating officer of Drum Workshop, said, "We never even considered that."

Wallace recalled, "They stayed here till probably 8 o'clock that night," and he started feeling like the CEO was considering re-opening the plant.



"But, really, until we finally signed the lease June 30th, we weren't 100 percent sure it was going to happen."

Part 2 of 2:

Ovation guitars have wood tops, and round backs made of fiberglass composite — developed from Kaman's expertise in composites, used in helicopter rotors. Charlie Kaman was also a gifted guitarist who turned down an invitation to play with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra.

Glen Campbell was an early endorser of Ovations, and Carly Simon, Melissa Etheridge, and many other musicians have relied on Ovation guitars.

"One of the things about Ovation that a lot of great players appreciate is that the notes are balanced all the way up the fret," Wallace said.

Bill Xavier, head of sales of Ovation, said when Bon Jovi's lead guitarist played a custom, double-neck Ovation on an MTV awards show, it inspired the MTV Unplugged series and caused a spike in sales.

Xavier, who did sales work for Ovation guitars decades ago, said it means so much to him that New Hartford is running again. "There's people in that building that felt like they didn't finish what they started," he said, and now they'll be able to."

Wallace used to be a full-time musician in a Cajun band, Filé, and met the woman who is now his wife at a Hartford show. She followed him to Louisiana, but wanted to return to her home state.

Although he's a fiddler, he had been hand-building guitars in Louisiana, and when they moved to Connecticut, he applied to Ovation in 1993.

Wallace still plays fiddle in a Cajun band, called Jesse Lege and Cajun Brew. "A couple of weeks ago, I played the Falcon Ridge folk festival," he said.

Since the news got out last month that the plant had reopened, he said, "I'm getting hammered by people wanting jobs, and I can only hire two" more.

Many of the people who were laid off have found new jobs — as furniture makers or machinists — but Wallace said he's heard from more than a dozen, all re-employed, who want to come back to Ovation.

In Connecticut, they'll build some 50th-anniversary limited edition guitars and some Adamas guitars, which have carbon graphite tops; other models are yet to be determined. They'll also continue to do repairs.

In the last year before the plant closed, the crew of 47 was generally making 14 guitars a day, but most were Guild or Fender; only one or two were Ovation. Though production will be low in New Hartford, it still will be higher than two guitars a day. Full production will start in October.

Ovation has an active fan club — there have been 600,000 unique visitors to that fan club's website — and there used to be factory tours. Wallace said those tours would draw 40 to 60, some from Japan and Europe, and included a small banquet.

He hopes those restart. "We may be able to tie that in with the restaurant next door," he said.

The Parrott Delaney Tavern, which opened just two months ago, is in the old Greenwoods mill. Wallace said that building, the oldest in the historic brick complex, is said to date to the 1860s. The restaurant is where Ovation's engineering department used to work, and the sports bar is the old conference room.

Ovation used to rent 80,000 square feet of space at the building, which is owned by the family that owns the Hurley Manufacturing Co., a spring maker. Now Ovation occupies just under 18,000 square feet.

Hurley refurbished some of the space in the same building as the tavern, making glossy-wood-floored artists' studios, flooded with natural light from the tall windows.

Two of the men laid off from Ovation did the construction work this winter.

The company started making guitars in South Korea in the 1980s, and it also has factories in China and Indonesia. Budny said those guitars use lower-cost materials. "They're not bad guitars for the money," he said. The imported guitars tend to cost $500 to $800. The American-made Ovations cost $3,500 to $5,000, and have ebony or walnut frets, decorative inlays and sometimes wood with elaborate grain patterns, such as figured maple.

The fiberglass shells are made in Ohio, and Xavier said that factory will begin making the backs for all the guitars, even those assembled in Asia.

In all, a guitar takes 15 to 25 man-hours over two to four weeks, because of glue curing time.

"You want a lower price offering for customers that can't afford the more expensive stuff," Budny said, and the U.S. product can be "something to aspire to."

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