NETAAC Success Stories
Success Story #5:
Pantheon/Bourgeois Guitars
NETAAC Qualification
Bourgeois Guitars of Lewiston, ME is a small, niche company that produces high-end acoustic guitars. Meticulously hand-crafted in low quantities to ensure uncompromising quality, the guitars offer customers “aware of the brand” both tonal and visual excellence.
A few years back sales started to fade as musical instrument dealers worldwide were inundated with marketing for mass-produced, foreign-made guitars that delivered lesser quality, but were cheaper to purchase.
NETAAC Assistance
A NETAAC review concluded that assistance was warranted to improve Bourgeois Guitars’ branding and marketing so that the superior quality they offer would be effectively communicated to both dealers and guitar-buying musicians. Initially, Bourgeois Guitars applied for and received a 30k grant—allowing them to begin the process of re-branding and marketing. This included creating a new, responsive website that greatly improved ability to represent the brand through a variety of digital channels, enhanced imagery, and detailed information. Incredible success from that investment lead to a subsequent and much larger Grant being awarded to Bourgeois in 2015.
“NETAAC assistance was absolutely critical in saving, and then transforming our company... and the consulting package which was cost-shared by NETAAC ultimately leading to my engagement as CEO. With NETAAC assistance we were also able to engage the expertise of an Online Marketing Manager, Branding Consultant, Graphics Consultant, and a Website Consultant.
Today, our website is able to supply dealers with photos and details of every guitar we offer in advance—resulting in the pre-selling of stock, increased inventory turn-around, and decreased time to sale. In a world dominated with larger $100 million companies, we are proud that a Bourgeois Guitar was played by Sawyer Fredericks as he won one of the nations most popular televised singing competitions!
Regarding the application process, The folks at NETAAC did everything in their power to make the procedure as easy as possible. They have been a joy to work with and I cannot thank them enough for all of their assistance. Our business is on solid ground, has grown its sales—domestic and international, much of which is directly attributable to NETAAC cost shared projects!”
