> Register
> Lost password?

Forum

Back

Groups » The Woodshed » Introducing the Flaxwood team: Kim Lerche, marketing manager

STARTER MESSAGE

03.04.2007, 00:37

kimmunist

NAME: Kim Lerche
TURF: Marketing Manager

Je suis Kim Lerche, my title is marketing manager at Flaxwood.
I am proud to see our new site finally living up to what we have envisioned for some time now, thanks Jussi !
Now, let me introduce myself, and tell you a little bit about our company. It's a rather long story, so get yourself a cup of coffee, and light up a particularly slow-burning Marlboro.

Born 5.6.1962 in Bangkok Thailand, I grew up mainly in Italy (I consider Rome my hometown, FORZA ROMA!), as well as in Asia, Pakistan and Bhutan more precisely. I moved to Finland at the age of 24, when I got called in to do my military service.

Music.
Music has always been around in the family. My mother was a music teacher by profession (memories of Bach and the French impressionists being played on our piano), my father an accomplished jazz pianist (memories of jazz standards, bossa nova played on the same piano my mother just finished playing). It doesn't end here; my grandfather, Nils Lerche, was a renown composer in his day, directing his own musicals and operettas in theatres around Scandinavia, and for some time now my older brother has been one of Finland's better guitarists (check him out at pauliinalerche.com Incidentally, I've been reading my brothers guitar magazines since I was in my early teens, which (I realised only too late...) set my life on a path of perversion from which I have never been able to fully recover. Anyway, so much for background an musical legacy.

I'm actually a song-writer KEYBOARD player myself (in a guitar company ? Heresy !), and music has always been a driving passion throughout my life. My musical skills however fell well short of what was needed when I aspired to professionalism, and thus....I am reduced to wandering around the world peddling electric guitars....and I LOVE IT !

Before getting involved with Flaxwood, I have worked as an art gallerist (which was good fun), in various import-export operations, as well as more extensively in international sales and marketing. I think the combination of musical sensitivity, and my experience building international distribution networks, were what got me this dream job.

Why is this a dream job for me ?
The product is of the very highest quality, both in its technology as in its craftsmanship; it incorporates status-quo challenging technical innovation and vision, yet it is respectful of tradition; it looks great....so sleek, contoured, and it feels silky to the touch; and of course, it sounds...well the way a FW sounds; and last but not least, you guitarists who have played it, tell me it is really, really good to play. It is also a politically correct instrument; the raw material is nothing short of a revolutionary solution to the challenge of preserving endangered tonewoods for future generations (read the international CITES agreements which are now actually beginning to be honoured by some countries); technology at the service of preservation, WITHOUT qualitative compromise, no small achievement. Then there's the people: dealing with luthiers, musicians, even all the (often failed) musicians like myself who seem to have drifted into the musical instrument industry, they're good people, AND I don't need to wear a tie.

As a marketing man I can see the potential in this guitar and company is huge.
Even a really battle-hardened guitar industry veteran at the Austin summer NAMM told me "Kim, I think you guys may just be on to something truly important. Just make sure you don't fuck it up". I agree fully with this person's assessment, spooky scenario included, and I feel the weight of responsibility to avoid "fucking it up".

In my short time at Flaxwood so far, there is one accomplishment I am particularly proud of:
the people I have been lucky enough to meet and pull into working on this project. This is not the Oscars, so I won't start listing the people here, but there are good folks involved here, and I think that with their contribution we have a good chance to avoid "fucking it up", and I'll go further: by successfully providing you guitarists with instruments that set your fingers and souls on fire, I think we can all look forward to going to very interesting places, meeting strange new peoples in lands distant and close, hearing great music, and having the pleasure to work hard on a great product, and feel rewarded for it !

Before closing, one request: please try our guitars.
This is, after all, all about the instrument; we can talk 'til the cows come home, but at the end of the day it is the guitar that talks loudest, so, with the risk of sounding obnoxious, I will (mis)quote F Zappa: "shut up, and play OUR guitar !".

Oh, by the way, we're doing great.
Our biggest challenge right now is to raise our production capacity to meet a steeply growing international demand, without compromising our quality. We have good people, we can do it. In fact we produced more guitars in the last two months than we produced in all of 2006 (which maybe says more about how few guitars we produced last year...;-))
This is so gooood.......thanks y'all !

Always at your service, over and out,

Kim
marketing manager
- kimmunist

REPLIES

Back