Generation of family ownership: Sixth
Company revenue for 2007: $90 million
Number of employees: 650
Years with the company: 35
First job at the company: Boxing guitar strings
At what age? As a young pre-teen
Best thing about this job: We have the advantage of making the best of its kind—not a copy or commodity. We're the world standard for acoustic guitars—and it's a high standard. I took some guitar lessons when I was a teenager, but I never practiced. I leave it up to the people who know what they're doing. When people express surprise that I don't play, I usually ask them this: Can you make a guitar? I can!
One of my greatest successes: When I took over the business, we were in relatively dire straits. At best, we were breaking even, and for several years we had lost money. My greatest success was in realizing that I couldn't fix the business alone. So I created an environment to reward all of my co-workers. We instituted profit sharing, and I learned the advantages of participatory management. With a lot of effort, we were able to institute continuous improvement with the involvement of all of our workforce. We're now five times larger than when I took over. I believe you can accomplish more with a bunch of people than alone.
My mentor: My father was a businessman and not very interested in the craft of guitar building, and I didn't see too much of him after my parents' divorce. My grandfather, on the other hand, was a great guitar builder, and he took an interest in me. He saw potential for me to be the next generation of Martins running the business. We had a lot of conversations about quality, about running a family business. He helped me understand the Martin family position relative to the guitar.
Best advice I received: My grandfather believed that you can only do one thing really well, and that's what we do. I had watched my father take some flyers, moving us into the drum business, the banjo business and even some businesses outside of music. These efforts just didn't succeed. I think our competitors would like to see us branch out again, perhaps take our attention from our core business. That's not going to happen again.
Line from our mission statement: When we wrote the statement, I wanted to make sure that we acknowledged that we wanted to be profitable—that's standard, and not original, but we had years when we weren't profitable. And there was also that hippie-feeling that maybe we should just give away our guitars. So our mission statement talks about being relatively profitable through judicious risk taking. I emphasize judicious. Because of our long heritage, we can't just take a risk for the sake of taking a risk.
Best thing about working in a family business: We're not publicly held, so we can make decisions in the best interests of all of our stakeholders. Public companies err on the side of the outside shareholder, and I don't have that pressure. I have shareholders, but we can talk about how to balance the short term and the long term, and how to preserve and grow our legacy.
Worst thing about working in a family business: I'm currently the only family member in the business. Other family company owners may be jealous of that, since I have no one to argue with. But I also have no one to talk to who fully understands what running this company is all about. I miss the opportunity to close the door and kick things around with family members. Martin is still a family held-business. Will it be in 20 years? My daughter, Claire Frances, is three years old. She comes into the office with me often, and she carries the C.F. Martin name. But she may not want to be a guitar builder. I'm going to tell her: Claire, if you just want to be chairman, that would be OK. She'll have the opportunity to make a decision of whether or not she wants to be the majority shareholder.
Words I live by: These paraphrase a good friend of mine, Larry Seifel, who passed away a year ago. (He was our master inlayer.) “Those of us who make guitars are the arms dealers for the peace movement.”
— As told to David Shaw