What the Customer Wants, The Customer Gets... Usually
Published On: 11-09-2011 04:36pm
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I get a lot of requests for custom designs on my guitar straps and I am generally happy to oblige as long as the design is not a copyrighted image. Guitar straps are one place where one is allowed to say something very personal about themselves without having to actually say anything at all. And, I am constantly amazed as what lurks beneath the persona of some of the musicians I work with. The death metal guy who wants a single red rose, the demure little folk singer who wants a "bouncing Betty" bomb. I absolutely adore the people I work with because they are such a constant and wonderful surprise.
One thing I will not do is make a strap I find personally offensive. I did have one customer who was an exotic dancer. She wanted a guitar strap for her boyfriend and I admit I was a little nervous about what she might ask for but, God bless her, she wanted a strap that had an octopus and a jeweled sabre. It isn't that the double entre was lost on me. It's that it was smartly subtle on her part, very clever. Pulling the imagery together and actually making the strap was so much fun that I even gave her a price break on it. It was a purely whimsical gesture but something I do from time to time just because somebody just hits me right.
The downside of custom designs is that often the buyer doesn't realize how expensive it can be. That's in part because anything handmade has been personally attended right down to the tiniest detail. I tend to over-engineer my straps and that is intentional. If you buy something from me, by golly, it's going to last. But, like I said, it's going to be costlier than a machine-made strap. One prospective buyer wanted a hand-sequinsed strap similar to U2's bass player's strap. It's a beautiful strap and it is an expensive strap. I cut the price for the customer by almost half, partly because I just really wanted to do that strap and partly because I knew he DIDN'T know what kind of cost he was looking at. Even at half price it was more than he could afford so the strap didn't get made (at least not yet... I may make one anyway). So, what the customer wants, the customer gets... usually. As an artisan, I get to say I will or won't make something. As a buyer, you get to say you will or won't buy something. All around, it's a pretty fair deal.
