Five Minutes With

TAYLOR BUCK

Marketing Director, Cordoba Music Group

By Brian Berk

Cordoba Music Group (CMG) is a manufacturer and distributor of acoustic and electric guitars, ukuleles and musical instrument accessories. Its brands include Cordoba Guitars, Guild Guitars, HumiCase and DeArmond, which are globally distributed. Other CMG brands include Savarez and Aquila strings, of which CMG acts as primary importer and U.S. distributor to retail stores. The company’s corporate headquarters are located in Santa Monica, Calif., and distribution and manufacturing facilities are located in Oxnard, Calif. Joining us is CMG marketing director Taylor Buck to talk to us about the company and the MI industry, plus more.

The Music & Sound Retailer: Please tell us about everything CMG does and the brands it is responsible for.

Taylor Buck: Cordoba Music Group is the parent company, and it oversees Cordoba Guitars, Guild Guitars and DeArmond, the pickup brand. We distribute brands as well: Savarez and Aquila. Cordoba is the largest nylon string manufacturer in the world. We have a big global presence. Guild has been around for decades, [since] 1953. We took on that brand in 2014 from Fender. A mission of ours has been to get that brand on track as a brand that everyone knows and loves. It has been fun getting that brand going again. We are at the Oxnard headquarters, where we build the USA guitars. So, we see the guitars every day.

My role here is as marketing director. I oversee all the brands on a global level. I work with the European teams and distributors throughout the world. I joined here in 2019.

The Retailer: Can you tell us more about your background and why you joined CMG in 2019?

Buck: I have been in the music industry for a while. After completing school, I started working for Musician’s Friend as a designer. I became the art director there and took over the creative direction for the company. In 2011, Guitar Center merged with Musician’s Friend and moved the facilities to Westlake Village, Calif., where its headquarters are now. I was offered the opportunity to go to Westlake Village. I was overseeing the Musician’s Friend brand there as the creative director for years. I became creative director at Guitar Center up until 2018. I moved to Live Nation Entertainment, overseeing creative branding. That was a nice jump into a similar industry, but more on an entertainment level.

After a year, I had this opportunity to come to Cordoba, which I had been in a contact with a bit. I had worked to promote its instruments at Guitar Center for years. I really got into [CMG’s] branding. My background is visual creative branding. I remember

back in 2007 when I was at Musician’s Friend, seeing the Cordoba branding, and how it was separating itself as this lifestyle company. I was always drawn to it, and this position came up to oversee all the brands. I reached out to them, and I connected with Tim Miklaucic, the CEO, and John Thomas, president of CMG, and we had a great conversation. They brought me onboard, and now I am overseeing the marketing department, and we are building a team here.

The Retailer: You mentioned rebuilding Guild. It is certainly a well-known name. But we have seen MI brands rebuilt successfully, and others not so successfully. So, what were your top priorities when you set forth to rebuild Guild?

Buck: For some people, starting to build a brand is hard to do in an industry this big with so many key players. So, it is a bit daunting. You have a legacy brand like Guild, that at one point was one of the top three acoustic makers in the world that everyone was playing through the ‘70s and ‘80s. If you were trying to build a new brand now, it would be difficult. But because there is so much legacy to tie into this brand, for me it is about connecting the dots the right way. Guild are some of the best-crafted guitars in the world. There is a reverence there. When people think about the best-built guitars, they think of Guild. For me, I look at a brand that has been around for a long time and has a great legacy to tap into with an artist roster of most any name you can imagine. How do you get that back into the spotlight again?

For us, we wanted to make sure we were still making guitars as good or better than they did back [in the ‘70s and ‘80s]. That took us a few years to get to. We moved so much of the factory machinery over here and had to get that working again with all the right people in place. We needed to make sure everything was carefully crafted and built to the Guild name and specs. We needed to make sure we were confident releasing the product. That took some time to do. We set up that process in 2014. We are confident now that we are making some of the best guitars Guild ever created. We wanted to make sure we were at that point before opening Guild to the doors of the world. We are absolutely at that point now. (continued on page 44)