Build Your Own Clone
recalls. “So I thought, I should put together a
Fuzz Face kit and actually let people build it
for themselves.
“I started off with ten kits and put an ad on
Harmony Central. They were gone in a week,
and everyone was raving about them. I figured, ‘I must be on to something here.’”
From there the company was off and running,
with Vonderhulls formally licensing the business in 2005. Without any viable competition
in the kit business, the company’s growth was
stratospheric at first, marketing a handful of
distortions, overdrives and modulation effects
to clamoring guitarists. As the customer base
and the product line evolved, Vonderhulls was
eventually able to bring aboard two employees, including Dave Lobie, a lifelong guitarist and veteran of the Seattle underground
scene, to handle production of the kits and
stand-in as the shop’s resident shredder. “I’m
the guy that makes sure everything is put
together in the kits, and I’m also the guy that
gets in trouble when they’re not in the kits,”
Lobie says jovially.
A large part of BYOC’s success can be attributed to the very forums that gave rise to his
business. A section of his website is full of
suggestions from users for future builds, from
tweaks and minor modifications to full-on
development requests—a valuable cache of
feedback that Vonderhulls eagerly samples
from. Customer service is handled by a
handful of moderators on the BYOC board
and builders experiencing problems can get
advice from more experienced hands, allowing Vonderhulls to focus on more pressing
business concerns. It’s a self-contained community that essentially cares for itself, and a
reality that Vonderhulls is more than happy to
harness. “Our forum just hit 3000 users and it
has only been up for two years. Of course, it
depends on what viewpoint you’re looking at
it from, but for something as esoteric as this,
that seems pretty good.”
Of course, even with a near-rabid fan base,
BYOC has encountered its share of trials and
tribulations. As the orders have stacked up
and Vonderhulls’ small team has hustled to
keep the pipeline flowing, mistakes unique
to the BYOC business model have occasion-
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