One Year Ago - MacKenzie & Marr Guitars On Dragon's Den January 2010

In May of 2010 Jonathan and I traveled to Toronto to tape an episode of the CBC hit program "Dragon's Den". We'd developed a cedar top guitar that we though was a pretty amazing instrument. If we could convince the hard nosed business men (and woman) that we had a product and business worthy of investment we would launch MacKenzie & Marr Guitars. To say the day - from the time we arrived at 8 AM until we went before the Dragons a bit after 4 in the afternoon - was surreal would be an understatement. Keeping silent about the outcome for the next 8 months was a struggle. We did tell our wives but even our kids had to wait for the January airing of the show to find out for sure whether we had scored a deal.

On Wednesday January 13, 2010 the segment aired on CBC. The following morning at 6 AM Jonathan and I flew to California for the annual music trade show. We weren't in the Montreal airport for more than 5 minutes before we were recognized. Our Web site was flooded with orders and within 36 hours we were sold out of guitars. It wasn't until December that we caught up on back orders for Tofino and we continue to have a waiting list for Dionisio and the Ian Tyson Limited Edition.

UPDATE: It seems as if the video of our Dragon's Den appearance has been removed from YouTube by the CBC. We'll try to get a copy to post directly on our site. In the meantime here's a photo of our partner (yes they did invest!) Kevin O'Leary. He's being challenged to pick the $5000 guitar. When he picked the MacKenzie & Marr Tofino over the actual $5000 guitar we knew we had a viable business.