MacKenzie & Marr Guitars - delivery update

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This newsletter contains information relating to guitar deliveries. If you already own a MacKenzie & Marr guitar or if you registered on macmarr.com without purchasing a guitar there may be little of interest in the following paragraphs.

For everyone patiently waiting for a MacKenzie & Marr guitar - Tofino, Nanaimo or Dionisio - the last few months have been frustrating. June delivery became July and then drifted into August. September has arrived but still no guitar. Jonathan and I share your frustration.

We've listened to a string of unkept promises from our agent and the factory. We've passed those promises on to you and then felt like fools when we realized we couldn't live up to our commitments. We didn't start this business to lie to people and yet that's what we've done - not of our own volition but by taking the word of our suppliers.

Last week I made a trip to the factory to determine what exactly was happening. With a couple of hundred guitars overdue by almost 4 months something needed to be resolved. What I found was not pretty. The factory had made great instruments. They had clearly followed the specs provided by our agent but for reasons that escape me those specs were not what we had ordered. Our agent appears to have been completely incompetent with no attention to detail and no follow-up on production.

We've fired him last Tuesday and brought in a team of QC pros to inspect all guitars currently in production. We've also set up a system to monitor on-going work on a weekly basis - no more last minute surprises. That system won't bear fruit until January 2011 when production placed this month begins to arrive in Montreal.

In the meantime there's bad news for almost everyone waiting for a guitar. Here's the breakdown by model:

Ian Tyson Limited Edition
We're on track to deliver all outstanding orders before the end of September.

Nanaimo (the left handed model)
If our QC team signs off on the already produced Nanaimo guitars we should be able to deliver them to waiting customers by mid October. Once we get the QC report we'll advise each of you individually.

Dionisio (cedar top cutaway with pickup)
All production of this model was made for left handed players. We never ordered a left handed Dionisio and cancelled our order with the factory. Unfortunately won't be able to deliver any properly made Dionisio guitars until January of 2011. (Please don't write asking if we can sell you one of these. The answer is emphatically no!)

Tofino (the original MacKenzie & Marr "Dragon's Den" guitar)
The factory only had 36 of these guitars in production. We expected to see well over 100. The shortfall means there are only enough to fill orders that were originally scheduled for May- June - and then only if they pass QC. If you have a Tofino order that was originally scheduled for July through November we're sorry to inform you that we won't be able to deliver your guitar in 2010.

In the next few weeks I'll contact everyone waiting for a guitar on an individual basis. I'll have specific information about each delivery.

Please accept our apologies for a very unfortunate situation.

John Marr
MacKenzie & Marr Guitars

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