Tune in CBC on January 13 at 8 PM to see Jonathan and I pitch our business to five savvy investors on Dragon's Den. We know we have a winner in both our Tofino acoustic guitar and our business model. Selling high end acoustic guitars direct from the factory to musicians over the Internet means huge savings compared to retail. Will the Dragons recognize either our cedar top guitar or our business plan as worthy of an investment or will they tell us our "valuation is nuts, we're being greedy an/or there's no business here".
We're betting they love the guitar and see the savings to consumers as a winner. Think we're wrong? Leave a comment or visit our Facebook page to add your input to the Dragons Den poll.

Things were just too quiet! We'd done pretty much everything we could to prepare for the arrival of the first 48 MacKenzie & Marr Tofino acoustic guitars.
We'd set up the stock room, humidified, insured, alarmed and locked down the building.
We'd tested the on-line store, and then tested it some more.
We'd proofed, published and printed our warranty to include with every order.
We'd lined up Canada Post and UPS for shipping.
We'd laid in 40 double walled cartons (with room for extra padding) to insure Tofinos were coddled in transit.

We felt reasonably sure we were on track to deliver all outstanding orders in time for Christmas. Then the rails (literally) started to come off. CN Rail, embarrased by a one-day strike, backed up rail cars across the country. Our guitars were caught in the backlog and didn't arrive in Montreal until December 21. Now Canada Customs is taking its own sweet time clearing the shipment. As of noon today (December 23) we're calling the broker hourly. Still expecting delivery in time to send out Christmas orders. Perhaps we should look into a sleigh and reindeer?

This morning we started shooting photos of the MacKenzie and Marr cedar top "Tofino"acoustic guitar. The back and sides are crafted from Indonesian Mahogany. The top is western Canadian red cedar. Combining the warmth of cedar with the crisp projection of Mahogany gives the MacKenzie and Marr guitar a distinct full voice.