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As the company, still headed by a family member, Chris Martin IV, celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, it’s worth pausing to reflect on not just the role it played in the development of the acoustic guitar – but what that instrument did to help create contemporary music.

In 1833, the year the first CF Martin arrived from Germany, the United States was still a young, frontier country. Poor people arrived in the east and spread westwards, taking whatever possessions they had with them – including their musical instruments. This is how those two icons from the campfire scene of every cowboy movie – the harmonica and the acoustic guitar – came to permeate almost every facet of American contemporary music and formed the shape of western popular music.

Jazz, blues, country, rock n roll – where would they be without the guitar and where would the guitar be without the influence of Martin?

This matters because when Martin celebrates 175 years of making fine instruments, it is also celebrating its role in helping shape modern music. Which set the minds in Nazareth, Pennsylvania a puzzle when they saw the date approaching. How do you celebrate an event as significant as this?

“It dawned on us in 2007 that we’d better start making preparations for the anniversary,” says Chris Martin. “Particularly with the anniversary guitar models, we had to design them, get the prototypes made, get them to the Anaheim show, take the orders and start to fulfil them. One of the most interesting things was coming up with the illustration we’ve used. My cousin Robert is a commercial artist and he came in to see me with the picture of CF senior we’ve been using. I liked it okay, but everyone here was ‘Oh, my gosh – that’s really well done’ and were really enthusiastic about using it, which is why it has been on the Dreadnoughts we sold to the dealers, on an LXM we sell in the gift shop to people who take the tour, and why we’ve put it on posters, mugs, buttons, the website - finding that was serendipitous.”

Products aside, for a moment (and some of this year’s celebratory models have been stunning), 175 years deserves celebrating in style.

“We always have a dealer dinner at the Anaheim show and his year we did it around the 175th anniversary, but with an Elvis impersonator, because we’re reintroducing the Elvis model – that was a riot,” he laughs. “It’s gone on from there as we’ve done a lot of things here at the factory. Our international dealers have visited, our wholesalers, all the dealers east of the Mississippi, then all the dealers west of the Mississippi, then a celebration for the staff at a local restored movie theatre – it’s been such a constant celebration that I’m almost tired of it.”

A final touch is that Martin’s Dick Boke managed to find the exact day that CF Martin senior landed in Manhattan (it was November 6th) and this month Chris Martin and other representatives will be unveiling a plaque on the modern building that today stands on the site of  96 Hudson St, where the story began.

For Chris Martin, the fact that his business is here at all is a relief – and he admits it came far closer to not being so than some may realise.

“I was here for the 150th and that was a pretty grim time. It was 1983, the acoustic guitar business was in the tank and no-one knew where the bottom was or even if it would recover. I remember distinctly going to a trade show with the gentleman that was helping run the company then, Hugh Bloom, who had taken over after my father retired – I was vice-president then. We had a little party at the show and we had a cake to celebrate the 150th anniversary. Well, there’s a picture that was taken of Hugh and I with the cake and if you could have put little bubbles above our heads, one of the bubbles would have said ‘Thank God nobody in this room knows we’re on the verge of bankruptcy.’”

That Martin didn’t go under but, in fact, stormed ahead to great success is a matter of record, but having weathered such awful times gave Chris Martin an old head on very young shoulders when he assumed leadership of the family firm, not long after. Experience that is relevant in the current financial maelstrom.

“The economic situation right now is not adversely affecting us yet, but we’re certainly aware of it. Every year we go through a very extensive process of planning for the following year and I make an hour long Powerpoint presentation about what I think the state of our business will be. This year I looked back 25 years and then forward 25 years. It’s not that we can plan what will be in 25 years, but the chances are that we are still going to be in business. Despite the daily ups and downs of the stock market, if we just remind ourselves that as long as the guitar is still an instrument that human beings want to play and we do what we are best at, we should be able to survive and hopefully prosper.”

And such optimism has an application for retailers.

“What we’ve found in the States, is that the dealers we’re working with that made the decision to concentrate on certain products, not every product, are doing fine. They’ve said, ‘I’m going to be known as the guy who specialises in high-end Martin products’ and they stock them, service them and treat the customers with the respect they deserve – they’re doing well.

“We have several categories of dealer – starting with the Marquis, high-end independent dealers who are thriving. Then we’ve got the Super Dealers – Sam Ash, Guitar Center and we’re starting to do business with Best Buy. But it’s the Standard dealers who are struggling, because they’re trying to be everything to everybody. If you’ve got a Guitar Center nearby, they are going to be a bigger version of that, so how can you compete? The independent who says he isn’t going to carry everything, who goes into a Guitar Center, sees where he can’t compete and stays away from that, as well as seeing where he can do better - he’s the one who will do well.”

Whatever he does, no retailer can be unaware that the acoustic guitar market is clearly over-saturated. While this might not affect a brand like Martin, does he ever look at the proliferation of brands and wonder how long it can be sustained?

“That is a factor that even the Marquis dealers have to make a decision about. How many high-end brands do they carry? We've got some who try to concentrate on all of them and some who focus on a few and we do better with the latter. But I have to tell you that I’m wondering is who the next Bob Taylor is. Who’s the next Jean L’arrivee? Who’s the next Bill Collings? That’s what we need (and I hate to say this) younger people who want to come in. Competition has been tremendously healthy for the market. The consumer is getting a better guitar as a result of it, but we’re all getting older. Jean has kids in his business, but Bob and Kurt don’t, Bill doesn’t, Richard Hoover (Santa Cruz) doesn’t. I’ve got Claire, but she’s only just turned four. I’m hoping to see some of the ‘Generation Xers’ get into the business.”

It isn’t immediately obvious what Chris Martin feels he would gain from having hungry youngsters snapping at his company’s heels, because Martin is a far sharper operation today than it was, say, 30 years ago. Back then, the traditional chunky Martin necks, beloved of the Bluegrass boys, were an open goal for Bob Taylor, whose instruments immediately found favour with players more used to Strats and Les Pauls. But today Martin is innovating again and paying close attention to the market.

His opinions of new companies and his competitors makes for interesting reading.

“Bob Taylor’s business used to bug me – not Bob, but his business. They had the advantage of not having felt the downturn in the late 70s and early 80s and Bob capitalised on being a very efficient manufacturer. He moved away from draw knives very quickly. Then I was in an airport one day and picked up this book  The 26 Immutable Laws of Marketing and I’m on the plane, reading the book and I get to the chapter titled ‘If there’s a Coke there’s a Pepsi’ and it was one of those ‘a-ha’ moments. As the book said, in a dynamic market there are generally two very formidable competitors, battling it out trying to be king of the hill and that’s the relationship.’

It should be said at this point that one of the particularly nice things about the acoustic guitar business is the personal respect that appears to exist between the individuals involved. Talk to Jean L’arrivee, Bill Collings, Chris Martin, Bob Taylor and the other big names and, however hard they fight for sales, there is a clear, almost quaint, personal regard for one another. It must be a wood thing.

But while competition may, as the MG slogan used to insist ‘improve the breed’, one curious facet of the acoustic world is the way the past 12 months have seen so much of it flow into the hands on one company: Fender. When it swallowed Kaman, it resulted in brand F distributing (and in some cases actually owning) brands including Guild, Tacoma, Ovation, Takamine, Taylor and Fender itself.

“It’s big business. I get at least one call a week from someone who wants to do for me what they did for Fender. They’d come in with a lot of cash, create liquidity for the owner, they’d allow me to stay on, and they would then sit on the board and drive this business to be much more aggressive in terms of growth. But once you do that, you have to keep the behemoth ever more ‘behemothy’, because if the merry-go-round ever stops, and if the market looks at you one day and says ‘Hey guys, you aren’t a growth company any more?’ you’ve got problems.”  

Clearly, Martin isn’t tempted by the callers and he has good reason. His father’s experience with expanding Martin in the past was unhappy to say the least. But he is rarely tempted, despite having said in the past that he is often called by smaller companies looking for a protective wing under Martin ownership.

“I get advised to consider it but I think to myself, without being arrogant, that we have the best brand in the world, so anything else I bought would be secondary to that and distract us from managing that brand. That’s why we dropped Sigma – it was a distraction.”

Word on the UK street is that in a time of recession, customers become increasingly conservative and are less likely to risk their money on an unknown or even lesser known brand.

This is reflected in the USA and is where Martin really comes into its strength.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a shake-out. There could be some companies that aren’t well capitalised, that are hanging on by the skin of their teeth and we could well hear that so and so was sold, or closed down, before long.”

Manufacturers? Distributors? Retailers?

“Who knows? You never know until you know. You know how it is, someone tells you everything is wonderful and the next you get a fax that tells you you are now a creditor. I’m not trying to be arrogant but, so far, we have outlived every one of our competitors – there are some that are still living, but we’ll see when Claire takes over, whether they are still around.”

Asked if there was anything in particular on his mind at the moment, Martin returned to the theme that has occupied him for many years: the shortage of the materials the guitar business depends on.

“It is a problem and it comes and goes. Right now we can get some types of mahogany, but not others. One of our colleagues just got back from Madagascar and the government there is extremely concerned about the value of the exotic timber and how it should be harvested. He went to one of our fingerboard and bridge suppliers and the guy said he had a very significant supply of blanks, but he couldn’t ship them because the government had put a hold on them. This was wood they’d already processed, it was ready to go, but they weren’t being allowed to ship it. That’s what it’s like – once they become aware there are problems, their reaction can be to put a stop to everything.”

The problem is by no means confined to exotic woods. Rumour has it that sitka spruce is under threat. Martin reveals that it is an old problem.

“This goes back to World War II, when the US government gave the Native Alaskans large amounts of land. Then they said ‘Oh, and by the way, have we got a deal for you. The Japanese are rebuilding their houses and they want to use sitka spruce, so not only will we give you the wood, we’ll give you a business’. So they gave every Alaskan their share, but not newly-born Alaskans, so only that generation gets its cheques each year.

“Greenpeace went up there, took a look around and said ‘what about the next generation?’ and the answer was they didn’t care, because they weren’t getting a share. The rule has finally been changed and now they know if they keep clear-cutting, they could run out. Greenpeace is trying to talk them into slowing down to save that wood.”

Vital though this may be for the next 25 years, nothing should detract from what is a genuinely impressive celebration – 175 years, not just spent making the finest acoustic guitars. It’s a journalistic cliché to ask someone how it feels, but we asked anyway.

“People have come up to me and said ‘Chris, this is very special in this day and age, that your family business has been around this long and has kept its reputation and is making a product that your ancestors would be proud of. That reminds me how important it is to maintain that and it’s kind of all we have – but it seems to be enough. If we try to make great guitars, people say that’s exactly what we want from you.’

And who could argue with that?