Link: https://www.thomann.de/blog/en/inside/thomann-takes-legal-action-against-fender/

Apparently Thomann decided to take legal action against Bud Cole's (Fender's CEO) cease and desist campaign.
Interested to see how the situation will evolve.

Based.

Fetch

Good.

Fender is digging themselves an early grave because their profit margins aren’t more!. Dicks.

Let’s go!

Fender really deserve nothing else. The fact that they sue their longterm distributor is shameless. I bet they'll lose this.

That's what happens when you're owned by the capital arm of a car company and listed as a turnaround investment. Servco is going to do what it can to squeeze every last drop even though they were a pretty good steward and partner for decades. They are also forcing high minimum buys for stores, leaving a bunch of Mom and Pop shops in the cold and trying to get you to buy direct because there's more margin if you buy from fender directly instead of guitar center.

They also rebranded Studio One to try to create the whole ass fender ecosystem, launched a big ass flagship store in Japan, and are bringing Pac-Man and Godzilla to the electric guitar world (who was asking for that exactly?).

It's the PE playbook without the PE name. Eventually they'll sell the goodwill fender built, saddle it with piles of debt, bankruptcy, and someone else will pick it up. I think fender is too valuable a name to let rot but I would have said the same thing about RCA so what the hell do I know?

Agreed. And StudioOne was an excellent platform I have little hopes for now.