Look closely. If you know anything about guitars, you know these are not the standard brands that hang in most retail shops. These are Fano Guitars. And they’re selling like hotcakes.
What Fano Did
I spent the first third of last Saturday at Pro Guitar Shop in Portland and played every single Fano on display. I spent the second third at home fully immersing myself in the brand through their website.
The final third… trying to convince my wife why I had to get one.
For any brand, that’s powerful stuff.
Fano’s philosophy is simple. They imagined what kind of guitars could be made if all the major manufacturers got together and shared their proprietary technology.
Visualize a guitar built with T.V. Jones pickups, a Telecaster body, a Rickenbacker 325 neck and a non-poly Nitrocellulose lacquer body finish more usually found on a faded pre-1962 Fender Strat.
The result? The most playable, incredible sounding, heavenly-feeling axe I have ever played.
No surprise Fano sales are booming. For a pro guitarist, one Fano Guitar can easily replace 3 or 4 other guitars given its sheer flexibility in feel and sound.
What drives Fano? Creativity. Inspiration. Fueled by a desire to offer something other than the same old, same old to a marketplace eager to discover something new.
The best ideas from the best brands
I’m often asked: If you were going to start a brokerage, what would it consist of? As of last week, I began to imagine what a Fano Real Estate Company might look like…
This brokerage would be some amalgamation of:
- Redfin’s focus on the consumer
- Corcoran’s brand marketing
- Weichert’s lead routing
- RE/MAX’s training
- Zillow’s obsession on the user experience
- Realtor.com’s mobile apps
- Michael Saunders’ brand values
- Trulia’s SEO might
- Houlihan Lawrence’s agent focus
- Front Door’s content
- M Realty’s local coverage
- Estately’s technology chops
- Better Homes and Garden’s social mindset
- WellcomeMat’s video prowess
- Concierge Auctions Website
I’d start here.
These elements would be strewn across my work bench. I’d carve, mold, shape and assemble them into a brand new brokerage idea. One that retains all the grand elements of what a real estate brokerage is.
Best of all, it would be different.
[Disclaimers: Move, Michael Saunders, Houlihan Lawrence, Better Homes and Gardens, Concierge Auctions, and RE/MAX are all clients of 1000watt.]
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Respectfully, I’d add one component to the mix: competence.
Without competent practitioners as the foundation of the brokerage, almost all of the above lack relevance.
Starting a brokerage requiring competent, productive and dedicated practitioners of the real estate craft would be something special … almost as special as consistently maintaining those standards.
So true. I figured this was a given. Due to the many brokerages I could have cited, I chose to not single one out. But competence is a base requirement. The selection process would start there.
Also being a guitar player and somone who is passionate about the future of our industry, I think you are absolutely correct. In fact, our blog post tomorrow touches on this very topic, albeit, from a little bit different angle.
Thanks Marc… on my way to to the guitar store and go play a Fano!
I think another feature missing is the “social connection” between home owners (residents) and potential home buyers. Why not set up a company/ brokerage social network (“HomingMatch” ) and let listed sellers and interested buyers message one another, or chat directly once a buyer shows interest in a property? Local property data is great, but I think I sealed the deal on the sale of a neighbors house by just running into potential buyers on the street and telling them about all the kids in the neighborhood who where their kids age, and how great a community it was. This personal knowledge is only shared by buyer/seller communication.
Hi Tina,
I shied away from specific strategies such as the one you describe for the post but your comments address a very interesting point. If all Fano did was copy exact specifics from each major brand, I can assure you that their guitars would look and feel like a Frankenstein Monster. Each of Fanos guitars have something distinctly Fano baked into them that make them their own unique product.
This would of course apply to a brokerage and that would play out through the distinct strategies they apply to whatever model they come up with.
I’m not a guitar guy, unless you count Guitar Hero, but this was an interesting post.
I like the idea of looking at other brands and seeing what they do best and trying to apply to your own business, but I think I would look outside of the real estate industry for examples as well. While the brands you listed do each of those things reasonably well too often in real estate we settle for what others in real estate are doing instead of looking outside our industry at who is truly doing something best. Can I learn from Starbucks, Zappos, eSurance, our even my local bookstore or bakery about aspects of business (customer service, local marketing, physical location branding, etc.) that would help grow my business?
That would offer my business a different measuring stick than what other real estate companies might compare themselves to.