Eindhoven will get its own guitars again: the Egmond guitar. It is a dream come true for Joep (71) Egmond, the grandson of the founder of the guitar brand from Eindhoven. Almost fifty years after closing the factory, the guitars will be made in Eindhoven again. They are the guitars that used to be embraced by guitarists like Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and Brian May of Queen.
“This was my life goal,” says Joep, the grandson of the brand’s founder. In 1977, the factory that used to make 150,000 guitars per year closed. Due to the competition from even cheaper guitars from the Far East, the company had to close. Joep has been working for years to get the Egmond brand back on the market. “I had the brand registered. That is the basis.”
Joep’s grandfather started in 1939 with his four sons in a garage in Eindhoven. The cheap guitars became a success. Beginning guitarists could afford this guitar, because American guitars were too expensive.
“I was the only one still involved with music.”
The fact that Joep can now bring his grandfather’s brand back onto the market means a lot to him. He was also in the music industry himself: he sold musical instruments for almost forty years. “I am the last of the Mohicans. I can collect all kinds of pictures and conjure up anecdotes, but I’m getting older. So what do you do with your heritage? No one in the whole family put a leg out for it. I was the only one still involved with music.”
Twelve years ago there was interest from Canada to re-market the Egmond brand. That came to nothing. “Competitors also approached me, but that didn’t work out. I ended up at Keymusic. The negotiations had been going on for a while, but then corona came and Keymusic went bankrupt. The company made a new start in Eindhoven and three months ago I received an email. They wanted the brand.”
250 models were made. Six models are now being launched, both acoustic and electric guitars. “They will look like our old models, but with a newer look.”
“We will produce them in the Eindhoven region.”
An Eindhoven distributor of the instruments in the Benelux has already been found there and so the grandson expects that it should work out well with ‘his’ brand. Test models will now be made first. “We are going to produce them in the Eindhoven region. It must be a solid product.”
The new Egmonds do differ from those of the past in one respect: the price. With amounts between 1500 and 3000 euros for the new Egmonds, they are not cheap for a guitar. “Then you might as well import Chinese guitars and stick ‘Egmond’ on them, but that’s not the intention. The brand must be firmly in its shoes.”
Joep finds it special that new Egmond guitars will soon be in the store. “I have to prepare myself mentally for that. You have a purpose in life and my goal was to see if this could get going again. It seemed impossible, but it worked. I find that special. It’s close to my heart.”
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