Friday Fantasy: Guitars and real estate brokerages

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.]