Strandberg Guitars tunes its growth
to the next level with Sage X3

Innovative electric guitars

From building guitars in his garage in Sweden, Ola Strandberg has developed Strandberg Guitars into a valuable multinational brand sought after by artists worldwide.

More engineer than musician, Ola Strandberg designs and builds innovative electric guitars with ergonomic design and original features. The aim is to reduce muscle tension, allowing musicians to play longer and sound better.

Today, the company is known for changing how we see electric guitars, altering their weight, shape and feel to create instruments recognized as futuristic and visionary.

How it began

Melvyn Hiscock’s book “Make Your Own Electric Guitar” first sparked Ola Strandberg’s interest in building a guitar as a hobby.

“It was my guide to making the first guitar a reality.”

After fifteen years and an IT career, his first attempt to revive the hobby won “Guitar of the Month” on a guitar-building forum. As a result, American musician Chris Letchford asked him to create a groundbreaking seven-string guitar, compared with the traditional six strings. Ola Strandberg accepted the challenge.

After building the first seven-string guitar, he received more requests and considerable praise for the design. A rapidly growing waiting list followed.

“I knew I wanted to meet this demand, but could not do it alone; it was time to build a business,” says Strandberg.

Manual processes

Once mass production began, Ola Strandberg launched an e-commerce site for international customers and left his IT job. He ran the business with his wife and a friend. The first years of mass production delivered strong results, with revenue growing by hundreds of percent.

Mass production brought rapid growth, and it soon became clear that managing everything themselves using only Excel spreadsheets was unsustainable.

“We knew we had to address the situation,” says Ola Strandberg. “We needed to consolidate all information from sales orders, purchase orders and every online store order, integrate it and track what went where throughout the process.”

---

Want to know more about Sage X3?

Want to learn more about Sage X3 ERP, or have questions about a particular feature, technology or industry solution?

Contact me, Fredrik Jansson, by email fredrik.jansson@systemstod.se or phone +46 (0)8-586 142 00‬.

ERP requirements

Ola Strandberg discovered EU funding could support digitalization projects. After the application was approved, they received help from a consultancy specializing in procurement and European supplier selection processes.

Without its own IT department, and hoping to remain that way, Strandberg Guitars needed an ERP system requiring minimal maintenance. It also needed to be cloud-based, as the company did not want its own internal servers.

“We knew the system had to support international operations because we already had overseas subsidiaries and would add more in different countries. It also needed to integrate with our online store and handle large order volumes, multiple manufacturers and purchasing forecasts. For a small company, we needed quite a sophisticated system,” explains Ola Strandberg.

After issuing requests for proposals, the consultancy presented four ERP solutions to Strandberg Guitars. Ola Strandberg says only one met every requirement: Sage X3.

Ready to start

A major benefit was that Sage X3 ERP let Strandberg Guitars get started immediately.

“It was more or less turnkey,” says Ola Strandberg. “It can be customized at any level, but the standard solution was usable for us.”

Integration with the online store was a key part of obtaining the right information and decision support, and Ola Strandberg describes it as seamless. “Sage X3 is user-friendly and consistent throughout. Once you understand how to use it in one business area, it is easy to implement in another.”

International expansion

Ola Strandberg says it was also important for the software to handle international currencies, subsidiary information and accounting.

“We were contacted by Guitar Center, the world’s largest musical instrument retailer, which wanted to start selling our products in its stores,” he says.

Strandberg Guitars therefore established a wholly owned US subsidiary, and Sage X3 enabled the consolidation and integration of all information across international operations.

Improved traceability

Building groundbreaking electric guitars requires many components and parts from different regions worldwide. Selling to a global customer base has led Strandberg Guitars to establish dealers in strategic locations.

“As we grew, we suddenly had three guitar manufacturers and suppliers, additional spare parts and accessory suppliers, and dozens of dealers worldwide. With long guitar manufacturing lead times, it quickly became too much to manage,” explains Ola Strandberg.

Sage X3 has given Strandberg complete traceability, from a guitar’s creation through purchase order to final customer delivery, all tracked by serial number.

Supporting long-term growth

Since implementing Sage X3, Strandberg Guitars has doubled production from 250 to 500 guitars and doubled revenue to SEK 35 million. Including its US subsidiary, revenue totals 55 million.

“We could never have done this without Sage X3’s support. It keeps our business information secure and integrated.”

Ola Strandberg expects the company’s use of Sage X3 to increase, especially in extracting information and decision support. “We enter a lot of information and look forward to exploring how to use it to forecast and draw intelligence from the system.”

Ola Strandberg says Sage X3 has become the key to running the business. “If we removed Sage X3, we would stop functioning,” he says. “As our growth journey continues, we know Sage X3 will grow with us and help us run our business better.”