Gibson: Plants ‘Up and Running’ Following Raid

Gibson Guitar Corp.’s chairman and CEO says the storied guitar maker is getting its operation back in tune following a raid last week by federal agents of the company’s factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville. “We’re back up and running at all our plants,” said Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz about the aftermath of the Aug. 24 raid in both cities, during which agents seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. While acknowledging the facilities that were closed after the raid have now reopened, he said production is not back to normal levels because of the seizure of a substantial amount of inventory. During last week’s press conference, he valued the materials taken by agents from the company at around $1 million. In later interviews with reporters, he upped that estimate to between $2 million and $3 million. “So we’re trying to figure out what raw materials we have (with which) to build and what we can get in the short term to fill in some very large holes in our production planning,” Juszkiewicz told The Daily News in a phone interview from his Nashville office. Gibson’s CEO said the company employs almost 2,000 people in the U.S. and has hired several hundred new employees in the U.S. in the last two years...more