BCBusiness
North Vancouver’s Prestige Guitars is a global leader in the industry. In 2023, the company made the bold move to start manufacturing guitars at its own facility
It’s possible that, if the COVID-19 pandemic had never hit, Prestige Guitars would still be getting all of its guitars made in South Korea. The North Vancouver shop was getting some 800 to 1,000 guitars a year made overseas before production halted. The country was (and still is) a hub for guitar-making and many of the big names in the industry were eating up the little capacity that remained.
“We went to getting only 200 instruments,” says founder and president Mike Kurkdjian. “We had to make some difficult decisions in those years to turn off the dealer funnel and only focus on our direct-to-consumer business.” It wasn’t long before that led to a larger decision to not be reliant on a third-party manufacturer.
Rare is the business these days that does manufacturing in Canada, let alone in B.C.—the costs (of space, especially) hardly ever work out in favour of keeping things close to shore. But in 2023, Kurkdjian and his team of nine employees opened a manufacturing space above a brewery in North Vancouver (about a five-minute drive from the company’s storefront location).
Last year, Prestige produced its 100th guitar from that North Van factory (a mahogany piece that blends together purple and blue). It’s been a long journey for Kurkdjian, one that started right out of high school, when he was listening to Tool, Nirvana, Soundgarden and Audioslave and working on guitars.
Kurkdjian originally operated sales showrooms in Burnaby and East Vancouver before moving to North Van in 2014. That’s also around when the business started to take off, as long-time Vancouver guitar manufacturing mainstay Larrivée had ceased Canadian operations a year prior. “In all of Canada, I can only think of two other major guitar makers,” says Kurkdjian, citing Montreal-based Godin and Saskatoon’s Dingwall. “And so, inevitably, when Larrivée left, you had luthiers who had worked there for 10 or 15 years honing their craft, their passion, who were now out of necessity doing other work. So when I decided to build a factory here, it was only possible when I got in touch with a couple of them to come and do this adventure. It was a big venture, a lot of risk.”
The other benefit of being in B.C. for Kurkdjian is, of course, the wood. “A lot of the tonewood comes from B.C.—usually the Fraser Valley or the Interior,” he says. “For acoustic guitar guys, they’re looking for spruce, western red cedar. Electric guys are looking at flame maple, burl maple, spalted maple. B.C. supplies most of the industry globally for these types of woods. So it’s good for us where we’re located geographically.”
It’s still expensive, of course. The high-quality woods that Kurkdjian and his team are working with can cost $600 per piece. Guitars are typically $4,000 to $7,000 and custom made. “We’re in the business of creating folks’ dream instruments, right?” says Kurkdjian. “So when you’re picking your colour, picking the wood, picking the inlays, there’s a customization behind that inlay work—that’s the next level of guitar.”
This year, says Kurkdjian, is looking like the best year ever for the company. He envisions Prestige hitting 200 guitars made soon and the factory has been non-stop busy with orders—there are currently 38 guitars in the company’s build queue.
The proof of the quality is also in the big names that rock Prestige’s product. Shania Twain has almost exclusively been using Prestige guitars for a long time. “One of my career highlights was seeing her playing our guitar on stage with Harry Styles at Coachella,” says Kurkdjian. Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and Canadian singer/songwriter Devin Townsend have also been known to use Prestige guitars.
Through the considerable risk, Kurkdjian has persevered. “I didn’t have to do it,” he says, adding that, especially post-COVID, the company could have successfully “coasted along” and gone back to what it had always been doing. But, he says, “When I saw the opportunity and jumped on it, I knew it would be a passion project for a couple of years until the ball got rolling and the orders came in. Having the factory here, with a mostly global market, we’ve gotten a lot more patriotic guitarists, especially recently, who appreciate Canadian stuff.”