Dowina Guitars is a small-batch manufacturer of seriously amazing, all-solid acoustic guitars. They have an incredible philosophy when it comes to guitar building and it's something that we highly respect here at WM.
They live for their work. If you get a chance to speak with Stan, Erika or any of the team you will be able to see this in spades. It's hard for them to not be incredibly enthusiastic, which is just so pleasant to see.
The guitar industry is full of salespeople that just want you to buy their products whether you like the product or not. Dowina is completely different.
Dowina is an experience, not just another guitar company.
They want to attract people who resonate with what they do and want to experience their love and passion for the craft. I have felt this first hand and to tell you that it's refreshing for the MI industry is a complete and utter understatement.
There's truly little to no comparison for what Dowina Guitars are doing and asking for a comparison is not understanding their mission statement or philosophy at all.
They are a small batch manufacturer. What I mean when I say this, is their guitars are built by a small family-oriented team of incredibly skilled people who have nothing but love and passion for what they do, along with a seriously good eye for the fine details and matching woods.
Stan and Erika travel all across the world every two months or so, to find amazing raw woods to create their wonderful guitars from. They scour wood suppliers and tap every set. Woods are generally classed in different grades which include grain structure, beauty and density. They don't grade it on tonality. So Stan and Erika tap every single plate of wood before they buy it. They have a very particular tolerance when it comes to wood selection. It may be the highest grade of wood that a supplier has but if it doesn't ring then it won't make a good guitar. Just this by itself is rarely seen in this world, you may see it in small luthier-made instruments but not on any higher output brands at all.
Taylor for instance uses a lot of laminated wood because it's consistent. You can set up one machine to a certain tolerance and it can pump out guitars all day. All the same thickness, all the same shape. It's consistent.
Dowina however doesn't do this at all.
(I'm not bashing Taylor by the way, it's just they're the largest acoustic guitar manufacturer in the world and most people know the brand so hence my comments)
Dowina will individually tune each plate by hand and thickness the plates individually too. They have a sound that they are trying to create and if they made everything super uniform it just wouldn't work because of the natural variances within the wood. Dowina accounts for these variances and builds according to what the wood wants.
Their main philosophy is to let the wood shine and build seriously high-quality guitars for the people who will appreciate them. The idea of getting their guitars in every guitar shop all around the world is not at all any part of their ideals. They want to remain small and do what they do because they do it so well. Why scale your business if you're only going to sacrifice quality?
This is something I personally resonate with a lot and is why I'm so proud to stock Dowina in the UK.
In this modern age, we have made everything so open-source that our worlds have expanded a millionfold. The retailers are in a race to the bottom, cutting prices, and undervaluing manufacturers and products. It's just not sustainable in any way. We aim to make our world smaller and I feel Dowina shares this too.
We want to work with people who truly value the people and the product behind the scenes. We're happy to sell smaller amounts of instruments if it means we are proud to support the entire system, from wood sourcing to the people who build them all the way to the final customer who will cherish the instrument for years to come.
We want to supply instruments that our customers will be proud of! That's our aim and that is also the aim of Dowina.
Dowina are incredibly unique for the industry and even saying their part of the guitar industry is hard for me because it is an experience, not just a sale. Dowina is creating an experience to be shared with people who truly respect that.
They are lovely people through and through and I'm truly so happy to be able to support them that I love my job because of it.
Stan is now taking more of a back seat and letting his daughter Erika run the company and let me tell you, she is a powerhouse! She is so easy to contact, overwhelmingly passionate (which I love) and she has an incredible respect for her team. Seeing this change first-hand resonated with me incredibly strongly. As you may know, I am slowly taking over the business from Walter and Mark (Mark now being retired) and Walter slowly taking more of a backseat in our business. Erika has inspired me greatly to fill this role in the best possible ways. It's these kinds of relationships with suppliers that are truly import to us and myself. I wouldn't want to do my job without it.
Written by
Ryan Havinga
