Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has opened an online ecommerce store making it’s range available to purchase directly to the Chinese market.

“China presents a tremendous opportunity for Fender and launching an eCommerce store on a platform that is home to more than six hundred million buyers is a crucial step in capturing it,” said Edward “Bud” Cole, Asia President, Fender.
“Today, so much information is consumed digitally. We find Alibaba and Tmall to not only be a great vehicle to sell our product, but also a platform to share our brand message of accompanying players along every stage of their musical journey.”

Fender is using Alibaba and Tmall for it’s direct to consumer platform and Export Now for web design and logistics.

This seems to be a fairly bold move by Fender CEO Andy Mooney on which is the time the Fender offers it’s full range of products direct to the consumer bypassing dealers.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out with the existing dealers as Fender’s next move may be partnering up with the like of Amazon.

And all of this is happening while as Australian Fender dealers are not allowed to list their inventory on E-Bay and have many other restrictions placed on where they can sell their products online.
Even when Andy Mooney has stated that all dealers should be taking advantage of E-bay type platforms.

Could this move spark a dealer revolt?
Are the big global dealers like of Guitar Centre, Thoman, Ishibashi, Sweetwater etc going to focus less on the Fender brand in favour of others?