Standing with affected dealers: our response to Fender's recent letters
Over the past weeks, Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has sent cease-and-desist letters to a number of guitar manufacturers and dealers across Europe. The letters assert exclusive rights in the well-known "ST" body shape and ask recipients to stop selling guitars that use it. We at Henry's have received such a letter too.
We want to be open about how we are responding — and, just as importantly, to offer a hand to the many smaller dealers who have received the same letter and now find themselves in a difficult position.
What the letters ask for
The letters ask recipients to stop manufacturing and selling ST-shaped guitars, to destroy unsold stock, and to pay damages. For a large company those are serious demands. For a small, independent dealer — often a family business or a single shop running on thin margins — a letter like this can be genuinely worrying, and the cost of getting proper legal advice in Germany is itself a real burden.
Our position
We respect Fender and its long history in this industry. At the same time, we do not believe the claims, as they relate to the ST body shape, are well founded. We have engaged Nordemann, one of Germany's leading intellectual-property law firms, together with the Czech-Slovak firm Staidl Leska, to respond to Fender on our behalf and to set out, carefully and on the merits, why we consider the demands unjustified.
Helping other dealers — at our cost
This is the part that matters most to us. Because Nordemann has already prepared this initial response for us, it can be extended to others with very little additional effort. So we are making a simple offer:
- To our own Henry's dealers: we are standing behind you directly, and we are in touch with you personally about what that means.
- To any other dealer who has received Fender's letter — including dealers who do not carry Henry's products at all: we will have Nordemann send an initial response to Fender on your behalf, and we will cover the cost. In practice, Nordemann adapts the letter we have already prepared and sends it for you. This is the initial reply — a considered, professional response, so that you don't have to face the letter alone or feel pressured into signing something quickly.
Because the work is already done, sharing it with others costs us very little — and it would feel wrong to keep it to ourselves while fellow dealers are worrying about how to respond.
A note for guitar builders
We are also thinking of the small guitar builders who have been affected and may not have the resources to defend themselves. Their situation is different from a dealer’s: because a builder makes their own instruments, a proper response has to address their specific models, and that tailored work is not something we can provide for free. What we can offer is a head start — the legal groundwork our lawyers have already compiled can serve as a foundation, so that a builder is not starting from zero. The model-specific part would then need to be added at the builder’s own cost, but building on existing work makes that defence considerably more manageable than facing it alone. If that would help you, we are glad to point you in the right direction; just get in touch.
Why this matters to us
"We built Henry's out of a love for music and a belief that players deserve choice," says Jindřich "Henry" Střelka, founder of Henry's Guitars. "Small dealers are the backbone of this trade. When one of them receives a letter like this, the whole community feels it. We are in a position to help, so we are helping — it is as simple as that."
Henry's Guitars is part of Praha Music Center spol. s r.o., a Czech company with roots in the music industry going back to 1991.
Get in touch
If you have received a letter from Fender and would like to take up this offer — or simply want to talk it through — please contact Juraj Žák at juraj.zak@henrysmusic.com. We will explain how it works and take it from there.