MountainCity in Nashville at Franklin Strap HQ

(Nashville, TN – posted by Jeanie Rhoades)  Dave and Tara were recently in Nashville for meetings with their management group and had the chance to drop by the Franklin Strap headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee.

They interviewed Charlton Moore, the Franklin Strap product Director (and “geeked out,” some might say) on a Facebook Live broadcast (see it here). They learned more about Franklin Strap, Glider Capos and other Greg Bennett Co. merchandise and designs.

MountainCity at Franklin Strap headquarters

Dave Powers, one-half of the Colorado-based, married, singing duo, MountainCity, was very excited for a chance to talk about his favorite straps and pick Charlton’s brain on their business model. Dave boasts having a Franklin strap on every guitar he uses in performances.

Jackson Hole straps, Franklin Strap

Dave Powers and the Franklin Strap connection

Dave Powers’s relationship with Franklin Strap started with Dave emailing the company and Charlton responding, as he does with every email he receives. They got acquainted by phone, shared stories and mutual values and soon the company invited Dave to be part of their Family of Artists.

Glider Capo

Greg Bennett’s Glider Capo demonstration video

Charlton Moore

Charlton told Dave and Tara he has spent the past several years traveling around with a suitcase full of guitar straps and capos.

While he had grown up in a musical family in a suburb of Nashville and eventually went through music school, he says he quickly realized he was a “gear nerd” and “would ruin some poor kid’s life” if he actually went into teaching.

“Franklin Strap is driven by the creative talents and marketing savvy of our founder, Greg Bennett, a well-known guitar designer, marketer and player.” – from the website

The unique opportunity to apprentice under Greg Bennett (see Greg’s bio here) presented itself  to Charlton following college.

“When you’re young and fresh out of school and have done nothing but theorizing, Greg Bennett was heck of a dose of reality,” Charlton says with a laugh.

“For the past 9 years, I’ve been traveling around and listening to Greg speak. He’s one of those characters that you meet where you just say, ‘speak, and I’m just gonna listen for awhile.’ He’s just wildly brilliant in business strategy and branding and design. Now I have the pleasure of operating his brands for him.”

Charlton oversees Franklin Strap and Glider Capos, “the most innovative capo in the world,” by the way, which are all made by hand.

Franklin Strap is just part of the Greg Bennett Company, which is a design, marketing and distribution firm. The company not only owns, manufactures and designs Franklin Strap, Glider Capo, and Greg Bennett Design Acoustic Guitars, they recently launched a boutique hard-rock guitar brand, Ethan Hart Guitars.

Dave and Tara interviewing Franklin Strap brand director, Charlton Moore

How did Greg Bennett become such a successful entrepreneur?

Dave was anxious to dig into the background of the company. The story goes that after a very impressive career as both a musician and successful music business executive, Greg Bennett and his wife decided to start their own company.

“Greg created this little capo, the glider capo,” Charlton says. “He goes to sell the capo to Guitar Center. He walks up and says it’s a dual spring system, it applies the same amount of pressure on both sides of the guitar simultaneously so it doesn’t warp your guitar over time. It glides. He shows them that you can palm it, you can roll it, and you can store it on the nut when it’s not in use.”

“So he goes through his spiel with the Guitar Center guys and they’re like ‘Yeah-yeah-yeah, the capo’s great, we’ll buy that. But what is that strap?”

It was a suede-backed, black strap with black stitching. Greg told them it wasn’t really available to them, just to independent dealers, but they would not be dissuaded. They wanted to order the black straps with the stipulation that he would also make some brown straps. That was beginning of Franklin Straps.

Now there are three-hundred strap options available in the Franklin Strap line.

The Franklin brand, Charlton shared with Dave and Tara, has just taken off. He credits that to the company’s determined efforts in branding. “We’re sticklers for branding,” he says.

“When you truly understand branding – it goes to the pit of the human condition. We have evolved to want to be a part of something that means something, that stands for something. When there’s just a whole bunch of unrelated desperate stuff pushed out into the market, a brand that is clearly defined shines straight  through the middle. In every retail store we’re in, which is about 1500 retailers, and that’s not including our international distribution, we outsell everything around it 3-1.”

Charlton explains that branding encompasses every single part, starting with the design on paper. “There are a lot of designs I want to do, but can’t because it’s not ‘Franklin.’”

“Branding gives you a border, a particular perspective. At Franklin Strap, everything has to meet a very particular aesthetic and quality test before we would even consider it,” he continued.

Franklin Strap

The goods

Hand-tooled glove leather straps

The room was rich with the smell of leather (they said so) and Dave and Tara got to see Franklin’s  NAAM booth straps display. Charlton showed them a sampling of straps.

“Instead of making the straps huge billboards with the word Franklin coming at you,” Charlton explained, “Greg chose to design an end-tab (Franklin’s own “Nike swoosh”) as a branding image.” He went on, “It’s not just random curves. Every single arch is actually the arch of a perfect circle That’s Greg’s design brilliance showing. And all of the curves are meant to accentuate the sexy curves of the guitar. Aesthetically and design-wise, the strap compliments the guitar.”

He showed them the best-selling piece, the saddleback strap, which retails for $39.99. Franklin has straps for banjo players and rockers. Dave was fired up by their ingenuity and creativity.

They offer Brazilian Python straps, padded straps, reversible straps, southwest straps and a Jackson Hole-style of aged leather. Most innovatively, they have found a way to use the small bits of accumulated, spare hyde. They designed a handwoven link strap from the small, “leftover” parts. What could/should be a $200 strap in materials retails for an astounding $49.99. In terms of value, Charlton says the woven strap is the best thing they sell.

Charlton showing detail on one of the woven straps

What’s next for Franklin Strap?

“We’ve gone through a really big transition this year,” Charlton told the MountainCity artists. “We’ve grabbed the digital age by the horns and are transitioning to a design and marketing firm rather than the faceless factory. We need to be shaking hands and making videos.”

You can see the results of this new direction at any of the Greg Bennett company websites or their Youtube channel. They have provided tutorials and instructional videos on many topics of interest to an artist.

“Greg has transitioned into the elder-statesman role with these very grand ideas,” Charlton said. “Greg believes the library is full of knowledge but you can’t do anything with it without creativity. We create the tools to foster the human ability.”

Dave and Tara were thrilled to have had that time with Charlton at the Franklin Strap headquarters during their Nashville visit.

“I love having you here,” Charlton responded to their enthusiasm. “Such talented people and I love having guys like you on our team, helping us spread the word.”

Here’s how to find Franklin Strap and other Greg Bennett companies:

Franklin Strap https://franklinstrap.com/

Glider Capos http://glidercapo.com/

Ethan Hart Guitars  https://ethanhartguitars.com/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/franklinstrap/ (most active social media site for Franklin Strap)

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FranklinStrap/

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/gregorybbennett (a lot of product info and instructional videos)

Charlton Moore’s email: [email protected] He always answers his email. 🙂

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Dave would like to thank his sponsor, Franklin Strap