FROM THE TOP THE NORTH AMERICAN GUITAR I BEN MONTAGUE
INTERVIEWED BY KATIE KAILUS
HOW DO YOU START YOUR DAY? I’m a very early riser — my alarm goes off at quarter to five, and I tend to get up around 5 a.m. The first thing I do is make my wife a cup of coffee, which I do every morning. Then I’ll catch up on emails and see what’s happened the night before in terms of the company. After that, I’ll get the kids’ breakfasts ready, walk the dog and then go to the gym. I’m usually at work by about 9 a.m. I have quite a long morn - ing routine, but because I’m so busy, I try to always put my family first — that’s the most important thing. I want to give real time to my wife and kids in the mornings so that when I leave, I can be fully focused at work. CAN YOU SHARE A LITTLE BIT ON YOUR BACKGROUND AND THE FOUNDING OF THE NORTH AMERICAN GUITAR? The company was started in 2010 in London — it was actually a London business called The North American Guitar. So, we obviously feel like it was written in our destiny that we were going to end up in the U.S. CAN I INTERRUPT? HOW DID THAT NAME COME TO BE? Great question. The steel-string acoustic guitar came from North America, so that’s where the name came from. AH, GOT IT, CONTINUE. So, we started off in a very small office selling vintage gui - tars and pre-owned guitars, but we really cut our teeth on the boutique market. We grew that business in the U.K., then got bigger and started doing product launches and taking on new brands — like Bourgeois and Santa Cruz — trying to offer customers a wider array of instruments. I know you guys called us “customer obsessed” when we were on the cover of Music Inc.’s August 2024 issue, but I’ve always had that instinct. I love people, and whether you’re buying or selling, you just want to have a great experience, because that’s what keeps you coming back. So, in 2019, I was coming back from The NAMM Show with my wife and our young children, and I got a cryptic email from a customer named Craig. It said “Opportunity in Nashville. Are you interested?” I said “yes” immediately, not even knowing what it was. I got back, picked up the phone, and spoke to Kim Sherman, who is still our managing part - ner. Her partners from Cotten Music were leaving, and she was in a kind of no man’s land about what she wanted to do with the store. So, I flew out, met her, and we connected on so many levels — customer experience, love of the instru - ment, matching guitars to people, the consignment model. It
felt like a great recipe to work together. In 2021 or 2022, my family and I moved to Nashville, right after COVID started. We quickly realized we couldn’t run two businesses — one in England and one here — so we closed down the U.K. operation and moved everything to Nashville. It just made more financial and business sense. We then acquired Carter Vintage Guitars in 2022 and start - ed building from there. We amalgamated the three brands — Cotten Music, The North American Guitar and Carter’s — under one roof, and that’s when I formed TNAG Global. A lot of people assume it’s a private equity–owned company, but it isn’t. It’s a fam - ily-owned business. We had worked with private equity in the past, but it didn’t work out, so we pulled the company back. And it was re - ally then that I started seeing this ongoing trend of incredible legacy brands all around America — what happens to them when they don’t have a succession plan? Some do, some don’t. That’s where my obsession came from: ensuring that the foundation of the guitar industry — pre-owned, vintage, new and buying, selling and consigning — retained that hu - man element, and that these brands didn’t just vanish into a marketplace that can sometimes feel very intangible. I’m a big tech person, and I reinvest everything into our own tech, but I want to make sure there’s still that personal connection — knowing you can go to Carter’s and see Hen - ry, or pick up the phone and talk to Kim. In the premium part of the market, that kind of relationship is really important. WE FEATURED YOUR NEW CARTER VINTAGE GUITARS SHOWROOM IN OUR AUGUST 2024 IS- SUE. ANY UPDATES? I can’t believe it’s already been two years since we moved locations. I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve built. The whole vision was to go from a warehouse to something really special, and for us, with 85% consignment, if you don’t have the intake flow and process absolutely dialed in, everything crumbles. That’s why we’ve invested so heavily in our own proprietary inventory management system and tech stack. What I’m most proud of is that when we set up that work - flow — intake, description, specs, repair and so on — we pushed to find the maximum number of guitars we could pro - cess. When we acquired Carter’s, they were doing about 150 consignments a month at most. We now regularly break 450 per month. AMAZING. THIS PAST JANUARY, YOU ANNOUNCED TNAG WAS ACQUIRED NORMAN’S
28 I MUSIC INC. I APRIL 2026
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