Join Our Mission: Build Careers Reviving Musical Instruments

Michael Caveney is organizing this fundraiser.

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I. Who/What is Lorien Guitar Recovery?

My name is Michael Caveney. I am the owner of Lorien Guitar Recovery. We operate out of Boring, Oregon, a small mountain foothill community outside Portland, OR. We sell refurbished string instruments of all kinds: guitars, basses and other stringed folk instruments. Our mission is to increase the availability and accessibility of affordable quality musical instruments to players and students alike by focusing on recycling used instruments.

We started over 10 years ago, in our barn. We sold on-line exclusively until we opened the store in September of 2022. The store, with the repair shop, filled a gigantic hole in the community. We discovered that Boring, Oregon has a wealth of players and students that want to support a local music store. That shift in our understanding changed the way we approach our business and our customers.

We are not just a local retail store, but a valuable resource for music and musicians for our community. To better meet the needs of that community, we want to expand our service center and our offerings. That’s why we seek your help.

II. What is our Story?

Click to read the full story behind Lorien Guitar Recovery.

III. Why Would You Care?

We refurbish (re-use) discarded instruments and make them accessible and affordable. At a time when reuse and re-purpose of existing resources is paramount, we seek to be a part of that environmental movement.

Click for more information about our refurbishing process.

But we have a greater vision, and a grander mission:

• We want to preserve the skills necessary to repair and refurbish musical instruments of all kinds, through apprenticeships with skilled repair technicians. We are doing that with guitars; one apprentice is now a talented guitar repair tech, and another apprentice is in place. As soon as possible we want to do the same with woodwinds, and violins.

• We want to get instruments into the hands of every player through creative pricing, and creative giving. We have done that with the Reynolds High School Guitar Club, and a recent gift to Sandy High School.

• We want to provide special musicianship awards that gifts quality instruments to skilled and/or deserving individuals. We have done that with several guitars and basses, and want to do more.

• We want to provide instruments to libraries and lending institutions so everyone can try instruments without spending money they don’t have. We believe that finding the instrument that fits you is the most difficult task in learning music. We want to make that task easier and without financial burden.

IV. Why We Seek Your Help

When we opened, we invested in our inventory, to provide a truly wide range of instruments in type and price. As a new retail store, we projected it would take us three years to turn profitable. We are soon to celebrate our second anniversary.

Over the last two years, we have averaged a gross income of $9,000 a month with minimal advertising or social media presence with only 1 full-time person, and open only 4 days a week. We have a lot of room to grow, but without staff we cannot grow revenue, and without growing revenue, we cannot hire staff. This is a typical challenge for a successful start-up.

Our repair department is a huge hit and draw, but we were not able to fund employees to staff the shop, so we use temporary contractors. In our first twelve months of operation, we fixed or refreshed over 500 instruments, but because we are unable to fund salaries, we were often late or have to turn away work.

Our company is self-funded. To date we have been successful in generating enough local business to fund our current operating costs. But to generate the revenue we need to hire two fulltime employees and create a higher level of service for our customers. This requires us to have two full time employees on board. We are caught in a quandary

Here is what we will do with the funding from this campaign:

1. We need to transform the company from a sole proprietorship to a form of LLC.

We need to guarantee that the company will survive me, and become a force of its own, and that the jobs we create become permanent. Because of the investments made by me and my wife to date, and the complexity of the transfer of assets to the LLC, we will need a lawyer and tax specialist to help us transition. It’s a one-time expense.

2. We need to hire staff.

a. The first position to fill is a Service Manager, a full-time repair technician. The person we intend to hire is a trusted friend and “graduate” of our apprentice program in guitar repair area. He has worked with us for 6 years. His name is, Jonathan Perez-Santiago. Under our program, Johnathan has developed into a highly skilled instrument repair person has a background in retail management. He is also a really good guitar player. We want to bring him on as a salaried Service Manager. This position will pay for itself in 6-8 months.

b. The second position is an On-Line Sales Manager. We have an on-line store at www.lorienguitar.com. We also have a Reverb store (for special/unique instruments), an eBay Store (for auctions), and a Facebook Market presence. We need someone full time to manage all of these platforms. This person could work remotely and would not need to be present at either of our sites full time. We believe this is ideal for someone that has limited mobility but a good understanding of social media. Income from this position is partially salary and partially commissions. We have not identified this person yet. The revenue expected from this person is, at a minimum, equal to the current store revenue.

c. The third position is part-time Repair Apprentice. This person is also a contractor currently, but we want to bring him on-board as an hourly employee. This position will also pay for his own salary. He has been with us a little over one year and is rapidly becoming a competent repair tech, and is one of our best “stringers”. He too is a really good guitar player.

V. How did we choose the funding number?

1. For the legal work:

We anticipate a bill between $15,000 and $25,000. For the purposes of this funding request, we are using $25,000.00 as the number for this part.

2. For the yearly salaries,

• We anticipate $56,000 for the Service Manager.

• We anticipate $35,000 plus $15,000 in commissions for the On-Line Sales Manager.

• We anticipate $20,000 -$30,000 for part-time apprentice.