If Kyser Capos founder Milton Kyser were alive to see his company turn 40 years old, he’d be beaming with pride and handing out his anniversary edition capos to everyone he encountered. A jolly capo Santa Claus, if you will.
At least, that’s how his successor and great niece Meredith McClung pictures the hypothetical scene, as the storied accessory brand toasts to four decades.
“His chest would be so pumped up, he would be beaming with pride, and he would be carrying his signature capos around and just giving him to everybody,” she says. “You couldn’t be around him when he didn’t have a capo in his pockets. He had a second-grade education, [was from a] family of sharecroppers in East Texas. And to see what we have, how far we’ve come, he would be bursting with pride.”
Since those formative days of Milton’s early capo-making, the faces at Kyser have changed a bit, but the foundation of the company remains the same: classic Texas craftsmanship and the providing the accessory that makes music happen. Scott Attebery is just helping steer the ship alongside McClung now, instead of her sole leadership at the company following Milton’s passing.
Attebery, who joined the Kyser team in 2018 as an executive consultant, was named CEO last fall, while former CEO Meredith maintains the titles of president and owner of the company.
“It was professionally and personally the best time for me,” McClung says. “I’m a single parent now. After my uncle passed away, I was left in charge of his estate. I haven’t been able to give my full attention to the company, and I realized that I’ve got this fantastic team of coworkers in leadership that were getting no leadership for me. I’m still very active, I’m just able to hand over a lot of the big decisions to Scott.”
While Attebery isn’t related to the Kyser family, his relationship with Meredith goes back years, starting when the two met through his work in ministry. Looking back on his original career choices, Attebery says he “would have laughed” had his 20-year-old self been told that he’d be a MI CEO one day.
“I was the executive director of a ministry where we were serving 1,200 churches. We had to make business decisions, but we were a nonprofit,” Attebery explains. “I pastored for several years, and then most recently worked at a ministry where we were providing resources to churches. It was everything from curriculum to use at churches, to consulting with struggling churches. We produced conferences for all different age groups. We even had a summer camp for kids.”
In a twist of fate, McClung grew up attending one of the conferences that Attebery’s ministry was producing. As an adult, she came to sponsor concerts for one of Attebery’s conferences multiple years in a row via Kyser.
“Before you know it, she had sponsored the concert multiple years and we had become good friends,” Attebery says. With his unique business background and recent relocation to East Texas, McClung offered him the original position in 2018.
“I do have two family members on my [Kyser] board. It was a double-thumbs-up from everybody,” McClung says of Attebery’s promotion to CEO. “The reason that I really wanted to bring an outsider in is he gives us a fresh perspective. Our family – we have a culture. He came from a different culture and we definitely needed something fresh. And Scott’s definitely brought that to the company and really to the culture of the company. Scott came in and he has time and he has the energy and he has brains to take everything that I had already put together and make it work.”
She adds: “I had to put aside my pride and realize I’m not getting the job done 100 percent. We were getting by, but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted it to be better. You have to put aside your pride and realize I can’t do it all. That’s why I stepped aside and let Scott come in and lead. And it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve made since I started working here.”
Although, to McClung’s credit, she passed on quite the ironclad team for Attebery to manage.
“Meredith put together an incredible team – she knows how to identify talent and to attract talent,” Attebery says. “I think I would have been terrified [taking on the CEO title] if it wasn’t for the fact that the team is so strong. In putting together the team here, she has brought in some incredible female leadership. I don’t think she did that just for the sake of bringing in women; I think she did it because they were the best for the job. It’s really been an honor for me to get to work with some incredible female leaders in the music industry, and they are just top-notch. I think that’s a compliment to Meredith and her leadership. She has attracted that.”
Expanding the Brand
Of all the things that McClung and Attebery are proud of upon the 40th anniversary of Kyser, there’s one particular feat that stands above the rest: The Kyser capo has hardly changed – or needed to change – in over four decades.
“The thing that I think speaks volumes about Milton is that that original design, for the most part, is exactly what we’re still producing,” says Attebery. “It was such a phenomenal invention that it hasn’t required hardly any change at all. Obviously we can change the color. We can change the tension on the spring to try to accommodate different action all guitars. We might even change the rubber. But I cannot imagine a scenario in which the capo still isn’t the same capo that Milton created.”
“The capo is still our bread and butter,” McClung adds. “We haven’t brought in new products that have completely taken over. I love that the capo is still what keeps us running as a company. And that capo, that’s Milton’s legacy, 100 percent. We can bring in new products and they can be successful. But I love that this was his gift really to the music industry, to the company, and this is what keeps our doors open and our lights on.”
Customers are attached to Kyser’s perfected model of the capo, too; McClung says it’s not uncommon for the company to receive years-old beat-up capos from customers asking for a repair. For an accessory that would cost less than $20 to replace, their buyers’ attachment to Kyser products speaks volumes.
Equally impressive is the company’s dedication to keeping Texas craftsmanship front and center. Known for a gritty, tough, and detail-oriented work ethic, the “Don’t mess with Texas” state motto still shines through the quality of every Kyser product, all made in the United States.
“We’re still making our capos in the USA, in Texas. That’s a milestone,” McClung says. “All of our raw materials, everything that we sourced for our products – we just haven’t had to go outside of the United States to source anything.”
“To be honest, if we wanted to get by cheap, we could probably bend some rules and cut corners, but that’s not who we are,” Attebery adds.
Still, as a major MI accessory company, Kyser feels the pressure to roll out items that are new, updated, and exciting to consumers in general. But how you can reinvent an already-perfected capo? The answer is that you simply don’t – you just expand into new markets and introduce new accessories.
“I have been through those periods where I’m like, ‘What are we going to do next?’” McClung shares. “That’s why we have an R&D guy that he’s constantly looking and seeing what other good products that we can add. So we do strings. We do things other than capos. We have a pretty decent product line, and Milton was thinking forward when he started to bring on strings and care products because we started selling overseas.”
“What we do to grow as a company is we thoughtfully look at either introducing new guitar accessories to the market,” she adds. “Another thing that we would love to do is buy other companies that would complement what we already do. But that’s it, we want to be thoughtful about that. We don’t want to just go find a company that’s barely making ends meet and just for the sake of it. We just want to make sure everything fits with our culture and our brand.”
Recently, Kyser has enlisted Frederick Export of Denver, Colorado, as the company’s export partner, helping Kyser to expand their global footprint. While Kyser already has some sort of presence in roughly 50 countries, they look forward to expanding their reputation in new parts of the globe.
“In the United States, we’re a fixture. People recognize us – and we believe we can build on that,” Attebery explains. “There’s no reason that people shouldn’t be able to recognize and find a Kyser capo in their local music store no matter where they are around the globe.”
Also on deck for 2020 is more R&D, which will go hopefully in hand with more global growth. In the meantime, to celebrate Kyser’s special anniversary, the company has rolled out special edition capos for sale. In a special initiative, the Kyser team is also gifting the capo to 40 up-and-coming musicians – just like Milton would do if he were still around.
“In honor of Milton’s love for live music, we’ve identified or are identifying 40 emerging artists to give a capo to just in honor of the spirit of Milton,” says Attebery. “[We’re] trying to just do some things there that really echo what he was all about.”
Clearly, some leaders come and go, and titles change over time, but Kyser capos – and the craftsmanship and tradition that comes with them – are simply forever.
