Ed Sheeran’s favourite guitar maker has signed a deal with Amazon to sell instruments across the US.
Lowden Guitars, based in the County Down town of Downpatrick, has already started selling its Lowden by Sheeran range on the online selling portal and said it has shipped hundreds of guitars to the US in time for the start of the singer’s north America gigs in the US this autumn.
The range is a design collaboration between Sheeran and the company’s founder George Lowden and has been on sale through distributors since 2019. It has broadened its network to include Amazon after attending an Amazon Global Selling Workshop arranged in collaboration with the UK Department for Business and Trade.
“After launching in Australia with Amazon, we have experienced first-hand the global opportunity available,” David Ausdahl, Managing Director, Lowden Guitars. “The sky is the limit because they give us a much bigger audience through access to regions where we have no representation at all.
“We are looking to expand our relationship with Amazon globally as we see it as an opportunity for growth. There are many regions we don’t even exist in, like Brazil and India. We get a lot of traffic to our site from India so those regions seem so much more accessible now through Amazon.”
As well as Ed Sheeran, Lowden’s guitars have also been played by Eric Clapton, Damien Rice, Lewis Capaldi and Niall Horan. Sheeran has been a fan of the guitars for a number of years.
“Our friendship with Ed developed as he started to play and write his songs on the Lowden and visited our workshops to choose more guitars,” David Ausdahl said. “We were so pleased to see how much he loved the guitars, so when Ed wanted to play a Lowden on stage, we of course voiced some especially for his stage use. That was the magic moment! Ed and George began to dream together of making a range of quality guitars more accessibly priced, that would inspire new players to make music. Sheeran by Lowden was born!”
Ed Sheeran praised the County Down firm’s guitars.
“I grew up wanting to play Lowden guitars, but they were so rare and so expensive I didn’t end up getting one until I was given one by my friend Gary [Lightbody] from Snow Patrol in 2012,” he said. “Through Gary I met George Lowden and he started making my tour guitars for me, which were amazing both on stage and in the studio.”
