When Ola Englund launched Solar guitars in 2017, he branched away from a successful music career with the Haunted to pursue his passion for electric guitars in a whole new way. His new business was a risk. But he had his reasons – and it paid off.
“It stemmed from frustration with the guitar industry,” he tells Rick Beato of his decision to start his own guitar company. “I've been with several brands before – I had a signature guitar with Washburn, which was a dream come true because Dimebag is one of my main influences. I had a Randall signature amplifier, and I was very stoked.
“But I got very disappointed in how the business side of things worked. It’s a very old system of distribution, dealers, and salespeople. As a YouTuber where everything goes fast, it was very frustrating to see how it could take a year for a guitar to come into production,” he continues.
“My followers wanted to buy my guitars, but they were nowhere to be found. These salespeople were trying to sell the guitars to distributors who had absolutely no idea who I was, like, ‘Who the fuck is this YouTube guy?’
“We knew that people wanted to buy the guitars, but there's no way to get them. And if they wanted to get them, it would take a full year of selling to distributors and dealers, then they make the order, then there's another seven months of production.
“It’s frustrating in a fast-moving world,” Englund reiterates. “ So the whole idea of the brand was to sell direct to consumers, because why would I need the middle man that has absolutely no idea who I am or what I'm talking about?”
He accepts it was a “gamble at first” with 300 guitars made available to order as Solar launched without knowing if they'd be a hit or not. Why? Because “people want to have the guitars in their hands within days.”
As such, Solar doesn’t deal with distributors and dealers. “We can release guitars whenever we want,” he says.
“We’re doing it the opposite: we’re ordering first and selling last. So people don’t have to wait, and that’s a big part of our success, I think.”
Notable recent releases from Solar have included a guitar that oxidizes as you play it, a series of relic'd guitars to lean into the growing trend, and a signature model for Crowbar's Kirk Windstein.
Englund has also had a tapping lesson from Wolfgang Van Halen, who has detailed his two approaches to the technique.
