Ever since the founder of the guitar company that bears his name moved from Europe to the Lehigh Valley in 1839, C.F. Martin and the town of Nazareth, Pennsylvania have been connected.

Generations later, the company is still crafting guitars in eastern Pennsylvania, not far from its original factory.
In the company’s museum, Made in America host Tyler Kern walked with current company CEO Chris Martin IV through Martin Guitar’s history to learn about where it’s been and where it’s going.

“The advantage we’ve always had, is if you’re a musician and you’re making a living playing music, playing the guitar, the Martin guitar was a reliable tool,” Martin IV said. “It was the Craftsman wrench of guitars.”

While Martin products are held in high regard in music circles, it has not been a 180-year honeymoon for the company. Each generation of owner has had to overcome new competition and musical trends, which required the company to adjust its offerings.

For example, the needs of country musicians were specific from the material of the strings to the makeup of the neck, forcing the company to cater to the needs of the most popular music of a generation.

“The instrument and the music evolved simultaneously,” Martin IV said.

The ebbs and flows of this longtime family business are closely tied to the leadership of each generation.

Martin IV’s father, and predecessor as CEO, experienced the highs and lows firsthand. He made acquisitions of several companies, one a successful string provider named Darco String Company, but another that did not result in much gain for Martin. The latter was a Swedish guitar maker that was purchased at an unfortunate time in the arc of musical taste.

“About the same time the demand for acoustic guitars dropped off precipitously,” Martin IV recollected.

While Martin was able to innovate around previous shifts in musical style and preferences, the 1980s posed an especially daunting challenge.

“Once again the market moved away from us. And not just us. If you were making guitars, particularly acoustic guitars, the ‘80s were a very difficult time. Very difficult,” Martin IV said.

Where there were once six strings and a fretboard, spandex had taken its place. While dancing with a guitar was a trademark of Elvis, Michael Jackson’s moonwalk wasn’t done with a guitar slung over his shoulder.

Shortly after this nadir, Martin IV was named as company CEO and pledged to recommit the business to its high standards. However, he was aided by some fortuitous timing.
“We picked up our game, and then MTV Unplugged happens. Thank God,” he said.

The show emphasized the intricacies and skills needed to play acoustic guitar, piquing interest en masse across the United States as well as cementing the place of Nirvana into the greater pop culture consciousness.

Martin IV also invested in new technology that received some skepticism from the company’s employees, but has led to growth without sacrificing quality.

Today, Martin continues to blend technology and the human touch to craft its signature products, and remains a major contributor to the music scene across the globe.
Even after each peak and valley, every Martin guitar’s journey still begins in Nazareth.

Every second counts in professional auto racing. While the drivers must be skilled to shave off fractions of a second at every turn, their pit crews work against the clock as well. It is critical for racing teams to be organized, communicative and prepared for whatever condition they find the vehicle when it comes in for repairs during a grand prix.

Technology has helped the most innovative teams beat both the clock and competitors. Analyzing thousands of data points each lap has allowed teams to gain new insights into their efforts, making the sport faster than ever before.

Renault Sport Racing Head of Partnerships Antoine Magnan has called F1 the most technological sport in the world. He gave MarketScale an exclusive look at what the Renault Racing team’s pit crew area looks like just hours before the drivers head to the starting line.

On November 3, F1 raced through Austin, Texas for the United States Grand Prix. Magnan’s Renault team competed against six-time champion Lewis Hamilton and the rest of the talented field.

Do athletes have a sixth sense when it comes to anticipating a penalty kick or deciphering whether to swing at an iffy strike zone pitch? Yes and no -- it's a mix of stellar hand-eye coordination, past experience that helps athletes anticipate the ball, and training. But not simply athletic training; visual-motor reaction time training.

On this episode of the MarketScale Sports and Entertainment Podcast, host Shelby Skrhak sits down with Dr. Daniel Laby, a board-certified Ophthalmologist and founder of SportsVision NYC, to discuss a very "Moneyball" approach to the role of vision in sports and performance, as well as to break down the Reflexion technology powering neuro-fitness in sports.

"Our eyes are just a camera," Laby said. "Our brain is what takes that image and makes a decision to bring in memory and training to decide whether you're going to make a motor action."

Laby began measuring eye-hand visual-motor reaction time more than 20 years ago when he was completing a fellowship with the LA Dodgers. Over 18 seasons, Laby measured the reaction time of thousands of baseball players and was able to quantify that data into actionable information coaches could use.

Over time, Laby went on to measure athletes' vision in other sports and found correlations between specific sports and its athletes' depth perception, contrast, and perception of light.

"Every sport has a different constellation of vision skills to perform optimally," Laby said. "In baseball, for example, it has to do with how well do you see sharpness of vision and ability to see contrast."

The culture around sports gambling has changed significantly in recent years, driven by the legalization of the activity across several states.

Professional sports leagues have embraced the new business opportunity and now a sports restaurant is digging into the wagering scene.

Buffalo Wild Wings on Thursday announced a partnership with casino operator MGM to allow sports betting in certain restaurant locations in states where the activity is legal. The companies will launch a wagering app called “Picks and Props,” which can be played anywhere on any smart device. There will not be gambling kiosks in the restaurants. Winners will have to pick up prizes at their local Buffalo Wild Wings location.

The companies will begin testing the offering in New Jersey, which legalized sports gambling in 2018 and takes in a similar amount of money to Las Vegas through sports wagers each month. If the venture is successful, it will expand to other states.

As of today, 19 states have made sports wagering legal, and several more will vote on legislation in coming months and years.

With the 2019 National Football Season kicking off this weekend, fans will be lined up around the country to catch their local team in action for the first time in months.

For now though, they may be in line a little longer than they are accustomed to.

Organizations like the Chicago Bears have mandated that fans use mobile tickets to enter their venue this season. Attendees will need to access their tickets through a smartphone in order to enter the stadium.

The move is an effort to combat fraudulent ticket sales and ultimately speed up gate lines, but the shift has come with some growing pains.

CBS Chicago reports that the Bears will offer three WiFi hotspot tents outside Soldier Field in order to aid ticketholders who have questions or issues with the new format.

With digital tickets comes new insights as well. Teams should be able to better track the flow of people over time, and which gates are busier at specific times. This should help the gameday experience in the long run.

Tune in to Business Casual, MarketScale’s live radio broadcast, every Wednesday and Friday at 8 a.m. CST.

Hurricane Dorian has caused widespread evacuations across the southeast coast of the U.S., and the second-stronger Atlantic storm on record may come with a hefty price tag for insurance providers.

Analysts at UBS say the storm could cause as much as 25 billion dollars in insurance industry losses. Overall, the investment bank estimates that 2019 will be responsible for approximately 70 billion dollars in natural catastrophe losses for insurers.

On a lighter note, the price tag for sports franchises has also been heavy in recent years, and Big Tech companies bidding on broadcast rights could pump more money into professional leagues.

Current National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell admitted in a recent press conference that big tech companies are already players in current broadcast negotiations.

Tumblr was once one of the biggest names in social media, trailing only the likes of Facebook and Twitter. They were purchased in 2013 by Yahoo for $1.1 billion, but times have changed for the blog platform. The former giant was sold to Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, for a mere $3 million. What happened to cause such a precipitous decline? 

Find out what Daniel Litwin and Tyler Kern has to say on this snippet from Business Casual.

For more, tune in to Business Casual, MarketScale’s live radio broadcast, every Wednesday and Friday at 8 a.m. CST.

Disney's new Star Wars Galaxy's Edge opened to smaller crowds than expected. Does this mean it was a flop?

Mike Wallace, creative director at Falcon’s Creative Group, doesn't necessarily think so. "When we see these new attractions opening up we expect there to be lines out the gate," he told Daniel Litwin and Tyler Kern on Business Casual. "I think Disney strategically, in my opinion, avoided that by saying we're going to make sure our guests have the best experience possible."

Hear the full interview and get more insights on this topic from Mike Wallace in this clip from Business Casual. 

Tune in to Business Casual, MarketScale's live radio broadcast, every Friday at 8 a.m. CST.

On a brand new segment of Business Casual that we're calling Kern Down for What, Tyler Kern explains to Daniel why he believes youth sports participation is dropping in the U.S.

Tune in to Business Casual at 8 AM CST on MarketScale.com/industries or the Simple Radio app for the latest in B2B industry news.