WHILE many guitarists dreamt of being rock stars reeling off solos to hordes of screaming fans, guitar enthusiast Ho Zen Yong danced to a different tune: He wanted to build his own.

Turning out precision instruments in a highly competitive market is as daunting an ambition as you can get but Mr Ho, 29, was determined to have a shot.

'I always had a strong interest in how guitars were made and wanted to try my hand at making my own one day,' he said.

'So in 2004, I left for Goa to learn from an English luthier.'

The luthier - a maker of stringed instruments - taught Mr Ho, or 'Hozen', as he is known among friends and clients, pretty much everything he needed to know about making guitars.

That prompted Mr Ho to return and start Maestro guitars, setting up in a shop in the Peninsula Excelsior Hotel, guitar central for many Singapore musicians.

He had 20 handmade instruments on sale and has built up the business since, opening two other sales outlets and a service centre.

'Our sales has been good since I started out in late 2004 and growth has been steady,' said Mr Ho.

'And I am sure that if not for the recession, we would have experienced an even higher level of growth today on an annual basis.'

Five years after spending a month in Goa learning from the luthier Chris Horton, Mr Ho said he has sold more than 1,000 Maestro guitars.

Despite the downturn and a 20 per cent drop in sales between January and March this year, Mr Ho and his team of 12 staff - combination of builders and sales staff - have still managed a 10 per cent year-on-year growth since the company was formed.

'I always believed that if I maintained a strong business model that was backed by a good and unique concept, I would be able to survive any recession,' said the Singapore Management University (SMU) marketing graduate.

He uses only the highest quality tone woods such as Indian rosewood, red cedar and solid sitka spruce to make the guitars and employs new technology to differentiate Maestro from other established brands like Taylor and Blueridge.

Top-of-the-line Maestro guitars include carbon fibre-reinforced necks for more stability and improved tone, bolted necks for more resonance and additional brass tone-plates for a fuller sound.

The firm makes both classical guitars and steel-string models favoured by rock and folk players.

Maestro guitars retail from as low as $169 for entry-level models to $3,000 for a customised instrument.

Mr Ho has also started making ukuleles due to a surge in demand here.

'In the last few months, there seemed to be a strong interest in ukuleles and so I decided to produce a series of higher-end models that were made of finer tone woods,' he said.

Mr Ho said that even with the rising cost of tone woods and other raw materials, he still wants to offer customers quality and affordability, the elements of a successful business that he learnt from a young age.

The former Chinese High School student earned his spurs as a budding entrepreneur while doing his National Service and in university.

In 2000, he founded MD Portal - an online business distributing various brands of consumer electronics to local dealers - and in 2002 moved to an outdoor and sports marketing firm that distributed Laken sports bottles.

The Laken gig was followed by a short stint in 2003 distributing the DRI brand of towels - a revolutionary sports towel made of micro-fibre that he designed.

'I started the e-trading business with a $1,000 loan from my father - but it's money I have since paid back,' said Mr Ho.

Although none of the ventures quite took off, the profits he made did provide the $20,000 seed funding he needed to kick-start Maestro.

Within just three years, Mr Ho expanded his store network with a second store at the Esplanade, another at Parklane Shopping Mall and an electric guitar service centre, also at Peninsula Shopping Centre.

Maestro's success has surprised many, including his father because of the many obstacles Mr Ho faced in the early days.

The first hurdle was finding a proper workshop with the right set-up to craft the guitars.

However, his father, who runs Renner Piano Store at Parklane Shopping Mall, provided the breakthrough when he gave Mr Ho space at the Renner warehouse to fine-tune his guitar-making skills.

'My dad was always very encouraging and it helps to know that if I ever needed money, he would help. But so far I have not needed that, so I am indeed very, very lucky,' he said.

Mr Ho also endeavoured to connect with several luminaries in the global guitar scene such as Mr Kenny Hill of Hill Guitars in the United States and legendary Japanese guitar-repair maestro Hideo Kamimoto. These masters provided invaluable advice on how to build the instruments, said Mr Ho.

In March, Mr Ho opened his fourth outlet, this one at the Parklane mall near his father's piano shop.

This store, called the Maestro Living Room, was set up to give free lessons to budding guitarists and also to help them understand the intricacies of how guitars are made to appreciate the instruments more.

'I started to offer free guitar lessons to anyone that signs up at that store. They don't even need to buy a guitar from me,' he said.

'I did it because I wanted to spread the word about Maestro and to share my passion for guitars, especially how they were made.'

Mr Ho, who returned from a scouting trip to China last week, is looking to expand the Maestro network, after breaking into Australian, Belgian and French markets where Maestro guitars are now on sale.

'China is actually a good market for us to set up a shop and sell our guitars, but despite the free trade agreement between China and Singapore, there are still many other tax issues we to need to consider,' said Mr Ho.

'So we are now thinking of moving to markets with easier access such as Hong Kong or even Malaysia, where we can franchise our concept stores and spread the word about our Singapore-made guitars.'

franchan@sph.com.sg