The Fender Mexico factory is located in Ensenada in Baja California. The factory itself is located in a small industrial area.

The factory is pretty well known by the local residences.  Not necessarily by name, but by the logo. We found this out when we asked our Taxi driver to take us to Fender and got a puzzled look. After showing him my Fender luggage tag, we were quickly whisked off to the factory.

On our arrival, Sergio Villanueva, the vice president of Mexico operations, and Ruben Aguilar Flores, the production manager, greeted us (Ruben on left, Sergio on right).  After a short meeting we were off on our much anticipated factory tour with Ruben and were later joined by Marisela Sanchez, the Spanish web site moderator and public relations person.

Note: The Fender factories are not generally open to the public. You can, however, visit the Fender Museum in Corona, California.
 

Although I did not ask, they seem to be paid a competitive wage. From what I could tell by the way everyone was dressed, by their work ethics, and the spirit with which they did their jobs, they are probably paid a bit more than the average worker.  Many of them were so interested in their jobs; they preferred to work through their lunch hour.

They have a policy that if a worker can meet their quantity AND quality standards before the end of the day, they can go home with full pay.  I was told that some of the craftsmen are so skilled that at times, some have been able to leave at 11:00 AM on Friday’s. 

They are also very open to employee ideas. Many times it’s a small idea, other times it’s for a new line of guitars, or a special run model. The ideas are taken to marketing and if they like it, it goes into production.

The factory is broken into four major areas, acoustic guitars, electric guitars and basses, amplifiers and strings.  It’s actually divided even more than that for manufacturing purposes, but for us “laymen”, four areas is enough. All of the operations are housed in several different buildings.