PRS

Paul Reed Smith built his first guitar as an extra-credit project at St. Mary's College in the mid-1970s. By the early 1980s he was hand-selling prototypes to touring guitarists backstage at East Coast arenas — Carlos Santana, Al Di Meola, Howard Leese, and others gave him the early orders that bootstrapped the company. PRS opened in Annapolis in 1985 with fewer than fifteen employees and unserialized inventory; today it's headquartered on Kent Island, Maryland, employs around 420 people, and is the third-largest electric guitar maker in the United States. Paul still works on the floor. The acoustic line is younger.