Alex Garden
Alex Garden is the CEO of Vancouver-based game developer Relic Entertainment, which he co-founded with Luke Moloney in 1997. In February 2005, he founded the company iVALET Systems Inc. to develop an advanced parking system. In July 2005, he co-founded Klei Entertainment, a Vancouver-based video game development studio, with Jamie Cheng. On November 3, 2006, Alex Garden joined Nexon to run Nexon's North American game development studio, Nexon Publishing North America. In October, 2009, Alex Garden joined Microsoft to work in their games division, Microsoft Game Studios. On April 23, 2014, Zynga announced that Alex Garden was hired to become President of Zynga Studios with a start date of May 5, 2014. On 13 April 2016 Alex Garden returned to Relic Entertainment as CEO. In 2016 Garden founded Zume Pizza.
Fender Custom Shop
An offshoot of Fender's forays into replicating the look of heavily worn instruments was the introduction of the Fender Relic series in the late 1990s. Urban legend states that idea came as guitarist Keith Richards of the British rock group The Rolling Stones told the Custom Shop that some replicas he commissioned for a Stones tour 'looked too new', stating: "Bash 'em up a bit and I'll play 'em," but this has been denied by multiple Fender employees and Richards himself. The true story stemmed from Stones' producer Don Was. In 1994 Jay W. Black, one of the Senior Master Builders at the time, attended a Stones recording session in Los Angeles. Was wanted Black to beat up his new Sadowsky bass that he was due to play with Bonnie Raitt at a Grammy Awards ceremony because he felt "it looked too squeaky clean".