Great question! Let's answer it as thoroughly as possible. First, GUP stands for GUillaume Parent, which is the name of the founder of the brand. How do you pronounce it? As you wish, mainly, but if you are very committed at pronouncing it the "right" way, you must be able to pronounce "U" in French. It's not a "oo" nor a "ou", it's really just the letter "U", in a G-P sandwich. If you can't, no worries.
We are located in beautiful Saguenay, a city in the region of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, in the province of Québec, in Canada. We are native Québécois French speaker, just watch some of our videos to hear it, and we are also a couple. Yes, the name is after Guillaume, but I (Emilie) was there all along. The only thing I take no credit for is the repair shop aspect of the business. Guillaume still works at his day job, and when he has some time in between everything else, he likes to repair and setup guitars and amps.
We started in 2019, and things have been rolling since. All of our pedals are handmade by us, either Guillaume, Samuel (his brother) or Marcus (my son) and 100 % of the designs are by me, either hand decorated with vinyl, or UV printed. We design, build and ship from our home.
One point that seems to surprise people that either know us or just discovered us, is that we are a 100 % independent small business. What does it mean? We do not depend on anyone but ourselves. No subventions, no grants, only fun founded. The only money that pours in our business comes from either our sales or our bank accounts. Except for a few stores that buy from us as customers, we are still not distributed in any physical store and we do not intend to do so either, at least under the GUPTech brand.
Last year, we bought the brand Jonny Rock Gear, another independent handmade boutique pedal company, and added this to our catalogue. The pedals are available in our online store, but we do distribute in a few physical stores.
Take our time and snoop around on our website. We have blog posts, resources, videos, accessories and many useful things for the needs of guitarists and bassists.