François started modding guitars for fun shortly after high school. In early 2019, he began to experiment with creating tortoiseshell in order to embellish his twin brother's MIJ Fender Jaguar. After a year of research, he shared the result of his work on offsetguitars.com. The enthusiastic response of the forum members convinced him to start Avantguard, his own brand of handmade tortoiseshell pickguards.