business talk

[StarryNight]

ok, I'll be the first to admit I am new to the art/science of winding pickups. I have successfully built my winder and wound a couple of nice sounding humbuckers, and I'm looking forward to learning and winding more pickups as the years go on. My first intention was to build pickups for the guitars I'm making (also a new venture) to create a very customized instrument (maybe even sell them if I get good). However, I decided to post a small add locally stating that i'm in the R&D stage of designing pickups and if anyone would like to come down and try them out, give me some feedback etc., I would install them on their guitar and if they liked them they could buy them but no pressure yada yada. That was less than 48 hours ago. I have since received 14 emails from people interested in try/buying pickups. I was not expecting this kind of response but I'm plesantly surprised and now I'm wondering if I should persue this more seriously (i.e. invest in some stock etc.) Without revealing too much, can anyone give me an idea if making pickups as a one man opperation can be a profitable venture or is it more famine than feast? Does your business come mostly from word of mouth, local players or the internet? If I were to slowly invest more into it, what would be a good place to start re. stock, equipment, meters. I feel I'm in a good position as i only work 3 days a week at my day job and teach guitar in the evenings (which i'm ready to let go if i could).
thanks...

[SkinnyWire]

If you make a good product, you should have all the business you can handle. I've never advertised, but have had consistent business for years. By the second year, I was actually getting overwhelmed by orders and had to tweak my turnaround time to the point where the flow was sane since I have a full time day job. You can get the word out pretty easy over the net, and once you develop a base you really don't need to advertise ... IMO.

As a one man show, I think the biggest challenge is the routine/monotony of just cranking out pickups hour after hour. It can really grind on you after awhile and can sort of take over your life. If you're ready to take that on, you don't need a whole lot to get going in earnest. You've got the winder. A 9-10 pound spool of 42 gage will build a significant number of coils so maybe one of those and one 43 gage if you're looking to build some medium and high output winds. A bulk order of magnets - maybe 50 to 100 A2 and 50 to 100 A5 since those are the most common/popular grades, and a bulk order of bobbins and frames of various color. The most popular seems to be black. Double cream is out due to the DiMarzio trademark. Maybe half as many cream and some white just to mix things up. Slugs, screws, etc. Easy enough to put together the bits, and pretty inexpensive when you consider how quick you can make it back by selling a few pickups.

A decent DMM is really all you need as far as equipment goes. My magnet charger has become an invaluable tool as well and Gauss meter, but you can probably live without them in the beginning and buy them with profits as you go. An LCR meter comes in handy from time to time. You'll quickly run out of time to drop every one in a guitar for "real world" test.

Anyway, rambling on and I'm sure other folks here can help you a lot more. There are a million gear heads out there, and they change pickups like they change their underwear (I hope). You'll get a good bit of repeat business if you build good stuff, and that will drive your business via word of mouth. Advertise if/when you need to.

[Possum]

...

I'll chip in here. Don't be fooled by those first responses :-) Before even considering doing this as a living you need to spend a year or two figuring out how to make GOOD pickups, EXCELLENT pickups. And make pickups that aren't going to die onstage in the middle of someone's summer tour gigs. On the surface this stuff seems easy, but at its deeper levels, imagine spending 3 months of everyday pickup swapping, parts swapping, trying to nail a tone in your head and ending up with tone variations in say 50-60 sound clips you have to dig through, and while doing this, simultaneously trying to fullfill existing orders? Well, thats just what I've been doing lately and not done yet. Never done, really.

The biggest hurdle is gaining a world wide reputation for excellence in tone, and MOST importantly customer service. Can you deal with musicians endlessly talking about tone on the phone and never ordering anything, time wasters, people with drug problems calling you in the middle of the night, a customer who got a pickup of yours that died on him and who is angry beyond sanity, threatening to post on every guitar forum on the internet that your pickups are horrible and your customer service is the worst on the planet? At some point you'll encounter those problems and if you make the wrong move your reputation could be destroyed almost overnite, its happened here on this forum once even.

Then there is the parts problem, there are scores of parts you need to have on hand all the time, wire supplies that need to be kept current, band saw blades to buy, expensive test gear to buy, and very few suppliers. You won't get the best prices like the big guys do so your profit margin is much smaller than say Duncan etc. Several times suppliers have all run out of humbucker bobbins in the last few years so that none of the small makers could get them, what do you do then?

Then you need to have a commercial "image" that shows the world you're a serious player in the field so you need a professionally designed website, and you need to advertise to your target audience in national/worldwide guitar magazines. Ain't cheap.

Bottom line is you absolutely must be obsessed with pickup making or your products will just be ho hum, run of the mill, same as everybody else's. This takes years to get a handle on and obsessive experimentation with test gear, not to mention testing your pickups yourself at real live gigs or jams. You need to have professionals try your work and be prepared to be told your work doesn't cut it, in the beginning. You need to be an outside of the box thinker and not copy anybody else's work. Which means inventing unique pickups that nobody else makes or has even thought of. You need to be a good enough guitar player to be able to hold your own onstage with the hottest guitar player in town. If you're just a basic bedroom player how are you going to judge tone on a professional level? I spent about 10 years religiously going to blues jams twice a week, learning to play better, and watching what the professionals do, how they hear tone.

There are alot of big hurdles there, and as in the previous post, at its most basic it can be supremely boring and exhausting making the same stuff day after day after day. For me I can do about 3 days of intense production then I start to get burnt around the edges and have to back off, but I'm an old fart too :-) My advice is if you are toying with this idea just do it part time for a couple years, learn your craft, study your craft, burn up alot of wire in experiments til you know what coils do inside and out, get an LCR meter, guassmeter, magnetizer, good soldering irons, a good winding machine, and start throwing money out the door in this pursuit. AFter 2 or 3 years you'll know if this is for you or not. I've been doing this 6 years, almost 7 now and only went full time about 8 months ago. Its hard work and being a one man business in a supply/stock driven enterprise is always a struggle to keep up. Even with my very solid reputation I don't have more business than I can deal with, and who knows what the economy will do to my work, I don't see it getting better anytime soon. I do enjoy what I do, research is my real joy, and having customers happy with their guitars after using my work. I'll stick with this for a couple years and see how far I can take the business.

[belwar]

This brings up an interesting point .. How has the economy effected everyones business? I'll be upfront and say that the last month has been slower than i've ever seen it. Even business in Europe is slow. I'm not predicting a good Christmas season myself.

[JGundry]

I actually think that pickup and other guitar accessory sales will probably go up in a down economy. People who can't afford to make a big guitar or amp purchase will instead be looking to improve what they already with new pickups, effects, speakers...

As far as advice goes... If you can play and feel you have a good ear for good tone then that is your best tool. Make pickups you like. Get feedback from others and adjust. But ultimately it's your name on the pickups.

[Possum]

...

I haven't seen any change in my sales, but I don't do alot of product to begin with. On top of that a large part of my sales comes from overseas, the dollar is in the toilet so US goods are a bargain right now. I think making pickups might be fairly stable, the players who buy my stuff generally don't complain about my prices and are likely better off than the average Joe, so I don't see my sales plummeting from that market group. Thank God for the internet and Paypal is all I gotta say :-)

[SkinnyWire]

I had no drop off in sales. In fact, things are up a bit over the last few weeks.

[chevalij]

For me, sales have been the same. As for the business end, it can be a pain in the butt. Come home from a real job and go to work winding pickups. My wife wants to go out to a movie or something and I can't because "I have to wind pickups" She'll have plans on the weekend, but "I have to wind pickups". At first it was interesting and great. But after the first few hundred sets of pickups the fun wears off. The last thing you really feel like doing is experimenting because, well, you'd have to wind those freaking pickups!!! Of course, you can only wind when your suppliers have met the deadline on the parts you ordered two months ago and still haven't got!

And then some idiot calls or emails because he wants a tone like Gilmour on the bridge, John Frusciante neck and possiblly Hendrix in the mid. Oh yeah, they have a Squier strat made out of freakin Balsa wood with a hockey stick neck playing a Fender Frontman amp. They want every second pole to be A2 with the others A5 and can I mix the wire? Then they want to know what cap to use to get the Angus Young tone from their strat!!! Life would be great if it weren't for the customers Man I need a drink.....

[J S Moore]

You pretty much nailed it right on the head. I've lost count of how many times I've had requests for the impossible.

[kevinT]

For me, sales have been the same. As for the business end, it can be a pain in the butt. Come home from a real job and go to work winding pickups. My wife wants to go out to a movie or something and I can't because "I have to wind pickups" She'll have plans on the weekend, but "I have to wind pickups". At first it was interesting and great. But after the first few hundred sets of pickups the fun wears off. The last thing you really feel like doing is experimenting because, well, you'd have to wind those freaking pickups!!! Of course, you can only wind when your suppliers have met the deadline on the parts you ordered two months ago and still haven't got!

And then some idiot calls or emails because he wants a tone like Gilmour on the bridge, John Frusciante neck and possiblly Hendrix in the mid. Oh yeah, they have a Squier strat made out of freakin Balsa wood with a hockey stick neck playing a Fender Frontman amp. They want every second pole to be A2 with the others A5 and can I mix the wire? Then they want to know what cap to use to get the Angus Young tone from their strat!!! Life would be great if it weren't for the customers Man I need a drink.....

hehehehehehe that is funny. And you're so right.

I actually stopped promoting for the last few months to keep sales down because I just have too much to do around the house that I have been neglecting. It can actually be frustrating when you have a lot of other responsibilities including a full-time day job.

But on the other side of the coin it is fun and gratifying. Especially when you make folks happy because you're giving them the tone they seek. And it really is a ego booster when they start taking pickups, of well known makers (DiMarzio, Duncan, and some boutique makers), out of thier guitars and replacing them with yours because they like the tone that you offer more.

[StarryNight]

Man, I am so glad I started this thread! This is incredibly helpful - thank you all for replying. As with any business venture, it starts out as a creative idea which then becomes a responsibility and something that needs to be managed on many different levels. So many small business owners (myself included - I used to own an organic grocery store years ago) struggle with the boundries of personal life vs. 'the business' and I think we all look for that golden ratio which gives us energy as well as capital to keep going without burning out from stress and fatigue (or even bordom). I'm getting the feeling one of the caveats is customer satisfaction when the customer doesn't even know what their asking for. I heard a good quote the other day, 'the customer is not always right, but he is the customer...' The other thing I'm picking up is that this can be a tedious job. I'm not sure what to say about that as it's still very novel to me. Hopefully there's a way to keep sane watching all that copper go by - it is kind of hypnotic. I'd love to hear more stories (bad and good) what's your most frustrating customer experience? Do you ever listen to your clients on stage playing your pickups and say to yourself, 'yeah - I'm the reason he's getting laid tonight'

[chevalij]

Hopefully there's a way to keep sane watching all that copper go by - it is kind of hypnotic. I'd love to hear more stories (bad and good) what's your most frustrating customer experience? Do you ever listen to your clients on stage playing your pickups and say to yourself, 'yeah - I'm the reason he's getting laid tonight'

Listen to music, the TV anything other than just watching the winder spin. I've never though, 'yeah - I'm the reason he's getting laid tonight', but I do know that sometimes those pickups are the reason I didn't! "When are you coming to bed?" "How many more do you have to wind?" "Why is this stuff all over the house?" "The dogs eating wire out of the garbage!" Then, the grand finale... "How many sets did you sell this week?"

Anybody remember those Dunkin Donut commercials with the guy always saying "time to make the donuts" He was coming in the house and going out at all kinds of weird hours until he ends up passing himself?

[David Schwab]

That's funny... I always said "it's time to make the donuts" when I used to get up at 5:30 to get ready for my commute to my day job! Now I'm doing the pickups and guitar repair full time. My biggest commute is getting my daughter off to preschool.

I also listen to music while I'm winding. iPods are a Godsend! My wife is cool about me having a corner of the kitchen and is very supportive about me working all the time. She actually encouraged me to have pickups in stock, rather than waiting for orders, which has helped the turn around.

As far as helping the guy get laid... I think the pickups are the last ingredient in that equation! I know I never had a chic say to me that she liked my pickups! (I'm retired from that scene though...)

I'd sure like an automated winder though...

Back to the business talk... I just updated my website and have online ordering. I have been making announcements over at the TalkBass forum, and as soon as I said the pickups were available I got a few orders. I agree that even though the economy sucks, pickups are cheaper than a new guitar or bass. I'm in more of a niche than the PAF and Strat winders, so there are fewer options for people looking for EMG sized soapbar bass pickups. I'm branching into P, J, and MM shapes next. After that some onboard preamps, which I'm going to have made for me.

The other thing I'm doing is selling parts and strings and stuff. That's extra income that doesn't require much work on my part besides shipping the parts off.

[SkinnyWire]

For me, sales have been the same. As for the business end, it can be a pain in the butt. Come home from a real job and go to work winding pickups. My wife wants to go out to a movie or something and I can't because "I have to wind pickups" She'll have plans on the weekend, but "I have to wind pickups". At first it was interesting and great. But after the first few hundred sets of pickups the fun wears off. The last thing you really feel like doing is experimenting because, well, you'd have to wind those freaking pickups!!! Of course, you can only wind when your suppliers have met the deadline on the parts you ordered two months ago and still haven't got!

And then some idiot calls or emails because he wants a tone like Gilmour on the bridge, John Frusciante neck and possiblly Hendrix in the mid. Oh yeah, they have a Squier strat made out of freakin Balsa wood with a hockey stick neck playing a Fender Frontman amp. They want every second pole to be A2 with the others A5 and can I mix the wire? Then they want to know what cap to use to get the Angus Young tone from their strat!!! Life would be great if it weren't for the customers Man I need a drink.....

Indeed. That's why I jacked up my turnaround time. To more or less build in some family time. Gotta be able to step back when the joy is gone.

I call those kinds of orders "silver bullet" orders. I just tell them they're asking for a silver bullet when they want one pickup that covers every type of music ever invented all at the same time.

[SkinnyWire]

Man, I am so glad I started this thread! This is incredibly helpful - thank you all for replying. As with any business venture, it starts out as a creative idea which then becomes a responsibility and something that needs to be managed on many different levels. So many small business owners (myself included - I used to own an organic grocery store years ago) struggle with the boundries of personal life vs. 'the business' and I think we all look for that golden ratio which gives us energy as well as capital to keep going without burning out from stress and fatigue (or even bordom). I'm getting the feeling one of the caveats is customer satisfaction when the customer doesn't even know what their asking for. I heard a good quote the other day, 'the customer is not always right, but he is the customer...' The other thing I'm picking up is that this can be a tedious job. I'm not sure what to say about that as it's still very novel to me. Hopefully there's a way to keep sane watching all that copper go by - it is kind of hypnotic. I'd love to hear more stories (bad and good) what's your most frustrating customer experience? Do you ever listen to your clients on stage playing your pickups and say to yourself, 'yeah - I'm the reason he's getting laid tonight'

When you start out, the positive feedback is sort of enough to keep you going. At least it was for me. Folks being happy with the pickups and claiming they're the best ever or you nailed exactly what they were after makes you feel good about cranking them out. Honestly, with a little attention to detail and a good product dissatisfaction should be virtually non-existent. For the flake or two that comes along, I recommend instant action to make things right in their mind whether it's a refund or whatever. Don't spend the time to argue with them if at all possible.

You'll go through stretches though where maybe there's not as much feedback but you're pumping out the pickups and, as another fellow alluded to, it's the holidays and the wife wants to go across country for two weeks to be with family or the house needs this or that fixed. For example, I'm falling way behind on home repairs and a couple of years ago I had to go out of town for 10 days over Christmas. I was answering e-mails while on vacation and the orders were piling up. I thought about it most of the time and it was very difficult to enjoy myself. It literally took a year and a half to dig out from under it ... to get the turnaround time back down to a reasonable level that also leaves "space" for living.

And it does become difficult to experiment when you constantly have to fill orders. Do as much as you can up front to learn the craft.

Those are just the challenges of having a career AND a pickup business AND going it alone. If you can focus just on pickups as a business and have a couple of employees it might be a little different. I'm not trying to dissuade you at all though.