business talk

[Possum]

...

One of my problems, is I'll get excited by a research project and get lost in experiments and let the orders get a little too old sometimes. I think its a mistake to stop experimenting, there are too many upper level pickup makers who only have a standard line-up of products and they never seem to grow much past that.

I probably lose a fair amount of orders due to my long waiting line, but there is a benefit that may be worth the lost income. I've found that the guys who don't have the patience to wait for something good are more than likely customers that can be the most trouble. If they can't get it now then they don't want it, well thats fine with me because you know its a guy who really doesn't appreciate what you're making enough to wait for it. I really like to do things in a slow methodical way, I find if I hurry myself pushing pushing pushing I end up being a nervous wreck and make too many stupid mistakes. So I'd rather make a little less money and have happier customers as a result.

I did the double career thing for 5 years with Shrapnel album design work and doing pickups and it got to be too much to handle. I had some orders get six months behind, not a good feeling. I thought going full time I'd catch up but I never do :-)

I've already grossed more than I made with Shrapnel but profit margin is kind of slim in this business especially my PAF repro's which take endless time to make all the parts etc. Young guys who sell a few pickups think they've hit the motherload of a way to make money but they don't count up the money their StewMac kit bucker cost versus the long hours to make one set and the money they lose on Ebay and Paypal :-) This is a BUSINESS after all and bottom line is profit you can live on. So again bottom line is you better really LOVE doing this before you go full time, because it will dominate your every waking hour and you may not win any popularity contests at home banging away on the guitar all the time, listening and listening and listening for those tiny things to tweak.

As far as horror stories go, I already mentioned those in my first post, those things really happened. How to avoid that is have a CLEAR STATEMENT of your business policies on your website. A clear explanation of your warranty. Any loophole you leave open someone will try to crawl through. Basically though NEVER treat a customer badly, get sucked into arguments or tantrums, customer is always right even if he is wrong, do anything within reason to make them happy. All it takes is one pissed off guy to spread the word that you're a bad person and your business could be finished before you even get started. If you can't make them happy send their money back even if you don't do refunds.

Jason Lollar told me when I started "don't go too fast." Well I kinda did :-) Realistically you shouldn't be selling anything to anyone until you're about two years into the "dark craft." What you think you know before putting in the work and experience, you will find out later you really didn't have a clue what you were doing. I had alot of blind luck and only a couple years later did I realize why some of the early pickups I designed worked the way they did and why some of them never worked well. I was really lucky to have Jason help me get started and the pickup forum to compare notes with others out there who had more experience than I did....

[Alabam]

ok, I'll be the first to admit I am new to the art/science of winding pickups. ...

Me too.
Reading all the good advice from the old hands here was very informative, thanks lads.
I live on a working farm, make my own pickups for pleasure and not for business, and still find i don`t have much time to do it.
If your pickup is innovative enough it would be great if you could pass it on to one of the big makers, get recompence, sit back, and experiment with new pickup designs.

[Edward R]

All this business end of the deal talk is pretty interesting. It got me wondering about the number of pickups people make a week, month, or year. If you want to chime in on this that would be interesting, although it may be a little personal. I would imagine that the numbers must be pretty large. I wonder how many a Duncan or Dimarzio do, or even Gibson or Fender on the replacement end of things.

I find all this fascinating, it is truely small business in its purest form, I think. It seems that if your product is good, and can deal well with your clientele, things can grow nicely. Good luck with it all to everyone - you are better guys than me! I make a couple for myself once in a while, but couldn't imagine doing it full scale!

ER

[belwar]

Seymour duncan manufactures about 22,000 a month if I remember correctly. that was as of three months ago

[Possum]

...

I wouldn't dare show any of the big guys one of my designs, they would say yeah nice idea but we're not interested. Then six months later you'd see your product with their name on it and tweaked just enough so they'd say it was their design, and their lawyers would laugh at you. There aren't any really unique pickup designs that haven't been done before anyway. Even the Lace Alumitone is something that Seth Lover messed with years ago. I remember seeing somewhere a crude version of it mounted on a piece of wood. Then look at DM and how they steal patents when the inventor forgets to renew it. There are some not so nice things about the pickup business. Duncan is a cool guy but I think he's feeling the pinch from China and us smaller guys who can do a better job of things because we're not making mass amounts of product and can pay attention to each single order in a way no factory operation ever could.

[SK66]

I had to laugh!
The trill is gone!
You eventually get to where I was several years ago. Lead time goes up...initially because it HAS to. Then prices go up trying to knock back some of the demand and make it "worthwhile". And sometimes it's just NOT.

I don't make my living with this, not even close. I don't need the extra money, my real job keeps getting more demanding, my health pops up occasionally, I'd like to stay married this time, and I do have other interests in life.

Anytime you take something you enjoy and make it a job it becomes...well, A JOB.

I may make 1 pickup a week, I may make a set each night. It depends upon the demand and my mood. Demand is fairly low, and I like it that way. I do absolutely no promotion, my website fairly well sucks design wise (I have a new one done(drupal based, but I probably won't put it up because I don't like it...I'll probably do another instead...eventually). I keep lead times longish because I find that even if I "have to wind", it just doesn't work well if I'm not in the right mindset. I feel like if you're just "winding because you have to" you're only slightly above letting a machine do it all...and a machine will be more consistent.

There IS alot of satisfaction in doing it well. And that keeps me going. My intent was to SLOWLY grow a small "retirement business" to move into in about 8 yrs....It rapidly took over. I plan to keep my hands in it and start building again when I'm closer to retirement, but that might change. Right now I'm still with it because I do get satisfaction from it, I enjoy the creative experimenting, and I have it "balanced" with my current life.

[chevalij]

I do pretty well in my real job (Aerospace engineering), so the money isn't the thing right now. My biggest enjoyment in this whole thing? Getting that email from somebody who just installed your pickups and crapped their pants on the first chord or note

[Possum]

...

Your pickups give people diarrhea? Say, I have this constipation problem, can you help? Just kidding :-)

SK, boy I hear that, if I force myself to work, I make the stupidest mistakes, if I work and make myself feel rushed to do as much as possible in a nite, I screw up and end up winding pickups 3 times over. I love to tinker so usually will fool myself into working, I'll be thinking, man I'm burned out and don't want to do anything tonite, maybe I'll just sit down and fool around and put some leads on bucker coils and listen to some good music, next thing the whole night is gone and I've done a good amount of work and did it right and enjoyed it. When I wind I want to be in a mood where I'm thinking this set is going to knock this guy's ears off, he'll really love what its going to do to his guitar. To me its like enjoying a good meal, its just winding some coils but I like to do it in a slow artful way so I can be proud of the work. Everytime some impatient customer pushes me too hard to get his stuff done, I'll do it but this just sets the scenario for mistakes to happen. Sometimes I get really overwhelmed by having a long list of back orders, so I'll group them into pickup types like teles and do all those in a batch instead of jumping around, that helps and it feels good to make progress, but I never seem to catch up. At least I don't have a year waiting list like Tim White is rumored to have. My best customers are the mature types who have infiinite patience and appreciate they are getting something no one else makes. I don't have the luxury of a "retirement" I"m 58 years old, no health insurance and live hand to mouth like most people in this country, and will probably work until I keel over dead :-) You can probably guess who I'm not voting for :-) (hint....ugly short old white guy, with anger management problem....).

[Ruel]

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

+1!

[Edward R]

Now Possum, not to be a sour-puss or anything, but.... Do you think it is really the governments fault you don't have health insurance and a retirement account?

But you can probably tell whom I am not voting for (hint... pretty tall young black guy with truth management problems....)

Just poking some fun at ya.....

[Possum]

...

Well, lets stay away from the political thing. Unfortunately though, I do have a huge bone to pick with this country. We are the ONLY Western industrialized country that has no health care system for its citizens. I had health care once at an ad agency I worked at. It was great until I got sick and couldn't work, they dropped me like a hot potato, health insurance vanished, the agency threw me away to die basically. If you think it can't happen to you, good luck. If I had been in Canada for instance, it would have cost me almost nothing to see a doctor and I would have care regardless of whether I had a job or not. I doubt we'll see much improvement on this and certainly not from the old guy who wants to give me a $5000 "credit" to buy health insurance. If you don't have the money to buy health insurance in the first place a "credit" is worthless. INdividual health insurance averages about $10,000 a year anyway :-)

As for having no retirement, I've been self employed for almost 30 years as an art director/designer. Basically hand to mouth existence. almost every self employed person I know is in trouble with the IRS, has no health insurance and lives day to day. There isn't "retirement" for almost everyone I even know in my age group. Social security, ha. I think the idea of a "retirement" anyway is a huge facade and a phony sense of security that doesn't exist. I've known guys who worked 40 years at one company, had a pension etc. and got dumped one day and were left with nothing, no pension, thrown away for being old. How does anyone even survive such a thing? I would much rather be living by my wits day to day than plan for some future security that is questionable at best. I watched my wife's Dad, who had 3 pensions from the military and two jobs with major corporations, die totally broke without a dime, basically left to die in rehab, with all his insurance policies run dry, and his pensions spent down to nothing, savings all gone, all of it happened within one year, his bad health destroyed his financial security and almost thankfully he died soon after. There is no security for anyone, you can be pretty well off and end up losing it all very quickly. Pretty shameful and very common in this country, sadly...

[David Schwab]

You can probably guess who I'm not voting for :-) (hint....ugly short old white guy, with anger management problem....).

Amen brother! You mean these two?

[David Schwab]

Now Possum, not to be a sour-puss or anything, but.... Do you think it is really the governments fault you don't have health insurance and a retirement account?

You haven't seen the movie "Sicko" have you?

Or better yet, live anywhere in Europe for a while... Heathcare is all free, or dirt cheap.

Don't believe Mister Potato Head's lies. If you try and get health insurance for a family it will cost at least $3,000 a month. So what's that $5,000 going to do for you?

[belwar]

Ok - First off I try and avoid political conversations, particularly when business is involved. So I post this message trying to avoid showing support for any particular candidate, I post it only for humor value because both sides tend to get a laugh from this one... Enjoy

... and lets end the politics discuss on this thread - We'll only make enemies of each other and loose the friendlness that makes this place great.

[David Schwab]

I thought Abe Simpson was perfect, but Palin is Peggy Hill all the way! Only Peggy is way smarter.

When I Googled Peggy Hill I found I was't the only one!

I still call them Mister Potato Head and Winky!