The Business End of Things

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Originally Posted by Mark Kelly

I found that fascinating and it raises many questions: how do you deal with the customer who turns into a big timesuck? How do you account for / apportion these costs?

Richard seems to be saying it's all part of the business model, OK I get that, does it have to be? What are the alternatives? Has anyone tried them in practice? How did it go?

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Selling direct to customer is like any retail bike sale in the sense that you don't get to choose or alter the customers wants/needs. Your choice is only how to deal with them. Have you noticed how certain salesmen seem to get sucked into the time vortex with customers more than others? The conversation is yours to steer if you are at the helm.

On an unrelated note here is an anecdote from working the e-infobox at a bike shop. Potential employee emails resume and cover letter - nothing out of the ordinary. We aren't actively hiring and I tell him that if/when we hire it's generally someone with a bit of shop experience. I'm returned with a snide remark to the tune of "How am I supposed to get shop experience if no shop will hire me without said experience?" I left it there but the experience really proved the point that some people do and make and others ask and hope.

No one is ever given experience and I have certainly been at the ask and hope stage. That said there are plenty of places to sharpen teeth and get to work. I am constantly impressed with people who do more with less and am slowly coming down the mountain of mystical reverence of all things bikes. Steel tubes melted together - GO.

I'd say that I have gotten lucky to get what amounts to a apprenticeship in a fab/prototype machine shop but luck isn't the case. My this led me here and who knows where next. I think that a lot of people want to want to build bikes but their that will just never take them there.

I think if a person puts as much time and effort into learning to sell and run a business as the do into learning to build frames it can be very helpful. It seems from what I've seen that almost anybody that builds a frame decides they should go into business doing it, I did. But most focus most of their energy on learning how to build. If I could recommend one thing, it would be to do everything you can to learn how to provide excellent customer service, and run your business.

For me, one of the most important experiences I had that apply to my work today was to be a waiter in a high-end restaurant for 6 years while in college.

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Originally Posted by Carl S

...for 6 years while in college.

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Precious ^ atmo.

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Originally Posted by Carl S

I think if a person puts as much time and effort into learning to sell and run a business as the do into learning to build frames it can be very helpful. It seems from what I've seen that almost anybody that builds a frame decides they should go into business doing it, I did. But most focus most of their energy on learning how to build. If I could recommend one thing, it would be to do everything you can to learn how to provide excellent customer service, and run your business.

For me, one of the most important experiences I had that apply to my work today was to be a waiter in a high-end restaurant for 6 years while in college.

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couldn't have said it better myself!

I can't suggest highly enough buying into a bike shop with a crazy person as a partner and working as hard as you can while they crash it into the ground.

Very Educational - rock bottom is a solid foundation!

(Kind of a lie, I walked with 7K & a full tool kit to start Coconino)

- Garro.

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Originally Posted by e-RICHIE

Precious ^ atmo.

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I always wondered where those 4 year colleges everyone talks about are hiding. I also took 6 years, but I'm a slow learner

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Originally Posted by EricKeller

I always wondered where those 4 year colleges everyone talks about are hiding. I also took 6 years, but I'm a slow learner

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I took a few extra hours per semester, classes for two summers, interned the 3rd summer, and made it out in 4yrs. I changed my major twice, but early enough not to screw me over, and I finished every class I signed up for (didn't drop any) and didn't have to re-take any. Just barely squeaked by in Calc 2, but hey, "D" is for "Done", amiright?. GPA wasn't spectacular, but not bad, and I GTFO fairly quickly. I had a few jobs, but none for long enough to really count. Two of them only lasted 3 days...but that's another story/thread...

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Originally Posted by dgaddis

I took a few extra hours per semester, classes for two summers, interned the 3rd summer, and made it out in 4yrs. I changed my major twice, but early enough not to screw me over, and I finished every class I signed up for (didn't drop any) and didn't have to re-take any. Just barely squeaked by in Calc 2, but hey, "D" is for "Done", amiright?. GPA wasn't spectacular, but not bad, and I GTFO fairly quickly. I had a few jobs, but none for long enough to really count. Two of them only lasted 3 days...but that's another story/thread...

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You know that if this was a custom auto or custom motorcycle forum, you'd be discussing the classes you took in jail and the prison welding class that got you started. Richard would have tattoos on his knuckles, Zanc would have barbed wire decals wrapped around his paint jobs, and Jeff Duser would have a big shiv scar on his cheek.

Barbed Wire Cycles (tm)

Coming soon to a website near you with special endorsement from Johnny Hoogerland.

-Mark (Curran)

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Originally Posted by Carl S

I think if a person puts as much time and effort into learning to sell and run a business as the do into learning to build frames it can be very helpful. It seems from what I've seen that almost anybody that builds a frame decides they should go into business doing it, I did. But most focus most of their energy on learning how to build. If I could recommend one thing, it would be to do everything you can to learn how to provide excellent customer service, and run your business.

For me, one of the most important experiences I had that apply to my work today was to be a waiter in a high-end restaurant for 6 years while in college.

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Nicely said. I got the first part of my business education as a pastry chef in a high-end restaurant in Boston.

For years, I tried really hard to become a master goldsmith. It's not much different from frame building, except that you can't trash-can your mistakes. The first piece looked really good and was really awful. The tenth looked ten times better and was merely awful. Incremental improvement became tough at that point. I'd given away a couple pieces and sold several, which probably didn't help my reputation in the marketplace. I got to be decent, perhaps even good, but in a country with something like six thousand goldsmiths, I realized I wasn't going to be one of the top twenty, and all the profits were made by the top twenty. Everyone else had to fight to survive. Not a good business strategy, or life strategy. So I moved on.

Before that I had grown up studying concert piano. Got into a really good conservatory and quickly realized that there were two or three pianists who got concert careers. The rest accompanied the choir on Sunday mornings and taught 14-year-old girls how to play Disney theme songs on Tuesday afternoons after school. Again, not that appealing. You can guess which side of the divide I was on.

That's ultimately what frame building is about. You have to do it and do it enough so you are either truly humiliated, truly burned out, or truly good. It's probably a few years' work for most people to know whether they really have it -- not just building frames without silver contamination or other issues but also building frames that sell other frames and keep your business going. In the end you are a frame builder and it's your work that brings you more work. Once you know what you can build and how well, you can also decide whether you want to be the next Richard Sachs, the next Vanilla, the next IF, or the next All City. Each is a different business model, and it's worth studying each to understand just how they differ from each other and how each built frames to become the business they wanted to be.

Somewhat ot ..
Anyone asks me about opening a bike shop... I get asked this all the time.
I tell them to work in one for 12 months and pay the guy you work for $30k.

If you still want to open a bike shop... next 30k goes to a shrink.
The problem with any small business is not having it or starting it.
It's making a living running it.

Steve Pucci

Seeking a defined pathway as absolute as the laws of physics is fraught with peril
Talent alone does not make the pathway work
There is luck and circumstances that play a major part of the outcome
However, you can put in
the toil and persevere at the toil and persevere at the toil and persevere
till the end arrives, what ever the end is for the individual.
It all is just a chosen path of professional expression.
It is fortunate that we can have these choices

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Originally Posted by Dazza

Seeking a defined pathway as absolute as the laws of physics is fraught with peril
Talent alone does not make the pathway work
There is luck and circumstances that play a major part of the outcome
However, you can put in
the toil and persevere at the toil and persevere at the toil and persevere
till the end arrives, what ever the end is for the individual.
It all is just a chosen path of professional expression.
It is fortunate that we can have these choices

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The Tao of Dazza.

I am going to toss this out there. There has been plenty said on this board and others--> The frame making is a small part while running a business is the bigger part. Sales and customer service were hit on in the thread as a pretty high priority by Mr Strong and who knows better. This is very true but fact is it is also true of just about any job/endeavorer where you receive a pay check/compensation. Everyone performing a task has a customer. A huge part of your success as a builder, SW engineer, waiter, clerk, nurse... whatever. The job you perform is ultimately for someone else. I came into this trade full time at the age of 37 and had spent my previous time in a few careers and usually did quite well. I established early on that I had to satisfy the customer and that doesn't always mean a retail buyer on the phone or over the counter. I many jobs it is simply the next guy up the food chain. He is no different than your frame customer.

No matter what folks are setting out to do to keep the lights on, anything, they'll ultimately have to satisfy someone and that someone is their customer. If you are older and have had a career or two and have done well, you understand this. If you are a youngster and don't have a grasp on this, then go work somewhere, get a job, anywhere and get a handle on this. Your bosses will guide you. If you can't manage in the average work environment then you will have a hell of a time running your frame business and I hope you have a fat trust fund.

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Originally Posted by Carl S

For me, one of the most important experiences I had that apply to my work today was to be a waiter in a high-end restaurant for 6 years while in college.

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Huh, snap, I was a wine waiter for 5 of the 12 years I was at uni .

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Originally Posted by Mark Kelly

Huh, snap, I was a wine waiter for 5 of the 12 years I was at uni .

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Oops. Fail.

There's always your next life. As a gecko.