ShmellFab thinking of moving from SoCal to Utah maybe.

Hi Everyone. Not an official vendor on here but been doing a bit of Fab work for locals in SoCal for the last 5 years and have been able to keep very busy. Thinking of moving though. Looking for a change. Just tired of California. My full time job is currently in the motion picture industry and I really enjoy it but I wouldn’t be able to do that if I moved to Utah. I’d have to make welding/metal fabrication my full time work.

Anyways, as many on here who have been customers of mine know, I don’t currently ship the larger items that I make. I want to be sure that if I move to a smaller town and started expanding my fabrication business that people would still purchase my stuff if I started shipping.

Please let me know your thoughts. If you don’t know what any of my work looks like then please refer to my fabrication thread which is under my signature

Added a poll as well haha

 

Move to northern Virginia.

 

hahaha little Far East for me lol

 

100% if you can compete price wise with some of the big companies out there I would imagine you will get a lot of business

 

Me too!

 

Right on man! I really appreciate the feedback! Means a lot

 

This... and also the personal service from a smaller company usually out weighs what comes from the larger ones. You have a following, now just need to expand on what you already have done and maybe come up with some new and innovative ideas that would make this all work out for you even more...

 

Jeep culture & the UTV/side-by-side is big out in Utah. Do you think you would be able to diversify your product line to include the local Jeep & UTV market to help improve your local sales?

You'll need to do a ton of marketing to bring up awareness of your company to local off road communities, but that could be as easy as what you did here; Join a forum, build a positive reputation, offer a quality product with quality service.

 

Thanks dude. I still wanna try to keep things kinda simple and mom and pop style. Don’t intend to have a big shop or big company. Just wanna be able to do enough to support my family haha. I’d probably try to come up with some bumpers and maybe a few other products as well. Thanks for your feedback man

 

Being in SoCal you have a large client base that is able to take advantage of the fact that shipping costs are not included- on the sliders and other armor those costs can be substantial- I think loosing this advantage might make a negative impact.

 

haha yeah I definitely learned that while out there. I would certainly be open to building whatever anybody needed that I thought I had the ability to do. I feel like my skills have improved quite a bit since I first started doing this so being able to build other products for different markets I don’t think would be too difficult of a transition.

 

This is so true. So many people have told me that they love that the pickup and install are included in my price. I agree with you that it would be a negative thing to lose out on that which is why I might have to lower my prices a little to counter that. But if I was able to get enough business while lowering my prices I wouldn’t have a problem with that

 

Was also thinking of a lot of other things I could do Fab wise to make money. I plan on buying a larger plasma table at some point so I could do CNC plasma cutting services, make and sell metal art, cut whatever any DIYers need cut out for their projects, etc...

Also had the thought of building Offroad RTT trailers. Like 4x6 or 5x8 trailers. I’ve built a few of them and thought they came out nicely so there’s another option.

Pretty much whatever anyone needed built in the area as for as local business goes I’d be willing to do haha

 

Come to Bend Oregon! seems like every other car is a wheeling rig

 

I’ve really enjoyed it when I’ve gone. This last trip to my aunt and uncles house last week was super great.

I’m 29 and have a wife, a 5 year old daughter, and almost 2 year old son. The amount of accessible adventure and just the quality of life I feel would be all the reason to leave here for there.

Off-roading, camping, shooting, horseback riding, and all sorts of other things are so close to where we’d live and I just love the thought of being able to enjoy that so much more often with my family.

 

hahaha noted! I’ll have to look into. Definitely open to different places!

 

I’ll tell you that I hear weekly from people that wish a good Fab guy was in town. My buddy owns a shop and works on a constant flow of land cruisers and they need to purchase from Coastal and pay someone to weld them up. If you could work with him on a design I’m sure that he would sell a ton of stuff. Also need a guy to do CMCs