Calling all Virginians (Tidewater area)

Hunter and Luke,
It's really double-edged sword...and depends on your ability to manage risk. If you manufacture in lots you have material and carrying costs (cost of inventory, cost to store inventory, and cost to manage inventory) and the potential for obsolescence cost.

The best model is Just In Time manufacturing, but unless you can control and manage your suppliers (next to impossible as a small time guy) and have a predictable demand it's hard to achieve JIT.

So what a lot of companies do is have customer place the order, receive an estimated delivery date based on previous performance of the unit making and the suppliers, begin production. This model works until you over promise and under deliver or a supplier has a problem.

But most companies set an unrealistic schedule to begin with, then take on more work, and wham! you have a compounding problem and hope most of your customers won't bitch too much.

And that fellas is BUS 101, there will be a test for you two in a week.

 

That's what I ordered. He's saying he forgot to charge me the extra 140 something for the fill plates. I was pretty skeptical when I had gotten a response about them in the beginning saying that they didn't actually offer them anymore bc they make the sliders warp. I asked about them again a couple months later and his response was that they had to weld slower. Now this fact should already be known by a company that welds for a fucking living.

 

Can I take my test now, so I dont have to wait..... or just flash you my new fancy piece of paper that is on my wall??? tee hee!! I think the biggest problem is the fact that 90% of the "startup" companies that have sprouted from TW dont have any idea how to actually manage a business. They merely build something for themself and post some pics and all of a sudden everyone on here says cool i want one and they see dollar signs piling up in their head and say, heck im gonna make a business bc i can make these and sell them and next thing you know they are in over their head and struggling to survive. Some turn things around, case in point eddyrrt when he first started and people thought he was trying to run a scam on his bedracks bc they were not delivered on time or as promised and in the wait time he created this huge business draw with a new shop and all these fancy machines the TW'ers felt that they had paid for with the bedrack group buy and close to half of them never even saw their bedrack in person, but had to settle for a refund from paypal instead. But now seems to have turned things around and is doing pretty well.

 

I don't mean like mass produce them and have 100 sitting in the shop. Use Pelfreybilt for example, Tyler sells bumpers like crazy and has probably the smallest wait time for any vendor on here, especially of his size. What I'm saying is he knows hes going (more than likely) to sell XXX number of bumpers so why not have a couple laying there ready to be shipped out and if they need hoops/whatever just add them on. It may not make sense to a business major and that's why I'm an engineer . To me, keeping that overhead of a few bumpers already finished is worth it to be able to have them shipped out quickly and replace them as they sell. You'd gain a reputation of being quick for shipping and maintaining quality because they're already built and don't need to be rushed. If for some reason the business were to go under (in TW fab case) those bumpers would be snatched up quick. That's just me.

 

Luke and Hunter are getting ready for college, so test is for them only. Braddock School of Hard Knocks Accredited!

You are very correct, there is a difference between fabbing stuff and selling or producing product, marketting, selling, and managing a business.

 

think you've got two different eddy's. the guy that made the racks with soft toppers was from somewhere in new england and hasnt been heard from since he basically started the gb and made a few then left everyone hanging.

edit: agreed on people making one thing and everyone wanting one. the business side needs to be managed WELL otherwise you end up like relentless with a > 1 year wait time and everyone gets annoyed and goes somewhere else. If youre going to "mass produce" something (scaled down to TW size) you need to have a larger business such as CBI or something that can churn out products and has experienced people to handle the business side. if it were me i wouldnt post a "wait time." first come first serve and ill get them out as soon as i can and cut off orders after a certain number or do like TRS does with the retrofit gb, ships (or in fab case) build in groups of 10.

 

I will the rack is shit don't get me wrong, but if we can salvage it for functional 12 months then I just want to get it on and be done.

Paypal said they would offer a full refund including return shipping and handling, so I'll get with Randy tomorrow or Wed and see if we can salvage the base plate and then get a partial refund from the seller. I do plan to pursue a ban hammer through bob though for the seller. He has no business calling himself a fabricator or having vendor status or recognition. The fact that he sent out half ass work a month late and offered $40 as a fix speaks to his business and fab skills.

 

True, but if you are building pretty much the same thing for the same models with variable lengths one would think of building a jig to fabricate the same parts with quality on a repeatable basis. If I were to start a fab business the first thing would be to have proper jigs for each model I plan on making. Quality sells over quantity when dealing with people that are picky about their trucks like TW.

 

True and recall the first sentence: it's about managing risk! It also requires capital to be tied up and small guys have a hard time doing that. Hell, I work for a multimillion dollar company with steady work and as a company we are risk adverse and really don't want to tie capital up on inventory.

 

well dern, i apologize then. could have sworn that was his screenname.

edit, just found the thread his name was eddie209. so my apologies to eddyRRT and anyone else that may have been offended by my confusion.

 

Edited last post for what I think the smaller shops need to do.

 

it isnt about warehouse space, capital towards non liquid assets like that are nothing to a company because you can amoritize the cost and figure in depreciation in your accounting statement to the point where you pretty well get reimbursed on taxes for the cost of the warehousing space. along with some other little nifty accounting perks.

the cost and risk comes in with having all of your capital tied up in raw materials that it takes to build said products. the longer you have the products on the shelf the more money you actually lose.

most all of them do have jigs set up and ready, but dont put in the orders for raw materials until they are ready to start a new batch.

 

Since all of them have some sort of plasma table/waterjet they should know how to maximize the use of their raw materials and how many bumpers/sliders they can get out of it (use 10 as an example.) They should take 10 orders of bumper/sliders and then wouldnt have to worry about the raw materials overhead because they already have the products spoken for. Then theres no way they can get in over their head because there is no question that the product will be sold and if someone were to back out there are more people waiting in line for the next batch.

 

I don't even allow dealerships to advertise their names on my rides. Pay me, or get your decal off!!!

Stock is not just the little guys either. One of the items I bought for the secret santa gig was DKR TRAILHEAD Tire Deflators from Toytec. I ordered 2 sets. I STILL don't have them!!!! That's over $120 just sitting out there since NOV 29!!!!

 

id get a refund. thats crazy!


side note: anyone looking for some flood pattern 6 led pods? http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd-gen-tacoma-marketplace/316313-fs-okled-6-led-light-pods.html

 

For the sake of argument, let's say material for a bumper costs $200 and it takes 10 hrs (low estimate) to weld and your weld labor is $20/hr (again low estimate for a quality welder) plus you have fringe and overhead on top of that so it's more like $50/hr. That's $700 x 10 bumpers to carry = $7000.00 tied up in inventory and assumes you're a one man show, factor in shipping, receiving, cutting, bending, answering the phone, etc and you see how it gets out of hand. That's for one product offering, more products = more capital tied up. And it means that in order to stay viable, I have to have an inventory turn every 2.5-3 weeks or I end up eating the carrying costs and having ramen for dinner.

This ^ is a must.

 

That is what most do... and several still have people that do their plasma cutting for them.

 

For example, Billy gets his cut by another local shop. When I ordered my bumper he said he had problems with him meeting demands, he outsourced to someone else as well but is walking the fine line of not burning any bridges.

Pelfrey, on the other hand even his front bumpers have quite a few variations and almost always someone wants something a little different. Wouldn't be cost effective to have them on standby because these things come in waves. All of us on TW fit the ASCH phenomenon to a T. Hence, Group buys and Swimgood peer pressure. ARB on the other hand can afford to leave stock on the shelf.

 

Here ^ are two more excellent points, a plasma table not running is an expensive concrete weight. Not too mention the maintenance costs associated with it. The company I work for uses the subcontracting model, because even though we fab a ton of stuff, our demand is not enough to keep it in capital, maintain the thing, and pay someone to operate it. We could market the downtime but again there is risk and money tied up.

 

Our thread is the most random informational regional thread, ever. Just wanted to point that out. We's kinda smart.