Hard Times, Tough Choices

Well fellas, seems like I am at the proverbial fork in the road here.

Been thinking lately about closing down my shop. The economy and market for our kind of cars is very soft, and although I won't turn away work based solely on the car, it's still been tough. Everyone I know is in the same boat, super slow at the other shops as well.

Because of this I have decided to abandon my Impala project. At best it will sit for a long while more and at worse I may part it out. If I do this I will post to the classifieds the parts I have.

Anyone have their own shop that might offer some advice? Encouragement goes a long way too. Thanks guys and gals.


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Unfortunately many businesses are suffering due to the lax economy.

I hope it improves for you. HRP

 

Do not know how long you've been at it, Here's my thoughts, ALL business, has ups and downs. Being a small business owner (Tool & Die Shop) for 37 years, the secrete to my longevity was Commitment, NEVER give up, I'm too proud and or, too stupid to give up, Diversify, take on different types of work, MAKE it happen, It does not happen by itself, YOU are in charge, BE in charge! You are not out of business until the bank kicks you out your house and the IRS pad locks your shop. EVERYBODY, I know, that survived and was successful has this type of mind set. Many times, went to bed and wondered, how am I going to make machine payments, payroll, shop rent, etc, and scrape off a few bucks to feed myself and the family, IT CAN BE DONE! If I CAN make it happen, SO CAN YOU! All my life, I've heard ALL the stories, How lucky I was, timing was right, its easy for me, Blah, Blah Blah,thats all BS. Commitment, Hard work and a few smarts equal success. END Of PEP TALK, Think about where you are and where you're going, only YOU can make the right decision for YOU. NOTE! My Standard Disclaimer, "Free advice is sometimes worth the price you paid". GOOD LUCK! John

 

Sorry to hear things are slow, are there things you can do to reinvent, branch out? what does your shop do? build cars restorations? are there other pieces of business you can pick up?

 

I run a mechanical shop. I keep very busy. One of my friends has a hot rod shop that grew out of doing collision work. He's been at it for many years. He has found it to be slow lately and has taken to doing collision work again to keep things going and paying the bills. When he was super busy he would stick to doing hot rods and restorations and turn down collision work.
Not sure if something like that would help. I wish you luck.


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Hang in there and invest as reasonable and smart as much as you can in your equipment and into your skills to make your shop and your build quality the best in your area... I said the best, not the biggest... don´t do fancy stuff, only invest in things that´ll really improve something... for example rather spend 1000 $ in a metal shaping workshop than into a fancy homepage.
We are having hard times in our branch over here,but it really pays to hang in there and bite the bullet to improve everything you can to make a better product. You know, if everyone in your branch has the same problem chances are that everybody is saving their asses off to reduce cost while keeping theis business alive or sneaking their way out. If you go the other route and act smart you´ll most likely come out on top in the end.

You are your best coach, cause you know best where things are going wrong.

I´ll promise you, you´ll came back on top of things once the economy comes back to live and you will have the best equipment, the best reputation and the best employees around. Be the talk of the town and et your quality speak for itself.... and keep improving. The bad times will return once in a while, then repeat. It won´t e easy , but you know that ..
I don´t want to sound like a smartass, but this has worked for me.

 

I've found "the economy" to be as good as it ever has been, as far as selling used parts goes. And I know of a couple of local shops in Wisconsin who are packed to the ceiling with work, although that could be just a regional thing.

One thing I would ask/suggest, is how much overhead do you have? Is your shop debt free, do you make payments on any machines/vehicles/credit cards/loans and such? Because those are a shop killer. I'd sell off anything that had debt attached to it before I'd completely close up shop.

Also, most shops I know have lots of loose parts, parts cars, scrap, and just generally extra shit laying around. If you've got down time, make a little side business of selling off anything you don't need or aren't using. There's a lot of money tied up in stuff like that, and you can free up space, too.

 

Thank you all for the encouragement and advice. Have already begun to get rid of dead weight (scrap, extra parts). No debt other than rent. I know a lot of guys that are into it deep with the tool trucks, I'm not doing that no matter how tempting easy credit is.

Gonna make it work guys, I want to make it work.

To answer another question asked here, been in a little over a year. Statistical example in action? But yeah I try to do any work that I know I can do. And yes the economy is up in places but around here the economy revolves mostly around income tax season. Hopefully it picks up soon.


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Good to hear you're overhead is low. That's a big one to stretch through tough times. You'll get through it.


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Maybe you could do general collision, instead of JUST hot rods and or muscle cars. Maybe until things get better or do both and stick with whatever pays the bills. There doesn't need to be a hot rod shop on every corner.

 

I looked at your website www.fenixspeed.com

From the looks of your website, it looks like you build more "kustom kulture" or R R type builds. That may or may not be true, but that's the impression the website gives me.

These next two websites are for shops literally within minutes of my house.

www.randrstreetrods.com

www.kdhotrods.com

And my favorite hot rod shop, over in Sand Springs (Tulsa), OK

www.hot-rodgarage.com

As you look at the websites of these three shops, it is clear that they build any style the customer wants to a very high build quality. They build traditional hot rods, street rods, pro-touring, whatever the customer wants. One looking at their websites would think, "These guys really know what they're doing."

My guess is that you, too, can build any kind of car, for any taste, to as high a level as the customer wants to pay. You have the skills and experience to get it done. Market it! Your "gallery" for example, shows only fuzzy photos of cars from the Lonestar Round-Up. My suggestion is to replace those with clear, sharp photos of YOUR work, so potential customers can see that you have what it takes.

The "kustom kulture" segment of the rod & custom world is a very narrow (and usually flat broke) one, so my advice would be to market yourself to a broader spectrum, especially to those who have money to spend. The people with money to spend on a hot rod or custom are still spending the money; your task is to get them to spend it at your shop.

Eat beans and rice, and rice and beans, and hang in there. Do whatever it takes to stay in business and hold on to your dream. You have the skills. You can do the work. So do what you have to do to market yourself to the right potential customers.

I wish you the very best!

 

Fred, yes that has been what I've been doing mostly, re-sprays and collision but now I'm known as the paint guy! Doh


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Everything that's been said rings true. The website IS outdated. Not to mention the phone book has my listing under "Internet service providers" takes a while to fix that f-up by the phone company.


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I'd say try your hardest to keep the doors open. Shops like yours are impossible to find and are necessary to the hobby for sure ! ! Even if you cut the hours somewhat or revert back to a hobby shop and find other work to do to provide a real income, it would be terrible to lose your skills and knowledge.

We have a small (cover your ears) air-cooled VW shop that we operate from home. The last in our area really and have a pretty steady business, but it a real specialty clientele that seems to replenish itself in cycles. The old get out but the new kids keep getting back in. I hope that you can maybe manage the same thing, but surely branch out a bit, feature your work a little better, just don't close. Please.

All the best ! ! !

Luck.

TC

 

Well I don't own a shop any more. I did run a shop through a couple of weaker economies and discoverd that I had to scale back or look for other things that I was capable of doing to keep the doors open. IE I could weld and had equipment so I took on odd welding jobs etc.

Today I work out of my home garage, its not as nice as having a shop but it is one set of bills less to pay. That said I have not had much going on all winter and I am hoping that someone gets a big tax refund this year.

 

Amen on the tax refund porknbeaner! Looking into making switch boxes for bagged cars outta beer cans and bottles. Or steel patio benches that hide your cooler in your favorite team color/logo.


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My wife has been in the floral business her entire life,she and my daughter makes the 3rd and 4th generation and she has seen ups & downs over the years.

Complacency is a death nail for any small business,diversification & creativity and sometimes hard choices have to be made.

In the last few years ladyhrp has had to make a few tough decisions that she really didn't want to face..I did what she couldn't do,cut some of the dead wood and let a couple of people go that were not earning their keep.

She was renting a dumpster and it was costing 140.00 a month,,the city supply's 3 large covered trash cans for 45.00 a month,,that was a easy 95.00 a month savings.

It is a different economy from when here grandmother originally started the business,computers,internet sales,and every grocery store & wallyworld sells flowers..

Long hours,determination and persistence keeps her going and the fact that she loves having her own business. HRP

 

I know this isnt going to be a very popular oppinion on the HAMB, BUT, whether you like them or dont, if you can blow out rats in a quick time, there is actually good money in the market.

I do higher end cars and sadly have to do rats to make the bills. I PREFER to do nice cars, more for a pride thing. Unfortunately, paint, interior, DETAILS take time, and time is money. It was once said (I believe by Pete of Pete n Jakes fame) that anything you do building a car past running brake lines, you actually start losing money. I have a few regular customers that I do higher end cars and mods for, but my bills wont survive waiting on them as the work isnt steady enough.

If you build a decent A coupe and its around the $30K mark, you have a lot of time, money and effort into it, plus your target of guys looking for $30K cars is MUCH slimmer than guys in the $10K range.

On the flip coin, the last 2 RRs I did took me 17 days and 14 days to build them and I made (profit over cost) around $17K plus they both sold in a couple weeks. I dont put skulls and crap all over them, they were just basicly good running, drive anywhere, un painted/finished bobber type trucks. Did I sit back and admire my pride in the work I had done? HELL NO. But that money sure spent the same.

Im not saying someone has to build rats to survive, but you do have to adapt to whatever makes MONEY if you are doing this for a living.

Sometimes artists have to paint houses to eat

 

How would anyone even know what you are capable of doing?

There aren't any pics on your website?

You haven't posted any pics here?

I just do this stuff as an excuse to drink beer in the garage...

but, If I needed to show somebody examples of my work, I could provide a ton
of pics of bikes, rods, customs, etc that I've built or worked on over the past few years.

ADVERTISE!

Just saying.


Rich

 

Visited a lot of shops in Cal last month seems everyone of them had a lot of work underway.
Surprised me I thought the economy was in trouble guess it depends on where you are or who your talking to.

 

When you are updating the site check for misspellings or extraneous words. Just doing a quick breeze through, I found a couple of mistakes- sorry, I'm an English teacher. Also, post pics of your work- it doesn't have to be work that you have done since the doors opened on the shop, just work that you, or folks who work for you, have done in the past. If I were to take a car to a shop and couldn't look at an online portfolio, I would be pretty apprehensive. There are a lot of fly by night cats who think they have skills, but are flat out hacks. Differentiate yourself from them.

You are on the right track as far as diversifying. Create those benches and sell them for a pretty penny. Here's another idea: fabricate smokers, larger smokers on trailers. They command good money and could be fabbed fairly inexpensively if you watch your bottom line. My mom's husband is from Houston and he had a very successful business making said smokers on trailers. I can't tell you how many times my buddies and I have borrowed his for parties, etc. As a matter of fact, my buddies love it so much, we are going to use his design and make a couple for ourselves. Shoot me a PM if you want me to float you a pic.

With these things, or things like them, and maybe some ads on Craigs offering your welding services, you will hopefully turn a corner soon.

Good luck!

 

my shop stays fairly busy, even at the end of the year being typically slow, I was slammed through december. The point is, there is always people with money to spend, even during the hard times, there are others that still have toys and such, do everything you can to stay the course, work always comes.

 

One more thing: Build your Impala as a showcase of what you can do. Start a build thread here and elsewhere. Take the Impala to every event you possibly can. Let it become your best marketing tool.

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I agree. You said that you've been in business for a year,but I see no pictures of your work. Only a promo picture of a 60 Chevy.

Your shop looks empty, no tools or equipment. No inventory in the showroom.

I suspect you were severely undercapitalized when you opened the doors. What did your business plan look like>

I'd also agree that you do some simple, low buck projects to generate cash flow and get your name out in your community. Don't wait for the sugar daddy who is going to make you rich.

 

You really should consider all form of advertising, and much of it can be cheap or even free. Advertising all over your area on Craigslist to let people know you're out there. Also setting up booths at swap meets to hand out flyers and business cards to the people passing by.
Your web site seems to be void of any pictures of cars you've done? This would help immensely to show what you've accomplished, and let people see what your work looks like.
You might also consider looking for partially finished cars locally, and spend your free time completing them, and selling them to pay the bills. I know of several local rod shops that have fill in cars that get worked on only when customer business gets slow, and then get sold and another started. It helps keep you busy, plus gives visitors something to look at when they drop by to see what your shop is doing. An empty shop isn't inviting to prospective customers!

 

Mission, Texas isn't real convenient to the rest of America. If I had a marketable skill like you do I might think about relocating. Austin, Texas seems like a hot-spot now, or it's at least marketed as such.

Good luck to you and keep us posted.

 

I guess I'll have to ask this question,Do you have a business mind? Myself I do not,I was a worker bee and I accepted it! Worked for three companies over 30 years(construction) and worked my ass off! Sometimes we just have to realize our limitations,You may be a great and talented individual but sometimes you might be better of working for someone else.(Hope I didn't sound like a dick,remember I was a construction worker) Hope it works out for you!! Pete

 

Even if he isn't business savvy, he could hire someone that is that could develop his business and make it go in the right direction and he could do the stuff he's good at. There are many ways to skin a cat. He's not the only business suffering in this economy it's a widespread epidemic since '08. I can't tell you how many machine shops have closed their doors due to the economy and a lot of them diversified, laid people off, sold equipment, cut expenses, owner/operators go without pay just to keep the doors open one more day.

 

My business is booked up until May 2015...
I restore old cars, build hot rods, street rods, honestly anything old. (I dont touch anything 1976 or newer. I used to be 1972 but since 70s mopars and caddys are becoming popular I branched out a little).

What kind of advertising do you do? word of mouth is nice but it does not get enough work to keep you busy all the time, yet at the same time bad words can and will completely destroy you.

Give my website a look through, My brother is in webpage design and hosting costs very little. But still most of my business comes from car shows. I get vendor spots at most car shows within a 200 mile radius. What you do at the spot depends on the kind of show. But the biggest part is just to get out there and talk to people. Offer advice, be friendly even when they wanna do something stupid...

Do you have a truck and a trailer to haul customers cars? Offering this service really helps out your customers since they dont have to worry about their car. Keep intouch, and send updates to customers often....

I feel that is how my business is still going strong, If you wanna talk any more shoot me a message...
www.summersshowandgo.com