This might be considered O/T, but my little brother is going to open a business that supplies to fabricators. kinda like a fabricators warehouse. Most of the stuff he will sell will be targeted towards our liking. I have made him a list of stuff that i think would be very useful to be able to walk in and pick up. I have listed all the things I could think of. If you could help me out by giving me a couple of ideas for stuff someone might like to see at a place like this. This would help me out ALOT. I've listed the obvious stuff: tubing, brackets, tie rod ends, bushings, sheetmetal, header kits, welding supplies, things like that, but i'm looking for harder to find things for him to supply. It's just in the planning stage right now. I could'nt think of a better place to go to get some real world information. I just want to see this go good for him cause he's a hell of a good guy and i think he deserves the help. Thanks in advance guys. Hell, I'd like to know if you think this maybe even a bad idea at all.
no, its a great idea. But is it a place that caters to businesses and experienced fabricators or just people who want to fab stuff for their cars? Did you mention stuff for making y and h and x pipes? And if he is gonna have header stuff, have a good variety of header flanges(coming from a guy who is gonna have to make studebaker headers).
When he gets it going let me know. we can do a HAMB and eggs breakfast and have a shop run to check it out. Good luck to you both
Cool. Quality fastners would be great. Cleco's and pliers Benders of all sorts Now that I think of it this list could go on forever, keep us posted on this. Just remember the overhead in stocking a bunch of stuff can be tough if it's not selling. A consignment type store would be good also you could take a percentage of the sell price, kinda like a permenant swap meet with a small percentage of the take.
A wide varity of cleaners and degreasers, for parts washers, shop tools, hands, floor, ect. Quality metal clamps, not the cheep flee market crap.....as many different styles as you can afford to stock. Also sand. Never can get good sand blasting sand when you need it. Tig rod, no one carries freakin tig rod except for the welding supply. hope that helps
we're tyring to stay away from the ROD SHOP atmosphere. going in the way of like a home depot for hot rods. raw materials and parts we commanly use to help people stay out of autozone and oreily's. walk in, walk through the inventory grab what you need and pay. Don't want to get into the part store atmosphere either. mostly trying to simplify getting what someone wight need with out getting in their way too much.
It wouldnt hurt to sell hot dogs. Every time Im out getting materials, Im usually getting something to eat too.
Thats a good idea Bishop has there.... The plumbing supply shop we go to has a soda fountain and does barbeques a few times a week....
I'd say keep a good stock of various flap discs, grinding wheels, wire wheels, welding consumables, various masking tapes, oddball fasteners like Heli-coils, weld in threaded inserts, safety glasses, gloves, ear plugs, face shields...
I'd spend a lot of time on market research. Can your area support such a specialized business? Surely, all the people building cars in your area already know where to find what they need. This isn't a low cost inventory type of business you're talking about.
Brass. All the $1.98 brass frickin' fittings and adapters that you have to spend all day hunting down to finish a 15 minute project.
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