wish i could do it that fast...:depressedQuote:
Originally Posted by NUBBLET
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wish i could do it that fast...:depressedQuote:
Originally Posted by NUBBLET
shit your slow , just sprouted wings !Quote:
Originally Posted by GlassFreak
Jeez that will get them to buy from you again.......Quote:
Originally Posted by bifwitsis209
Seriously you need a street peddlers license to sell off of our city sidewalks / lots.
First grudge sell out side of my shop and I call the city marshal, the fine for no license will wipe that smile right off your face. Then I go an a calling rampage, city fire marshal, state tax collectors, IRS........ do I need to go on? Ignorance begets ignorance........ I would never do those things unless you acted that way first.
Seriously would you want a group of citizens outside your glass lab picketing with signs about "the dope pipes" you are blowing?
Get over it and act like an adult, you could not force me or any other shop owner to buy...... but you could make one hell of an enemy very quickly. Is that the way you roll?
I would understand how it would piss off an owner... that is what I have intended it to do in the past..... With that said... The owners of the shop were more worried about sellin dream catchers and speed pipes so I never intended on selling there again....
i have been blowing since '95. in the beginning i couldnt make shit bad enough to not sell, people even wanted the unuseable pieces. over the years though, as the market grew and the number of blowers increased, the game became more serious. as a reaction, i started making all kinds of crazy pieces to stay competitive, like fish and shrooms and dubs/triples.
i have never had problems selling to stores until recently. one of my main problems is that i will stop doing business with stores who import cheap shit. but that seems to be almost everybody i do business with. now when i try to hook up new stores they want everything super cheap... only the cost of production and living expenses has gone UP. so how am i supposed to justify working for $2-$5 after expenses? if we had the same economic conditions as china then it would be all fair, but we dont.
this is an economic war on you. if you dont think so, then you arent paying attention. i suggest visiting bloomberg every once and a while to see how the corporate/political game is being played. we are living in a wealth grab society wherein the top 3% end up with 90% of the resources. china has become a tool, or weapon, that is being used to further drive down the world standard of living. yeah, i know that other countries have it way worse than we do in the US, but does that mean we should help out third world countries to economically enslave their people instead of providing equal wealth distribution?
supporters of the US trade policy need to be voted out of office. one of the best ways to "vote" is with your dollars. start by never even going into a wal-mart, i dont even accept presents bought from there. also, buy things that are made/grown locally, as much as possible, that way the money stays in your own community. i realize this philosophy is not going to change things quickly or maybe at all, but if enough of us "live the protest" others will join in eventually. i am currently looking for stores that only carry local/non-imported products, but it seems that is a dream. as a result i am opening my own store and will follow my own advice. that might be the best solution, as it seems more people are wanting to buy local. kind of like a permanent art fair. if that doesnt work, i am going to go live naked in the jungle and eat papaya. /RANT
that would be the shit, gills AND wings! would you be like the opposite of a dolphin then? fly in the sky but every few minutes you have to go under water to breath? TRIPPY...Quote:
Originally Posted by NUBBLET
I think the best thing for any of us to do is partner up with another blower or two that you trust and open up shop for yourselves and mark your prices barely above wholesale. You will be the only competition in town in a short matter of time, then you can raise prices, just be reasonable. I had some people I really liked totally slap me in the face today with their greed. The gloves are officially off in Waukesha. From here on Im only looking out for me and mine.
I am thinking it would do some of you good to walk in the "shop owner shoes", give you a whole other outlook on life. With overhead and custy's to deal with..... who gets to work and who makes the sales? who pays the bills and who pays for supplies...... ahhhhhh shit just go open you a shop and let me know how that works for you.
And the pricing thing is priceless, flood the market with your "cheap" glass and put your competition out of business. Then when your customers see your prices rising and start bitch'n you can just smile and tell them how good they have got it.
Best laid plans of mice and men...............
I don't think spending $500 a year on food that's made in ohio(or wherever you live) instead of florida is going to change much. You say that people in other countries have it worse then we do, but that's because each and every one of us exploits people to do jobs for less then we're willing to do them for. Of course, when it effects what we sell........Quote:
Originally Posted by raven sun
well, food grown locally will be fresher and in better condition than food shipped in, unless you only eat boxed food...and the shipping of food is a wasteful, unenvironmental, corporate structure that is incongruous with the small artist philosophy...so i dont support it when i have a choice...Quote:
Originally Posted by nodice
and yes, we(developed countries) exploit people in poor countries because we can, that is wrong...that is why i buy local and do as much of my own work as i can...such as all my own automotive repair...but to me it is just a small part of my bigger philosophy which includes taking in homeless teens and helping out strangers in need...do i think im changing the world?...yeah, the little part i live in anyway...
why do store owners in the pipe market in particular think they deserve a 100% mark-up?...the average retail mark-up is 12-15% which is still better than investing in the stock market...i have a considerable amount of retail experience and realize it is hard work, but that doesnt make it right to be greedy by importing cheap shit and marking it up 300%...thats doing the devils work in my opinion...i do the design, labor and market research for my product, why should i give half the value of the product to the store? if they can move all my product at the inflated price in a reasonable time frame(less than a month), then i am fine with huge mark-up, but in my experience, most stores do nothing to increase sales or promote artists, and even when my products fly off the shelves as they often do, the next time i go in, the buyer will try to talk me down in price anyway, why?, maybe more store owners need to take business classes...Quote:
Originally Posted by byron3
/\/\/\/\ So you have a big bad ass store right? I mean you can talk that talk but can you walk that walk?
So how much of a mark up do you have on your glass, tell the truth....... Blowers on this forum have repeatedly dodged that question. I can assure you, you have a much greater than 100% markup for materials and supplies. But of course you do not want to discuss that do you?
"average retail mark-up is 12-15%" wtf, where do you get these figures? Your retail experience, did you work for someone else or were you running the show? Your not doing it now, what went wrong?
Perhaps those business classes you are suggesting might not be a bad thing for you to look into.........
Food grown locally might not be fresher or in better condition then food that's shipped. Small artists can be very wasteful, and unenvironmental. At least when you ship food, someone can be fed.Quote:
Originally Posted by raven sun
Let's say a store sells $100000 worth of stuff a year, and they make 15% on that. That's 15000 not including the rent they have to pay, or the insurance, or whatever else. A lot of stores don't really get as much business as you'd think. Some of them really need to make 50 or 75% of that 100000 to stay afloat, and maybe a little so they can eat and what not.
fuck that.Quote:
Originally Posted by byron3
sorry i couldn't keep quiet here.
raw glass is expensive. so is the gas to run torches and electricity for kilns. what about the hours of labor? am i supposed to just work for free?
why does the store ower have the right to make more off my work than me? Over 100% retail markup is fucked no matter how you look at it.
btw-your avg, high end galleries only take 50%. all while educating their customers about the artist and their work. informing them of what it takes to create such objects, therefore justifying the worth of said object.
I keep asking where these figures come from everyone wants to throw around.
Quote:
Net Profit Margin Example
In 2009, Donna Manufacturing sold 100,000 widgets for $5 each, with a cost of goods sold of $2 each. It had $150,000 in operating expenses, and paid $52,500 in income taxes. What is the net profit margin?
First, we need to find the revenue or total sales. If Donna's sold 100,000 widgets at $5 each, it generated a total of $500,000 in revenue. The company's cost of goods sold was $2 per widget; 100,000 widgets at $2 each is equal to $200,000 in costs. This leaves a gross profit of $300,000 ($500k revenue - $200k cost of goods sold). Subtracting $150,000 in operating expenses from the $300,000 gross profit leaves us with $150,000 income before taxes. Subtracting the tax bill of $52,500, we are left with a net profit of $97,500.
Plugging this information into our formula, we get:
$97,500 net profit ÷ $500,000 revenue = 0.195 net profit margin
Now just because you sell pipe "A" to shop owner for $2.00 and shop owner sells for $6.00 does not mean they have a 300% profit margin. Business's that simply double (keystone, which by the way is pretty much an industry standard ~you pick the industry~) are the ones out of business in the tough economic times.....
Who do any of you think you are that you can set a buyers sell price? This would be akin to a tube company (Pyrex, Simax, UST) telling you that their 26.0 X 4 sells for $9.16 a piece, you can get 19 (3") pieces worth $0.48 ea. So even after you fume it and shape it (use maybe $0.50 worth of oxy and propane) that you can only sell it for $2.00. Oh and do not holler about your labor, a shop keeper has the same labor involved to SELL the pipe. After all we are discussing cost of product vs selling price not labor of either party.
I have no problem with 100% markup. How does a store survive off of 50 percent or less for that matter. They have overhead such as retail shop rent, workers wages (including the owner if they man the store), taxes, and they have the money up front ready to purchase more inventory.
As a glassblower who works out of my house... I have morgatge/rent, gas bill, electric bill, and hourly wage for myself.
We both have some hefty expenses. And to make it work you need to be able to work with each other... We need shop owners as much or more than shop owners need us. I'm tired of the bullshit about markup. Its buisness. Set your wholesale price at the dollar amount you need and don't take less. Who cares what they mark it up to...
Selling retail for two times wholesale cost has been standard practice for many years. Not all stores take that mark up. Many take considerably more. Consignment galleries demanding 60% of the sale (artist gets 40%) aren't uncommon. Jeweler usually expect to sell for 3 to 4 times their cost.
Anybody that thinks the retail markup is creating huge profits for retailers should ask why so many retailers are going broke. If you think retailing is such a great gig, why not open a store?
i dont see a problem with 100% markup when it comes to prodo work, where i live, the one tobaco shop in town buys cheap shit and marks it up 300% no matter what, i worked there so i know. this makes it really hard to sell them stuff for what i want and i usually find myself agreeing to prices i wouldnt think of... but at the same time i cant really sell them to them for what i want because they will be marked up 300+% and nobody wants to buy a 50$ spoon in this shitty little town...
So you guys are saying there is no money in selling pipes to indian gas stations? Who knew? I think I will try to sell watering globes to walmart instead...
Most of my pipes are marked up over 100%. If certain ones don't sell, I simply stop making those and move on.
Try going to nicer shops and becoming friends with the owner.(Or at least friendly)
I've dealt with a lot of holes in the wall over the past few yrs, and its just not worth the time and effort to make sales to them.
Right now I only have a few good accounts and frankly that's all I ever needed. 1 person who can live up to their word and come through when needed.
Again it comes hand in hand. If you want good treatment, give some back to the shop. I constantly change my products to keep up with the market and kick down freebies here and there for supporting me.
Yes I am a noob, but I'm finally getting a feel for how this game works.
End of rant
^^^ yea thats why im moving... aint shit around here...