strategy for the recession

[MLAZYB]

Geno,
Well spoken words.
I will not make discounts for my knives. I make them out of the passion that I have. If that passion should ever leave I will quit making them and go on to something else. I only had 2 knives last year that were never picked up. I consider that very good.
I don't worry about things that I cannot control. If sales go down then I will have more time for another journey.

Bing
MLazyB Custom Knives

[J.Arthur Loose]

~
Do something else for money.

Just make blades for making blades.

[Geno]

Jay,
That was well said, said it all.

[Don Cowles]

Custom knife sales are off, but my factory knife sales have continued in a small but steady stream.

I have just started 12 new handmades (with no buyers as yet) that will give me an opportunity to take my time and flex my creative muscles. This is a rare opportunity that just doesn't happen when you are under the gun to meet order deadlines.

When more money is needed than is coming in, I have taken a job at Sears selling tools in their retial store. Works for me.

[ranger1]

New owners took over at work. I was kinda worried. In the last 2 days business has doubled. We have been wide open. Working commission this is a great thing. Life may be looking up.

[Stormcrow]

Well, I've never had money (except for a stressful two-year stint as a high school English teacher, which ended this summer ), and Texas is doing all right, especially San Antonio (where I reside now), so the economic woes are not yet affecting me.

Well, the economic woes of the rest of the nation, at least. I'm broke enough to be eyeing the squirrels, doves, and pigeons in my neighborhood and wonder if I could get a free meal with my slingshot or blowgun without being seen by the normals.

I've got a bad back that I've finally gotten in therapy for and have recently crossed a threshold to where I can work all day and walk out of the shop as straight as I walked in. I have had a reduction of pain and a buildup of muscle noticeable since even Christmas. I have a low-stress job in a big metal artist studio. It doesn't pay much, and sometimes there has not been work for me to do. I will never get rich, or do much more than barely scrape by if I stay like I am.

So what am I doing? What I can to build my own business and upgrade my abilities. I got my D.B.A. and have counted any money coming in so that I can render unto Caeser his due.

I've been forging since I was 16 (10 years ago). I put together a gas forge out of a coffee can, a pineapple can, some Kaowool, and a Larry Zoeller forge burner. When things are slow, or on Saturdays, I set up my coffee can forge at the shop and forge some blades. That forge allowed me to make and sell six knives to my boss, letting me pay rent and insurance for the month of December.

I am using salvaged materials as much as I can. My blades are car spring for the most part, gotten for free from a mechanic cousin. Half of the boss's knives were handled using naturally curved oak branches from a pile of tree trimmings outside of his shop. My bolsters are copper from electrical bus bars. One of my knvies has already been used to skin a deer and been proclaimed the best that the owner has used, so I know that even though I am using salvaged materials, I am turning out a good product. When I can afford to, I will start ordering new 5160 since I am stepping to the next level of work, but I will still use salvaged materials.

I am putting to use materials I gathered over the last several years. I was about to go buy epoxy and grinding belts, but dug through my materials first and found a stash of both. Two of the boss's chef knives were made using blade pre-forms I started and set aside years ago because I didn't like how they were shaping up for the blade I was trying to make then, which saved my time now.

I'm gathering tooling, most of it cheap or scrounged. I use a $100 Sears 2"x42" belt grinder because that's what I could swing at the time. It will do me until I can afford a KMG. I have an electric motor I pulled out of a junkyard that I put a Jacobs keyed chuck on the shaft, and now I can use a buffing wheel, sanding drums, sandpaper flapwheels, and other tools designed to go in a hand-held drill. I found a wooden crate next to a dumpster outside a Japanese auto mechanic shop, put a vise on one corner, and I now have a workbench that allows me to sit on a stool in my efficiency apartment and work on handles with rasps, file blades, drill out handle material, and do assembly before final shaping with my belt grinder. I scrounged some plywood from a sign shop dumpster, bought a foam camping sleeping mat from Wal*Mart for $5, and am going to see if I can make a Kydex molding press rather than spend $160 plus shipping to buy one. I built a tool today using scrap metal from work to hold Kydex rivet-flaring dies so I can use them in a $50 Harbor Freight arbor press instead of buying one with a couple of holes drilled and a set screw for $90 plus shipping. I use a $7 Harbor Freight die grinder and a $7 Harbor Freight cutoff wheel. If they crap out on my, at $7 I can treat them as disposable.

I am designing future tooling. I have a forge design for my specific product that I want to make, I know what I'll need and where to get it. I combined two power hammer designs in my mind today to make one that I can build once I have a place of my own to build it and use it. I have designed dies that will let me make relatively quickly the product that I specifically want to make and sell.

I am trying to build up enough inventory to get a table at the monthly gun show here in town. $50 for a table. If I can sell one item, I will have taken care of the cost to display.

I am trying to set up to do faster and better work. I am working on improving quality. I decided today that I will make myself a knife that will be all-out the best work that I can produce right now, and it will be my benchmark. It won't be fancy, just a good working knife. It will let people see what I can do, and it will help me know how to do better.

So, I'm basically doing what I can where I'm at with what I've got to move forward into a semi-professional status. I'll probably never make a knife that sells for over $1000, but I will do what I can to make beautiful and interesting working tools.

[Craig B.]

Stormcrow,
Looks to me like you have the right type of attitude. Keep building on what you have and what you've learned to build the best possible knife. Add to that in the form of better equipment later on when you can afford it.

I'm like you I guess in that I ain't seeing the economy as being all that bad. Did anyone notice the huge crowds and the people that got hurt and killed across this country in the sales the day after Thanksgiving? I guess people are so poor they were rushing in to see what they couldn't afford to buy.

I realize that alot of people are having a hard time right now. Most because they placed theirselves in that situation by overspending their means.

And the news media is hyping this up as well so that the new administration can push even bigger government on us. And I don't think it would've mattered rather it was Dems. or Reps. we would still see the same thing. More Government control.

There is a new law going into effect on Feb. 10 that all items sold to children under the age of 12 is to be tested for lead contents and the amounts of lead tagged onto the product. Resale shops I think have been exempted, but I think screenprinters, toymakers, book publishers, etc. have not been. If this happens, I'm sure Imported goods will be exempted and more US manufactorers will go out of business. All at a time when our new administration is talking of helping US business to grow. GIVE ME A BREAK!

They are even talking of a tax paid to the EPA on livestock flatulance. We are going to have to pay a tax on cow farts! And this is true stuff, not just some wild story circulating around. Everyone around here has been hearing this on the radio and are being encouraged to fight it.

I don't mean to change the thread here so if this post needs deleted, administrators please do. But in this economy we as custom knifemakers must understand and realize that the glory days of selling lots of knives for whatever price we can command may be over. We may all have to start taking less for our work if we want our hobby to stay alive. And it may be that big brother government may take it all away anyhow.

I think they want people to believe the economy is so bad so that they can get all of their crazy ideas passed into laws while we the people have our minds on something else....THE ECONOMY!!!!!

My suggestion to all of us is this. Keep making knives but don't overextend yourself in new tools and supplies. Watch out for all the things policticians and special interest groups are trying to slip in unnoticed and fight back with phone calls, letters, and petition drives.

And pray! Good Lord willing it will get better. If not, there ain't nothing we can do but ride it out anyway. Trust in God and all is well.

[Harry Mathews]

We haven't seen much of a recession yet and I pray that we don't. Charlie and I decided in December to stop taking custom orders the first of the year. Our delivery time was getting further out than we wanted and we were uncomfortable making some of the knives we wanted to make with customer orders on the board. Right now, knowing what knife I will be making next year this time as well as what knife I will be making every month in between has no attraction to me at all. Of course that can change too. In three months I might want every order I can get. Just going to have to stay flexible and never say never.

Most of the latest orders have been for the higher end knives and there still seems to still be a good market for them. We don't have any plans to stop making knives or lowering our prices. When we get a little further down the road on our orders we hope that we can move into some areas of knife making that we are interested in but haven't had the time to explore in the past few years. We are going to have to get a little creative with our marketing and make knives for those that are still buying. Hopefully on the other side of this thing we will be better makers than we were going in, our inventory will be up and we will have new customers buying the knives we want to make rather than knives that others want us to make.

These things pass over time, but I am still seriously praying for our country and its leaders as well as those that are suffering the loss of jobs and reduced income.

[TexasJack]

Since Tai hasn't done it, I'll chime in with the words from an appropriate song:

Income tax is overdue, I think she is too
Been busted and I'll probably get busted some more
But I'll catch it all later, can't let em stop me now
Besides I've been down this road once or twice before

Chorus:
Just gettin' by on gettin' by's my stock in trade
Living it day to day
Pickin' up the pieces wherever they fall
Just letting it roll, letting the high times carry the low
I'm just living my life easy come, easy go

"Gettin' By" - Jerry Jeff Walker (Great Gonzos)

[raker]

I know there are areas that the economy has taken a down turn. Business and jobs have all been in cycles. There was a saying in construction work that was always appropriate, "Chicken today, feathers tomorrow". When we work, there will never be another poor day. That is because we forget about the tomorrow.
I have looked at retail business's and grocery stores parking lots and while driving around, all the new construction of shopping centers, stores, homes and other acivities. I don't see much of a slow down there. I have always seen the employment drop in the winter time and raise back up in the spring. It may not rise as much as it usually does, but then that has also happened before.
The political world will always holler about something and then pass some laws to correct it. Even if it has nothing to do with what they are hollering about. Any excuse is a good one when it is yours.
I do plan on offering a lower price knife. I don't plan on lowering my prices because it actually costs more now to make the same knife as it did a year ago. I have the same feelings as Geno in that I only have a certain amount of knives left that I can make in my lifetime and with the Lord willing, I would like for it to be a lot. That may not happen and if it does, at least they will be knives tha I enjoy making for myself and my customers.
As President Bush said, We are Americans and We Will Make It. At least that is what I got out of his message.

[mcninch]

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