Do you ever make something and it doesn't sell?

[Farside]

Worse than making something that doesn't sell, is finding out many years later that someone who you told about it in confidence has stolen it and made a handsome living out of it.

 

[gav0994]

About 5 years ago myself and a mate began making ATV off road stock trailers, general purpose ATV trailers and log trailers. We were using high quality components for the axles and hitches along with good quality wheels/tyres. Anyone that is familiar with Logic ATV trailers will know the type of trailers I'm talking about.

I have worked on a livestock farm for over 20 years now and had a good idea of what quality was needed along with good features built into the trailers. We spent a while refining the design and got to a point where we had a high quality ATV trailer that was making us a good profit and extremely well priced. Despite initial interest from many farmers we couldn't get orders coming as we were not a recognised "big name" in the agricultural industry . We had a local Agri dealer interested and he shifted a few bit really screwed us down on price. The last off road trailer I designed and made was a heavy duty log trailer to be towed behind large ATVs/compact tractor. It was displayed on the Arctic Cat stand at the Royal Highland Show in 2014 and got alot of interest. No sales came for it and it sat for several months before we sold it to small scale forestry outfit.

In early 2015 we called it a day as we couldn't justify the unit we were in. Shortly after we quit I found a carbon copy of the heavy duty log trailer on eBay being marketed by a company called Quad Bikes Wales. It is still available on their website/eBay shop today. At first i was very angry they had copied my design, but now I like to think it was obviously good enough to be copied. The market we were targeting is very tight and if you are not a big name you won't last long, no matter how good your product is. Farmers seem to be happy getting ripped off by big Agri companies because they are established brands

 

[penfold]

Made some toolboxes for Farriers. Cheaper than the competition (imported from Europe) and in my opinion better quality. Sold one now got three just sat here, one guy hasn't turned up and there's loads of interest on Facebook and my old man (a farrier) has been showing them to people that comment on the quality and how sturdy they are but no one will actually spend the money. They'll spend £60 less on a piece of rubbish unfortunately.

Got any pics of them?

 

[Brad93]

Got any pics of them?

First photo is my friend who has had one.

 

[sardine]

My plywood solid fuel stoves were a poor seller.

 

[Farside]

My plywood solid fuel stoves were a poor seller.

Lots of repeat business, surely?

 

[pondy]

last couple of years i make a few roses for valentines, usually 3 or 4, every year lucky if i sell 2. do them for £30 and always get told it's to much money

 

[Brad93]

last couple of years i make a few roses for valentines, usually 3 or 4, every year lucky if i sell 2. do them for £30 and always get told it's to much money View attachment 104865

I made 316 stainless ones, 5 hours to make including the polishing. Wanted £70, sold one, gave the rest away. Still got half a sheet.

 

[Davek0974]

Finding the people that will appreciate and pay for craftsmanship is nigh on impossible these days, they would rather pay for a piece-of-crap import and when it fails would say "well its just typical"... and so on than buy something made to last that was probably only a few £ more.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

I was an apprentice Blacksmith to a semi retired Master Blacksmith who supplemented his living by being a Farrier (shoeing horses), he always said I'd make more money being a Farrier but although I like horses I saw the injuries and back problems Courtney used to suffer from when shoeing and I preferred the artistic and structural side.
When I finished my training and set up on my own I realised that very few people can afford to pay for hot forged work so although I still called myself a Blacksmith I was in reality a Fabricator.
My main customers for hot forged work were the National Trust, a charitable trust restoring a large country estate and a multinational furniture company for whom I made their prototypes, there were very few private customers who could afford my hot forged work.

I learnt that if you are going to produce something it either has to be:

Innovative - In which case you need to sell as many as you can before someone copies your idea and undercuts you.

Cheap - So cheap that a customer will come to you rather than pick one up from a supermarket/Amazon etc.

Quality - Produce something of better quality than your competitors for a similar price, not easy to do in a competitive market.

Bespoke - You can succeed with made to measure but be prepared for a lot of interaction (which you need to allow for in your pricing) with the customer to meet their expectations.

Niche - Produce something that no one else can be bothered to produce as it's not a volume product but you still have to be careful that another producer doesn't take note and undercut you.

Complex - Have the skills to produce a product that would be hard to replicate by anyone else, the trouble with this is it takes time to learn and use skills which need to be accounted for which can make your product expensive, hot forged components as a case in point!

 

[Davek0974]

Precisely

If making things to sell - possibly remove option 2 - "Cheap" - it is far better to sell one item per month for £100 than it is to sell 100 items per month for £1 each, it is easy to get into a situation where you are working yourself to death trying to knock stuff out cheaply but not getting anywhere.

The hardest part is selling, not making.