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Re: Neon Plant - Economics

>On Wed, 17 Jan 1996, Mike R. wrote:


>Wholesale work is a hard way to go. Why not sell retail, the same work
>for twice the price.  Even at retail once you start production you
>probably wont have time for art.  This happened to me. I had a very
>successful production studio, selling 1/4KK/yr.  I thought that my six
>employees could manage and I could work on my art at least one day per
>week.  I was wrong, I didn't even get one day per month.  When I
>discovered that the business was really running me, I pulled the plug.
>Now I am back to the one person studio and making art.  My personal gross
>and satisfaction has grown.
>
>>      3.)  I'll develope a line of "production" decorative or functional
>>           (signs) pieces that I will sell retail and wholesale.  This will
>>           also be a "part-time" effort to support my art
>
>I suppose it may work, if you like golden handcuffs.

I'll add a big DITTO to this!  I too have scaled back my operation in
recent years.  There seem to be two paths a neon business takes on its way
to making more money.  The first progresses towards the wholesale
production shop.  To make good money here, you need multiple benders, and
your full-time attention to the day-to-day operations.  Everything becomes
a quantity and "cost-per-unit" basis.  There is nothting wrong with this,
and there are people on this list that operate very successful
mass-production operations.  The second focuses on glass working.

I steered away from the production arena just a bit for some of the same
reasons as Kenny:  I was starting to feel removed from the one thing that
had drawn me to the industry in the first place:  the art of glass forming.

I too have actually improved my gross by keeping my overhead low, doing it
all myself.  Don Boniface has visited my shop, and he will I'm sure attest
to my "minimalist" approach to a neon shop.  I still do wholesale work, and
it is profitable, but it's no longer the mainstay of my business anymore.
There's nothing worse than a monkey on your back when you're trying to
enjoy hot glass.

It's very easy to get sidetracked (and I have) in a neon business.  At one
point I found myself spending much more time on backgrounds (hot-formed
plex, etc) and installations than the neon itself.  Some neon folks spread
out real thin and start getting into vinyl-cut letters, computer-printed
murals, etc.  This stuff adds to your overhead, and makes production an
ever higher priority. It's all profitable, and there are members of this
list making good money with all this stuff.  But people with computers and
vinyl cutters are very plentiful, and the competition here is greater than
a tube-bender.  I just relating the path I traveled down (and I appear to
not be alone).

>> Also, has anyone bought and used one of those "all-in-one" pre packaged
>> neon plants like Victory sells?
>
>             !!!!! AVOID THIS PURVEYOR AT ALL COSTS !!!!!

I'm very opposed to this as well.  A neon shop is a very individualized
installation.  No package of any magnitude replaces (or hastens the
learning of) hot-glass skills.  Benches & tables should fit YOUR space,
YOUR height.  There's nothing wrong with buying a ready-made manifold.  But
stuff like benches and gas/air piping should be engineered into your shop.
And you should understand the specifics of your equipment (ie: the limits
of your 92 cfm blower, or effects of an inproper mixer, etc.).

If you spend some time researching the basic requirments, you can always
put together your own system cheaper than a pre-packaged plant, and usually
wind up with much better stuff, and the ability to troubleshoot/repair it.

If pre-packaged plants were assembled by engineers with experience in neon
production (or even well-experienced tube-benders), I might have a
different feeling about this.  But in most cases they are not.  I'm not
here to bash anyone, but I have my doubts about the Victory stuff.

   -John