Re: [Harp-L] Harp Mic Repair Fees

Robert

I have a business serving harmonica players. Your statements below indicate to me that you understand the game pretty well. It is absolutely and totally fair to give your work some value.

The market is very small - maybe 10,000 players worldwide, of which 1,000 or fewer are ever likely to hear about your services or mine. Fortunately a large part of the market are "amateurs with means". Most pros are struggling to make a living and rarely have any extra bucks to spend. The following sentence is the most direct answer I can give to your question: I price my goods and services with a labor component of $35/hour. Given that to do what I do requires skills in electronics, woodworking, machining, manufacturing, marketing, sales, operations, computers... not to mention understanding the gigging harmonica player's needs, $35/hr is probably well below what my skills are "worth". But I do it because I love it. I love solving customers' problems. I love learning new skills. I get to have a one- to-one relationship with each customer - I have absolute and total control over customer satisfaction - and I find it very rewarding to "under-promise and over-deliver." So it is worth it to me. But that might not make it worth it to you.

I KNOW I have happy customers because the longer I've been in business, the more of my business is repeat business. So I'm confident that my work is valued and appreciated - and I believe my customers understand that I can't give my labor away. They also understand that if the market were, say, 100 to 1000 times bigger, a big company with offshore manufacturing could make anything I make and absolutely crush me on price. But the market is small and thankfully for us, it doesn't make economic sense for the big guys, which means I make stuff one at a time, by hand, the old fashioned way, and therefore it costs real money.

Keep in mind that your labor rate is only part of the picture. In order to turn jobs around quickly, I have to have thousands of dollars invested in inventory - elements, connectors, amp rebuild parts, weird stuff I have to buy in huge quantities to get at all, etc. And in order to do quality work over and over again, I have many more thousands invested in tools. The price of the tools you need to do a proper job of fitting a screw-on connector into a bullet shell, for example, is way more than I charge to do the job (and by proper I certainly do NOT mean epoxy, or an attempt to retain the connector with allen screws, which is guaranteed to fail.)

If I had to support a household and/or family solely from this job, I'd be looking for another career in a hurry. When you look at it realistically, the profit margin ain't very high, even if you DO charge a reasonable labor rate. Lucky for me, it works. Only you can judge whether it will work for you. I hope that helps.

P.S. - There is a very friendly gathering of harp mic builders at Tim "harp mic gaskets dot com" Dougherty's "harp mic forum" at http:// harpmicforum.myfastforum.org/index.php


/Greg

http://www.blowsmeaway.com





From: Robert Ross <robertaross@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: March 2, 2008 2:33:42 PM PST
To: Paulharp@xxxxxxx, Harp L <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Harp Mic Repair Fees


Thanks for your reply, Paul. Actually, I agree with you at one level.
But I should have mentioned that my new friend offered to pay. When
he first asked I wasn't willing to accept the project (and
responsibility for his lovely vintage JT30), but he insisted.

In addition, I just lost the job I was working at for the last 6
months. So though I would prefer to do this for free as I have a few
times before, I can't afford to turn away any income at all right
now. In addition, this guy is not only a successful musician, he is
extremely successful in his other businesses. As long as my work is
of professional quality, which I am told it is, isn't it fair to give
it some value? I just don't know how to establish what that value is,
so asked the folks on Harp-L for help. This isn't a commercial post,
I am not trying to promote myself and am not looking to more of this,
but if I need a little help to do it right, where else should I turn
besides Harp-L?

There are lots of guys on Harp-L that charge top dollar to top
quality work. Their work is clearly well worth it to the people that
pay high prices for their high-end boutique amps or custom mics. It
is in fact much appreciated by the harp community in general - nobody
really expects them to do that work for free. Even so, they usually
don't make much profit, but they do need at least not give away their
time.

My mother always says, when I am in struggling mode, that it's
because I give people too much of myself for free. I always responded
by telling her that I get more satisfaction out of helping people
than money could buy...but there are times perhaps that she could be
right. So I hope my request for a little info is taken in that
spirit.

Thanks,
Robert








This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.