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I'm just dreaming here, so please bear with me... I've been thinking about the realities of turning guitar building into a business and I've worked out I'd need to build 9 or 10 guitars a year to make a living from it. For those of you who have already done this, how long does it really take to build up that kind of demand for your guitars? Obviously everyone's situation is different, but I'd just be interested to know, especially from people in the UK.

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

At 10 guitars a year you are looking at selling your guitars for quite a sum a piece. The more expensive the guitar the harder it is to find a market.

Yeah I know, but £2500 - £3000 seems like the average price in the UK. And Wales is a cheap place to live!

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

I've come close to having a few sales that could have launched my business but I never quite made it. I don't mean to be discouraging at all, if you have the will and the means to give it a go (and you are young and have time to escape) then go for it. What I found was that I had to keep an active repair shop to pay the bills. So active in fact that I could hardly build guitars anymore. At one point I was doing work for 4 local music stores. The repair work was great and actually payed quite well. After some time my guitar shops went out of business or moved and I was down to one shop which was not very active. So I got me a day job. The interesting thing is that with a full time day job I still end up building about the same amount of guitars when struggling to stay afloat with a repair business. So it's all good.

One thing that will help is getting your guitars into stores. Go talk to Trevor at TAMCO and dont leave till he agrees to put a PeterF on the wall

Get some financial /legal advice first . Have a biz plan. and an entry/exit plan as well.

+1

There is a lot to running a business that has absolutely nothing to do with building guitars. I assume there are taxes and licenses and all that fun stuff on your side of the pond as well.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Kent Everett has written a (small) book about going professional. Well worth the read. I assume it's available from his site. It's a very honest assessment of the pros and cons.

Steve

If I could even manage to get one guitar commissions a year, I'd be a happy man, I haven't gotten one yet.

Repair is equally bad, none of the 10 music shops I have been to in Taipei are even remotely interested in repair work. A vast majority of the guitars sold here are disposable guitar shaped objects. In fact I've had a revenue of 30 dollars in the last 2 months.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Start learning to do accounting now. I find myself struggling to keep up with who owes me how much money, how much I owe who money, how much stuff I need to build the orders for whom I've taken money from, where the money for that will come from etc....business has picked up sharply and swiftly that I'm a little overwhelmed, because amongst all that ballyhoo you still have to get the work done whether you've run out of day or not. Wah wah, but get your systems in place while your volume is low. Maybe take a small business bookkeeping course. I think I'm going to have to....

I wish I was in the position that business has picked up so swiftly that I need to seriously think about accounting... so far things have been so slow that accounting is more academic than practical. I don't have any debts however.

Sometimes I do wonder what went wrong...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Lutherie is an extremely difficult way to make a living. The competition is stiff and it takes years to build up a reputation. Also, your work must be exceptional tonally and have superior build quality -- no Taylor or Martin level quality will suffice if you ever hope to earn more than a meager wage.

My advice is to just build for fun and try and build up a reputation -- and then build guitars full-time in your latter years.

That much I know, but even repair is extremely difficult, at least out here where everything is disposable.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Thanks for all the advice. I'll have a look at the book.

None. Like I said, I'm only dreaming, I'm definitely not thinking of doing it any time soon, just interested to know if it might be an option for the future.

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

Selling 10+ Guitars per year can be mighty hard work and the UK is an established market with long established makers. Forget business plans. They all rely on fictional data input. The real business plan is the real world and real sales and it's awfully difficult to predict how that's going to develop. That price bracket (£2500 +) has taken a big hit since 2007/2008 and the recession. I've been monitoring a well known Guitar sales site and pre 2008 Guitars were flying out. I don't think they have sold one in 6 months and they are representing a number of makers. I've also talked to retailers with old fashioned outlets and the couple that I've talked to all report the same: sales of the higher end are well below 2008 levels.
That should give you an idea of the difficulties facing someone new into the market.
I think you would be well served to test the waters as an amateur/semi pro. It makes much more sense.

there's gotta be some other ways to make a living using the skillset required to make a guitar... I mean like woodworking, carpentry, possibly constructions, engineering, etc.?

If everything took a hit across the board, I think not being able to sell 10 guitars a year is the least of your worries.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

edit: freudian slip...

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

first, congrats Peter - i wish you the best of lucks.

i´ve often thought about if i would had the balls to go pro (if i get to make a decent guitar, in the first place) - i always felt like one could loose part of the enthusiasm when one builds to pay the bills. then, there would be the other parts of the conundrum: 1 - you´ll have to deal with people (warranties, refunds, repairs, demands, ego pampering, etc.), which can be demanding at times (well, to me it is); 2 - you´ll have to convince people into buying your work instead of others.

i live in a small town and found out (observing my teacher) that a possible route to number 2 above would be to focus on guitar students (i´m talking about classicals): building a nice, responsive guitar without too many fancy dressings (simple purflings, rosettes and head design, etc.) and to provide them at a reasonable price and try to build momentum from there. a student buys it, teacher and colleagues hear it, some like it, they discover it´s not a factory guitar, word gets around - that kind of thing. at least, it worked for my teacher... of course, diligent choice of some repair work might help too.

good luck!
miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Even that approach can be a 'trap'. A Guitar at £1500 can never be as good as one at £3000. It only ever gets compared to those at £1,000 (or less) or £1500. People buy in price brackets. You see it all the time over on Delcamp - 'I'm looking for a Guitar between £4,000 - £5,000 or 'I'm looking for a Guitar below £3,000'. That kind of thread comes up time after time after time. 90%+ of buyers will never ever consider that a Guitar costing eg. £2,000 will ever sound/Play as good as one costing two or three times as much. Then you have to factor in the bargain hunters and the time wasters - and boy can they waste your time. There's much more to it than simply putting chisel to wood. There's all the other business activity that buyers never see, so our OP's 10 x £2500 per annum might seem a reasonable return. In fact it's really paltry when you consider all the business costs, the time and all the effort. It's all too easy for people to look at the price, make a few false assumptions and think that making Guitars is some sort of idealistic, romantic ideal.

I completely agree. Also a good place to start is by looking at other professional builders and what they charge plus how many guitars they sell per year. Off the top of my head the only builder I can't gunk of that only makes around 10 guitars a year is ray kraut. And his cost a little more than the $3800 Peter estimates he needs to sell for. I believe his base price is $9000. So their is quite a difference there.

Here is my advise, take it or leave it.. This is how I was raised by my father who is the hardest working man I have ever even heard of, who built a strong business and made a happy life for my mother, myself, and two younger brothers from absolutely nothing. If it is something that you are PASSIONATE about, if it is something that you would do even if it were not about the money, if you BELIEVE that you can make it happen, if you are not scared of really HARD work.. Then "dang THE TORPEDOS, FULL SPEED AHEAD"!! I took this same outlook, mixed with honesty, integrity, and good business sense, and built my own business from nothing.. So go for it! The only losers in life are those who are too scared to try SOMETHING.
BTW, "dang" is not the correct wording.. it was auto-fixed..

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Guitar Maker and Purveyor of the World's Finest Tonewoods
http://www.aaronhixguitars.com/
http://stores.ebay.com/A-Hix-Tonewood-a ... r-Supplies

Also, Peter, if you decide to go for it, I would be honored to be your wood supplier!

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Guitar Maker and Purveyor of the World's Finest Tonewoods
http://www.aaronhixguitars.com/
http://stores.ebay.com/A-Hix-Tonewood-a ... r-Supplies

I agree with the others who suggest on learning the X's and O's of running a business first. If you try to learn as you go, it can suck the life out of something that you enjoy doing. Have a contract in writing of what you will do for every commission, and what is expected from the customer as well, and signed by both parties. I do this in my business, and it makes work more enjoyable!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

This thread reminds me of the story of the old Iowa farmer that had won several million dollars in the lottery. The Des Moines TV station came out to his farm to do an interview.

The first question was "What will you do now that you've won all this money?"

Without blinking an eye the old farmer says: "Oh, I'll keep farming until its gone."

Thanks Michael. That's exactly the sort of information I was looking for. Is that from TAMCO? I guess when you're selling something in that price bracket it has to be totally unique/outstanding for it to get noticed.

Aaron, thanks for the encouragement!

_________________
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars