I see that your customer will walk on a $5000 appliance package when he can get it for $20 less somewhere else. Tells me that you should tell the customer you will meet the price if he buys it from you. The only thing here is $20 less profit to you and you get to keep the customer.
New President & CEO @ RUGER
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My JT PPP showed up today around noon, so I anxiously watched the clock waiting for quitting time. I got to the LGS and opened the box like a kid at Christmas and there was at first glance a beautiful 4-5/8” SS Bisley. I picked it up and the Tyler grip panels looked like they were fit to the...
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Yaworski
Buckeye
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You presume that I was allowed to adjust pricing. I worked for a stretch of time under "the price is the the price. No adjustments." Fortunately that didn't last too long.
Also, customers will tell you after the fact. Like the lady that came to me the other day. "I buy all my appliances from you but I got my refrigerator at Lowes because they were offering free delivery." So? "Well, it's not working now and Lowes won't help me. I thought that since I'm such a good customer, you'd help me." Nope.
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GE was very open minded, physicist = engineer, chemist = engineer, mathematician = engineer, degree in early childhood Christian education = upper management.
I worked with physicists PhD, chemists PhD, mathematician MBA = engineers and all were practical and astute engineers, except for two. The PhD Physicist who went back to teaching at a university, and a MBA mechanical engineer who, I was told by my Engineering Manager, was "at the top of his game" and we were going to have to "up our game". That one turned out to be a "bull yugo artist". He filled two patent notebooks with other's ideas (that he "eves dropped" on) in the two or three years he was in engineering and never completed one project. I was there 34+ years and filled ~5-6 pages with patentable ideas. (A patent notebook is a 8x10 bound ledger type notebook with gridded pages for sketching.)
Yaworski
Buckeye
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I was often called "engineer" but that didn't make me one. I reality I was a software weenie.
My customers know that I only mark my merchandise up 10% because I have no "overhead", the discount is built into the price. Every once in a while, a "customer" will come in and try to get a discount off my profit margin. Yes, I am a small dealer, so I have to pay about 2-3% more than a "stocking dealer" and typically, I have more trouble obtaining "in demand" products. My price is my price, go somewhere and buy it cheaper. Buy it off Gun Broker and have it sent to me for transfer (that service will cost you $30). The average price of a decent piece of merchandise is $300-350, I still get my 10% and I don't take any risks.
BTW I had primers at a decent price when primers and powder were unattainable.
I doubt it. Wranglers have a higher profit margin and because of their price point sell a lot better.
Now…if Ruger would take the basic Wrangler and make a "New Lightweight Single Six"… that might be something.
Hmmm…that might be a good project down the road! Darn it! Now I need to buy a Wrangler… polished and blued barrel and cylinder, anodized main frame, properly fit and finished grip frame, slicked up internals…
carbonfibrebob
Redhawk
I see what you did there
FAIRtax is a consumption tax
I would expect it to be a uniform form of tax, but it could grow at an exponential rate depending on which political party is controlling congress. 4% this year 6% next year 9% the next year, etc. etc. until it reaches gigantic proportions equal to what we are paying in income tax today. You buy a $5.00 item the tax is $1.25. I recently bought some items from MGW, parts costs $27, NC Sales tax was $1.89, Shipping & Handling was $14.75= $43.64 x 10% for my markup now it is 48.03 + NC sales tax again $51.27 total cost to customer. Now add a US Sales tax. Are we giving the taxpayer some tax relief yet?
I was often accused of being an 'engineer", but my title was "product designer", I was one component of the design team which consisted of a, design engineer, tooling engineer, manufacturing engineer. During the design phase I worked closely with the design engineer and the tooling engineer to create the product line. My main goal was the design of the product that met the Product Planning specs. (marketing) and had easy to make diecastings (something of a "black art") and the associated mounting brackets for the product and the internal design that channeled the heat away from sensitive electric components. Another goal was to utilize brackets for the ballasting components that were already progressively tooled.
NikA
Hunter
Paying NC sales tax twice seems incorrect, shouldn't you have some sort of tax exempt certificate as a business reselling?
I don't have an exempt certificate with every supplier that I rarely buy parts from. MGW doesn't have a dealer price structure, what they charge (MSRP) is the price so if I can get the part elsewhere I do it. MGW is the source for all Winchester, Browning, FN and some of the other major firearm's manufacturers. I buy very little from them. I just bite the bullet and motor on. Being a one man operation gunsmith, one man primary health care giver, my time now days is limited to maybe 4 hours of productive work. Out of state sale tax is a racket, I am sure small companies like MGW don't send out tax tickets and checks to the 50 states monthly. Just another excuse to gouge the customer for another 7% profit.
Does the fighter pilot need to have mounted a tire or built a rocket motor? Admittedly that is an over simplification.
What would make a CNC operator or product engineer qualified to run a business? The new guy has to be a cheerleader, a salesman, a market analyst, soothsayer, and the needs are ever changing. A from grasp of the mechanics of the tools is certainly important too.
I was once given a design task about a week or two before Christmas to design a lower housing for a post-top fixture and get prototype castings before New Years. Seems we were buying a similar casting from one of our competitors and paying through the nose for them. So off I went basically copying the competitor's casting in two different sizes. I calculated the weight of the new castings to be 10% heavier than the competitors castings but my designs were one piece without welded on changeable features. So come January 2nd I had to give a design review to the General Manager and his staff which included a host of "bean counters". Wrapping up my presentation I summarized that I had created two sandcast housing increasing the weight of the housings by 10 and 12% respectively and cut the cost of the housings 50%. By the end of March we were in the business of making products and making more profit plus we were more competitive in bidding against competitor's products. By fall the two sand-cast housing had been redesigned with modular thin-wall diecastings. The end result was GE ate the competitor's lunch. Funny thing the competitor tried to sue GE for an appearance patent infringement but I produced old catalog photos from the 1920-30s illustrating GE products that looked like their products.
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I didn't say that a CNC operator was necessarily qualified to run the business. I am saying that people that come up in the business they are about to run have a better idea of what actually goes into making the products they are about to create, or cut, or publicize or create. They have a better idea about what kind of work is necessary, not just "we need to be more productive and your department needs to be faster, and we can be more productive with fewer people."
eveled
Hawkeye
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I worked for a large HVAC Company, corporate hired a guy who ran the lingerie dept a Macy's to be our General Manager. When he didn't work out they replaced him with a guy from UPS. There have been 12 GM's during my career there.
I really hope this new guy is great! I will give him the benefit of a doubt. But my working career experience has made me jaded.
I really hope this new guy is great! I will give him the benefit of a doubt. But my working career experience has made me jaded.
Fair point. He been in the outdoor industry for some time, one would think there's something there. I listened to an interview by Tom Gresham where he came off well. Fairly softball stuff, but he did answer correctly at least.
Truthfully Peachead, the design team leader (usually the mechanical/physicist engineer) when isn't tripping the light fantastic with his slide rule, is making sure cost constraints are adhered to, and we (the team) are meeting the deadlines and reporting progress to the "bean counters" and marketeers. A few years before I retired the CEO of GE decided to embrace Six Sigma methodology to streamline design and manufacturer and to insure we didn't make mistakes. (I can't ever recall designing a product that I didn't care whether it failed of not.) The end result was all GE employees were pre-occupied with generating data to be presented to the GM, bean counters and marketeers, in the form of fish-bone, Parato, and pie chart presentations. Between about 1996 and my retirement in February 2004 the GE squandered 2.5 billion dollars on Six Sigma methodology Worldwide. The whole concern of office personnel was "customers be damned, I've got to work on my Six Sigma presentation!"
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I remember those days too! Smh
DGW1949
Hunter
Yeah, that, "5-S" and "Lean".....What a circus. I'll always believe that there-in lies the answers to most of what's gone wrong with U.S. manufacturing today.
DGW
