To Be or Not To Be!

No, I am not going to quote Shakespeare. Hell, I don’t even understand him let alone quote him much—guess that makes me a peasant or something. To open a full-time shop or not to, that is the question. More than likely you started gunsmithing part time. After spending so many nights and weekends your business has grown and your wife is threatening divorce.

If the later is true, let her do it before you do open a shop and get into a six or seven figure annual income bracket (ha!) Many gunsmiths suffer from too much desire to be full time, be their own boss, or listen to the wrong people. To open a full time shop one should realistically look at several things so that you don’t have to add a second line such as sharpening lawn mowers just to keep beans (let alone steak) on the table. One should know the market for gun repair in a very cold clear light.

The size of your immediate area should be considered. How many other gunsmiths are there and how busy are they? What are you qualified to do that the existing gunsmiths can’t do, if anything? Other contributing factors are how much experience you have had so that if you are honest with the public and yourself you have some idea of what you can offer. How much more machinery do you need? You sure are going to need more than a hobby-size drill press and a Unimat. What about bluing services?

If there is another (or more) gunsmith in your area, look at what business they have, check their prices, quality, and the area of gun repair that they cover. What is their turn around time for an average job? If there are other gunsmiths you have got to be able to not only compete with them but find a reason that will bring people to you. Consider advertising or other marketing; how much and where.

Once you have convinced yourself that you are the Second Gun Messiah (I’m the first, just so you know…) stop and think about actual operating costs. Where will you locate? When I first started out in my area I could lease a small but sufficient business space of sufficient size (barely) for about $500.00 a month. It will likely be more expensive in your area now.

Figure in lights, insurance, legal fees, water, phone, advertising, web site, and anything else and even with a reasonable lease you will soon find out that you are looking at a $250 to $300 nut per week. At $10.00 an hour you can’t make it, so don’t start. If you charge a shop rate of $30.00 an hour you are going to have to work 10 hours just to pay the weekly nut and this is you working alone before you can pay yourself; forget about hiring anyone else, at least right now.

Your next consideration—and a vital one—is how much business is in the area? Can you realistically book $800.00 of fees every week? Or is it more like $400 or less? You better have a good projection based on fact, such as what you have already been doing during your part-time nights and weekends work and whether or not you have a backlog of business for you to get started or you just might find that the bubble has burst after the first month in your new shop.

It takes constant business to stay afloat and if that is not there then you are in the "not to be" classification. The ideal situation would be if you were certain the business would be there so you could eagerly go ahead. Or if you had an amount of money saved up and were willing to gamble it so that it could be used to ride out the first year so you could possibly make it. Your wife will raise hell about that one! Opening a gunsmith shop is not magic.

You have to be a businessman that understands costs, turn around time, off season slumps, and being prepared to ride them out. If you presently area part timer let me suggest you review all your past jobs and buy an account book or software and log every job as to dollars made as well as time and expenses spent by the month. Keep a cost sheet where you can be honest with yourself and list every expense. By very simple bookkeeping you can tell each month how profitable your business is.

Apply a minimum $1,000 overhead cost to your operation, adjusted for what shop lease and other expenses will be in your area. Can you still make money if you have such a nut to crack? If the financial reality indicates this isn’t currently a viable option, don’t get discouraged. There are a couple of things you can do. When you reach the point where over a year part time you can equal or better the income from your present job you can start thinking about full time. A two year period would be better.

Forget the high class store or shop and look around for something that would cost less per month and spend a little more advertising effort. If you have what the gun public wants they will find you—after all, they found your house or garage shop, didn’t they? Lesser quarters may not satisfy your ego but you will be able to go to Mc Donald’s… occasionally. There is still another approach. If there is a good gun store in your area and they have no gunsmith, talk to them.

See what arrangements can be made to lease part of their building. Convince these people (they should not need convincing) that if you are there two things will occur. First, their store becomes a full service store. This could mean much to them because it makes their cus-

tomers more dependent upon them. No need to go anywhere else. Second, work out a deal with them as to whether or not they will carry the mounts, recoil pads, sights, etc. If they want to carry these you would get the labor of mounting—that’s all. The lease arrangement can be based on a 10% of the work you do as well as a 10% credit of any mounts, etc. that are sold by the store and fed through your shop for installation, thus you would "pay" 10% of the mount price which costs you nothing and 10% of your labor bill.

This type of arrangement lets you get started full time at a minimum cost. You have no layout of money for a stack of sights and mounts or other parts. Your regular customers should not mind bringing their guns to the store and all in all, it works well. In lean months you pay little and in fat months you make up for it. Then too, you are always pricing your labor with that 10% in the back of your head.

If you like this arrangement but the store owner is not quite convinced, try this approach: "Look, I have been doing your guns for you and you mark them up a little and are happy, right?" He can’t deny this. You suggest that he check the total amount of repair sales that he did last year. If you come into the business you are going to be adding your present volume so that the total amount of repair business is going to be several times that of what he did. Now, assume that the dealer had that amount in the bank.

Can he get 10% on his money? Of course not. He is going to find all that lease money but best of all you will be giving him the opportunity to sell new guns or used ones to the people you bring in. You have presented a good argument that is going to be profitable to both of you. If he still stays stupid, look for something else. What most gunsmiths who start out as part timers fail to fully consider is the "what if" part of going full time. Again, we have to work with hypothetical cases.

You have a good job(?)—or at least you have a job. It probably has fringe benefits. It feeds and clothes you and makes house and car payments. Your part-time shop brought you in, say, $15,000.00. You know you could at least double or perhaps triple that amount. You would be doing what you want to do (or think you want to) and you are going to be your own boss. Wonderful, but "what if" you’re wrong? You have to be aware of losing the benefits you have to get your own health, fire, etc. insurance.

You have to fully understand the true costs of operating your own shop and be prepared to stay in it during the slow times and still maintain the level of living that you now have. If there are other shops in your area, check them out. Try to estimate how much they are doing and ask yourself this: "I am now taking $15,000.00 a year away from them. This means they are still surviving even though they have lost the potential based on the amount of part-time business I am doing.

Can I take away from these old established shops double or triple the amount I am now doing so that I can afford to make this move to full time?" In other words, will the horse I bet on win or fall dead at the starting gate? You better know this, don’t fool yourself. You may have a better mousetrap but will the public beat a path to your door? Likely not. Going full time is only done after you have been part time long enough to build a business and 15 or 25 thousand isn’t enough.

Your business will be built on repeat customers who do not always repeat every six months. Even if they did, you would need a large enough customer list to make the repeat business strong enough to support a full-time operation. Your old customers will bring in new customers as well as your advertising will bring in new customers but this all takes time. What I really am trying to say is, don’t jump, don’t fail. Be sure you know as much about business as you do gunsmithing.

If you are not a good gunsmith you can forget the whole thing anyway. Don’t give up the day job until you are sure you can match or better it. When you think about all of these things that I have said plus some I failed to bring up, then and only then can you start to think about the American Dream. What does all this leave us with? Do we make the move to success or failure or…? You have been working at home, either in the basement or the garage.

It is cramped, you have to put up with the dust from your buffing operation and neither you nor your wife really enjoys people running in and out, especially at dinner time. If you are working at home then you must be in an area where you are not violating zoning ordinances. If your municipality frowns on cottage industries, there you are on borrowed time. They will stop you eventually.

Assuming you can continue where you are you might better close off half of the garage, panel some walls and fix up a real workshop. If you have to cut aside door in, do it and make the place as efficient and neat as you can and then be happy for awhile. If it is the basement put a separate bell on the door, fix up part of the basement by a dividing wall so that the wife doesn’t have to have someone watch her do the laundry and get your shop organized.

Whenever it is possible, keep the buffing and bluing away from your shop proper. It’s dirty at best. This is not always possible and if it isn’t then you are going to spend a lot of time cleaning up. Stay with your "house shop" as long as you can for this is the least expensive operation you can be in and you should never be late for dinner. In the meantime, look for an older building, perhaps at the edge of town, that needs fixing up.

Strike a lease deal with the owner and start building when you know you’re ready. AG