Those doing more than the "hobbyist", what have you done to maximize workflow?

[acehobojoe]

What are some tricks to make pedals at a quicker and more efficient rate?

Did you have luck using some of the new tools of the trade? (SMT, Powdercoating)?

Does anyone on here make a living on stompboxes? I know a few friends who have.

[R.G.]

Workflow.


It's a brutal business. There have been posts here and in its precursor for the last couple of decades discussing how really difficult it is to support yourself building pedals. I suspect that improving your workflow won't get you there.

You might want to do a little math first.
1. How much money do you need to make selling pedals? That's actual, cash-in-your-pocket that you can spend.
2. How much money do you need to make before taxes to be able to spend that money without the feds and the state and the county and the city coming and taking other things away from you?
3. How much will you spend on overhead? You're going to pay something for electricity, heating and cooling, storage, insurance, office supplies, telecommunications, rent, and about 10,000 other things. That all goes into the cost of each pedal.
3. How much capital do you need to make this thing flow? In this sense, money is a "lubricant", used to order parts, buy supplies, pay rents, pay internet service fees, pay advertising, and so on. Note that this is not the money actually spent on those items, but a fund of cash to be sure you can buy what you have to have *when* you have to have it, and get the money back out at the end of the process to re-lubricate the next batch. A great analogy is the amount of water the human body uses digesting food. This is not the water used for urinary excretion, sweat, and so on. It's just the water that goes into the digestive juices to break stuff down. You use about two gallons of water digesting food each day. You don't see this because the majority of it is re-absorbed in the last little bit of the digestive process to be reused. This item is critical because it directly limits your workflow. You can't make any more pedals than you can order parts for at any one time, to overstate an obvious.
4. What is the fully-discounted cost of each pedal? Pedals are more than a box of parts and some neato soldering. They are a parts list, a process list, a packaging and artwork list, a per-box warranty and support cost, a pro-rated overhead cost, a per-pedal labor cost, a per-pedal inventory cost (it's there whether you think it is or not, like so many of these) and others.
5. What can you sell a pedal for? What you can't do is to add up all these costs, then lump on a comfortable profit, and be happy. There is a maximum price you can sell a pedal for, and probably only one or two sales at that price. If you sell for cheaper, you sell more, and you can actually make more money at a lower price. At some point if you keep lowering the price, you return starts going down again. The price/profit curve is an interesting application of the reasoning the Laffer curve, and one that is critical to small businesses.
6. There is an ill-defined maximum profit price for any pedal (or anything else!) where you get the intersection of best practical profit per pedal times the best practical number of sales. When you find that, you get to divide that profit per pedal into the results of 1 and 2 above and see if the number of pedals you *have* to sell to make a living is more or less than both the maximum profit point pedal quantities, and the number you can fund with your capital.

You're probably way ahead of me on all this. I'm a techie. I learned a lot of this the informal hard way, but a lot of this is common business degree stuff. Sometimes I'm a little bitter - the B-school guys know this stuff already and they didn't even have to learn to do circular integrals in the complex number plane!   

[Beo]

If you want to make an annual salary of $50k, and you sell your basic OD box for 100$, you need to sell 500 of them in a year, meaning you need to build 1.36 per day. If your pedals are particularly fancy and you can get 200$ per, you only need to sell 250 in a year, making 0.68 per day.

First of all, I don't think $50k revenue is worth it. That's not profit... you have to discount your costs: materials and expenses, taxes and the rest.

And do you really have 500 customers per year? There's a lot of competition out there, and the average guitarist doesn't care about custom or boutique... you can get a Berhinger or Dan Electro for 10-20$. You have to spend your time on marketing and branding if you want to get a premium for your boxes, whether by boutique mystique or local word of mouth.

If this becomes a part time affair, when you are not doing your day job, time becomes a premium. A fabbed pcb, onboard pots/jacks, pre-painted/drilled boxes, and a basic waterslide minimizes your build time. Work your pedals 5-10 at a time makes sense... especially for painting / clear-coating. Prepare your wires, tinning and parts sorting in advance.

Lost cause I think. Can make a lot more working at Denny's.

[mth5044]

All-pedal.com  

[garcho]

^ just like brewing. time-share manufacturing, i dig it. didn't look into all-pedal much, but seems like it could be a good thing for the right person.

Does anyone on here make a living on stompboxes? I know a few friends who have.

What are some tricks to make pedals at a quicker and more efficient rate?

what did your friends say when you asked them?  

[Perrow]

2. How much money do you need to make before taxes to be able to spend that money without the feds or the state or the county or the city coming and taking other things away from you?

I make a point of thinking twice before arguing with anything R.G says, but I think this is what he meant.



I'm a software engineer (that's read a little too much about logic), I don't think I, in my lifetime, will earn as much making pedals as I did during the first few months as a programmer. That won't stop me from selling a few pedals, but I won't ever quit my day job to start building pedals for a living.

OP: What do you do today that makes you want to quit and hack it out as a pedal builder?

[armdnrdy]

Another thing to ask yourself is....

What do I have to offer that will let my product stand out from the pack?

Do I have original designs? or am I going to join the hoard of the so called "Boutique", "Hand wired" crowd.

Why would someone purchase my stompbox over brand X?

[karbomusic]

First of all, I don't think $50k revenue is worth it. That's not profit...

Right, take what you (personally) want to gross as income, triple it then do the per pedal math to achieve that. Also don't forget that we need a large chunk of our time for running the business all the way down to ordering parts, marketing, warranties, doing the books and about 1000 other unexpected duties and expenses.  We have to calculate all that is needed then and that dictates the price of the pedal not the other direction.. However...

By the time one does the math properly they'll see that a "good living" results in a $500 per pedal (or some other ridiculous number) and we are dead in the water due to competition because even lovingly handmade has it's limits. Welcome to the real world. 

I build a 3-7/month @ 200.00-300.00 each. After parts, labor, taxes, business licenses and everything else, I'll be lucky to break even but it's close enough to fund the paid business hobby. IOW, I have a great regular job that allows me to do what little pedal building I do.

[Frank_NH]

"Can make a lot more working at Denny's..."

Quite true, but you CAN have a "regular" job and build pedals part time.  In that case, as someone else mentioned, your time spent building, marketing, and selling is what you have to put a value on.  If you enjoy doing it, then it can be rewarding, both personally and monetarily.

If I were building to sell, I would first develop a product line of pedals that were in demand or I could identify a market for.  If they started to sell, then I'd develop a batch style building process so that I could efficiently fabricate the components, install/box them, test them, and prep them for shipping.  I would also develop a web presence for marketing and selling.  And if possible, I'd also try to get a "name" artist to endorse my products.  The last one would be difficult without a major investment in time, but if you wanted your business to take off it's what you'd have to do (I suppose you could help this along by attending the NAMM tradeshow and similar events - but that would be another investment of time and money).

Good luck.  

[garcho]

I suppose you could help this along by attending the NAMM tradeshow

"Welcome to NAMM, a friendly place for EH to make their demos/you tube ads. Paid for by your booth fees!"

[Gus]

R.G.

Will an effect business need liability insurance if the device has a 9VDC power receptacle? 
Who knows what someone might plug into it.

[LightSoundGeometry]

the market is not there - you have to come up with a product and slowly let word of mouth get out to the consumer - its cut throat and people are not spending

it has to be a hobby and everything else will follow - if you make an honest product at an honest price it will come in time

my .02

[R.G.]

Will an effect business need liability insurance if the device has a 9VDC power receptacle? 
Who knows what someone might plug into it.

I guess it depends on whether you have anything to lose. What happens if a toddler chews the paint off, or eats the battery? Or if the housing crushes, and the sharp edges puncture the bare foot used to stomp it?

In a mature litigious society, any producer of goods that has money to be obtained by judgement *will* be sued. The only question is how soon and whether they are "judgement proof".

[karbomusic]

In a mature litigious society, any producer of goods that has money to be obtained by judgement *will* be sued. The only question is how soon and whether they are "judgement proof".

Pretty much. It isn't about whether you are actually safe, mindful and sound. It's whether you have something that someone else might want; and if you are successful and have a bank account and assets, you do. Suing is more of a source of potential income these days, vs. correction of negligence. Assume when, not if.

[trixdropd]

I find that building in batches of 10 or more is much more efficient than doing 1 at a time.

[GGBB]

All-pedal.com  

Wampler.

[Ben79]

As said above, I think batch building is the way to go.  I tend to build a pedal in a few hours but given another hour I could probably have built 4 or 5 if they're all the same.

Not that the OP asked for advice on this but I think the market is pretty saturated with little aluminium fuzz boxes with silly names....if you can use your imagination to come up with something a little fresh, even if it's mostly aesthetic, you've got a better chance of carving yourself a place.

[amptramp]

Don't forget that if your pedal generates frequencies in excess of 9 KHz, you will need to get FCC certification.  Pure analog pedals will be OK but delays and pedals with a CPU in them will require certification.  Probably around $1500.  Even a DC-DC converter will require this.

[acehobojoe]

In summary: work at Denny's

[R.G.]

!!
$1500 for certification??

Where can I get it done for that little?

I'm deadly serious. My experience is that it costs much more.