Custom Design + Fantastic Equipment = Happy Customers
It’s all about having happy customers!
In my earlier life while I was teaching myself how to design for machine I didn’t know existed, I quickly realized the power of a custom design but only when I started getting equipment did I realize that design was only half the equation.
Without fantastic equipment to back up your amazing custom design, all you did was create a headache in both departments.
Things don’t fit together, you burn out your blades, pop circuit breakers, put yourself in danger, produce inconsistent results and worse, fall behind on deadlines!
Remember, our goal at CNCROi.com is to produce happy customers as it leads to repeat business!
I was lucky in a way, I met the right companies at the right time, was able to talk to people around the world who had equipment and they told me their successes and failures and from all that, I LEARNED.
Before I started CNCROi.com, I actually wrote a blueprint as to what I was going to do to grow this business, it took a lot of time, lots of thought and it has served me incredibly well from the moment I landed back in North America to now, on the verge of moving to yet a bigger building to handle even more happy customers.
I’ve never shied away from getting something that was more than my shop “currently” needed as I know, the moment I buy A, I will have wished I bought B… and this has happened to me time and again.
It’s also important to have more than one way to produce a project, it allows for ultimate diversity in offerings and if anything “goes wrong” you aren’t stuck on the only canoe going up the creek.
I had a customer ask me the other day what made me want to invest my life saving’s and then some buying only a few top of the line equipments when I could have easily equipped the entire shop with everything I would have needed right off the bat at the same price.
The answer is simple, I like to buy things ONCE, not repeatedly!
You see, buying cheap is actually more expensive than buying right in the first place, by the time you figure your wasted time, clients projects lost and having to buy the same thing over and over again, you could have bought that top of the line equipment, paid it off and started to make a profit!
What I find interesting as CNCROi.com keeps on growing is that after the “start-up equipment” is paid off, you begin to realize that the next step up in equipment costs even more!
Sure, the cheap stuff can be bought quite easily, but again, do I want to trust my happy customers’ projects and their deadlines on machinery that’s a fraction of the price and can break down anytime? My reputation is worth more than that.
Over the weekend I’ll be finishing-up a project that has taken me several days to do for a customer, it’s enough volume to not be one of those “24 hours turnaround” kind of jobs but upon payment, I set-up goals with daily email updates to the happy customers as to where we were upon those benchmarks.
So far, everything has hit those benchmarks perfectly, now that the laser and other power equipment work is behind me, it’s time to go into the more predictable such as sanding and finishing.
What I enjoy most about doing these large projects is to update the customer as to where things are at, the reason for that is simple, if I was in their shoes and sent money to a company I found online whose owner I never met, I’d want the same reassurance!
I always try to put myself in my customer’s shoes, trying to produce the best result for the given application, if this means I have to mail a prototype or upgrade materials or even produce a 3D model for them to feel comfortable with the project, no problem!
Another thing I enjoy with customers are flexibility, if we agreed to one thing and I find out the results aren’t as intended, we have a quick chat and change course.
For instance, I recently made a bunch of custom bookmarks and the prototype was approved but once I got into production, I realized that the thickness had to be thicker as I was seeing the end product as kinda weak for the given application.
Making “one” and making “hundreds” requires a different approach towards custom manufacturing and sometimes all the stars aligned for that first one but don’t for the others without a few changes.
On-demand manufacturing means that we make everything in the volumes our customers require, custom means that we make things that our customers “think” and that we “design” and produce a real version of and with that, there are always issues that need to be addressed from materials to equipment.
As everything CNCROi.com does is custom, sometimes it means that what we both thought doesn’t go according to what we had planned so flexibility in approach is important.
It’s a lot of fun running CNCROi.com, each project is unique in its own way, from custom corporate awards made out of solid maple to welding tags made out of stainless steel or name badges out of Corian, I really enjoy it when the customer gets the finished product and writes to me how much they really like what we made for them.
What makes things fun is that CNCROi.com generally does the whole project, transforming raw materials into finished products for our customers and the best part is how smooth the transition is thanks to the equipment we have and the expertise established through thousands of custom projects.
If you need something custom, contact CNCROi.com right now!