Using high quality materials is important!
Only use quality materials! In all of my years in business, one thing has held true, businesses that don’t care about materials and only run after their bottom line simply don’t last. Why? Because if price is your ONLY differentiator, the race to the bottom eventually catches up to you.
REAL Leather is Expensive!
Not sure what happened this week but I had a rash of leads asking me about doing custom leather projects for them, now that the week is done, I can recap and share with you how it went.
About half has NO BUDGET nor idea of what the project they wanted done should cost. Without fail, each and every one of these potential customers didn’t follow-through with the project. Three companies immediately sent me back a request to half my price, saying it was too expensive. If the price was X when beforehand you had no idea what something should cost and don’t want to modify your design or increase volume, the price can’t be halved!
The other half were a little more informed, they knew LEATHER ISN’T CHEAP, the quality materials anyway, straight off the treated hide (yes, we put hides into our machine), not the junk you buy in sheets at the craft store. Of that, we ended up getting a project. Yahoo!
Bottom Line:
Not only does CNCROi.com use quality REAL leather, but we have to also use the thick stuff. Why? Well, the leather patch has to be closely to the same regardless of the unit count or orientation, as such, thin leather tends to shrink due to heat from the laser.
Fake leather is cheap garbage, thin is good for lots of applications, but not when heat is involved or durability is required. Quality materials start to finish produces the best results!
Metal has grain!
We do a lot of custom stainless steel work here in the shop (along with copper, anodized aluminium etc… ) but when it comes to stainless steel, there is actually a grain and due to the fact that everything is on demand, we actually give you the choice to decide what direction you want the grain to go on your plaques and tags!
About 9 times out of 10, the grain is horizontal for tags with the text or logo matching this orientation, it just looks good and fits well, but this is an option that maybe you aren’t use to being asked.
If you look closely at the custom tag below, you can see the grain going left to right on the stainless steel welding tag. Again, using quality material is vital when it comes to material that will be annealed or engraved.
Bottom Line:
Custom production has its benefits, the amount of customization and possibilities to personalize your production are as endless as your timeline and budget, and this is only possible when using high quality materials!
Value is a more important number than price
Ask one of the most valuable companies on Earth, Apple, how it grew a massive multi-billion dollar war chest and the answer is easy, they didn’t focus on price but on value.
The consumers didn’t mind spending a premium for quality material perceived to be, a higher value item. Spec to spec, Apple computers have generally lagged behind their PC alternatives but that didn’t matter, they optimized the heck out of the software, used top notch marketing AND educated their customer base to look more closely at what they were able to do with their stuff.
Your business should be no different and nor is ours! I could have bought a Chinese machine for a fraction of the price of my Austrian industrial laser, same goes with my American designed AND MADE ShopBot CNC router but I didn’t. Oh yeah, that laser also has a fiber and CO2 laser tube in it, huge premium equipment, but wow, its producing fantastic results for our customers!
I buy quality materials because I knew the value that would provide my customers. Buy top of the line equipment, marry it with expert knowledge and you have a capability that’s extremely hard to match.
The Bottom Line
Price per unit is one thing, QUALITY price per unit is quite another and that’s how you get repeat business!
Have fun with your passion!
Passion isn’t something that can be taught, you either have it for what you do or you don’t. I’m lucky, my passion is what I’m doing day in and out for our customers! I designed for these machines way before I even knew they existed. I was taught by industry leaders how to efficiently work with them and then, when I bought and founded CNCROi.com, I was given the opportunity to share this passion with my customers!
If you read enough self-help books, they all tell you to follow your dreams and build a business out of what you love doing, I’ve done that and am doing it daily.
Thanks to all my customers for giving me this opportunity to help them with all their custom needs!
