Don’t offer 24 hour turnaround!
At networking events, people look at our business card and brochure and SEE that we offer 24 hour turnaround. Some people are intrigued, other say “don’t ever offer 24 hour turnaround!”
Why offer 24 hour turnaround?
Offering and doing are two different things, on many of our smaller projects, we can have them done within 24 hours and shipped out the door. Generally, people are impressed at the speed we can offer. Why not? CNCROi.com isn’t in the storage business, the faster we get stuff in and out, the faster you benefit and the faster we get paid! It’s mutually beneficial to get projects in your hands ASAP!
Now, 24 hour turnaround doesn’t always work, the volumes may be too big, the production times too long or the queue of other projects on the go too large but rest assured, we try our best to be as quick as quality offers us. Why can we be so fast sometimes? Because our equipment is top of the line! I imported our Austrian industrial wide-format CNC laser into Canada… the first of its kind! I could have bought a Chinese laser for a fraction of the price but you know what, I figured out clients would appreciate having things that were straight and not getting calls about a part breaking or production problems.
Buying quality machinery with industrial capabilities is why that “simple” wall plaque was ordered in the afternoon and delivered in absolute quality the next day.
Why offering 24 hour turnaround is a bad idea!
One particular business owner who saw my business card and proceeded to spend an hour trying to convince me NOT to offer 24 hour service has always stood-out in my mind. I simply couldn’t figure-out why he was so against the idea… I didn’t realize until after the meeting and a little hindsight what was going on.
He kept telling me that I had to get my pricing down so that I could get into a business and then increase prices afterwards, tried to convince me to do a bunch of pro-bono work for him as it could lead to lots of future business and the list goes on. It was rather confusing… but then it hit me. This guy isn’t in the business that I’m in. He wasn’t actually MAKING any of the products he was selling… he was IMPORTING all the “custom” things from China, Thailand and India. He was competing against all the “custom” promotional companies out there selling branded pens to t-shirts and he freaked-out when he realized what I was offering!
His turnaround from order to receivables was up to a month (and throw-in quality control issues)… no wonder he hated what I was offering. He didn’t want me approach XYZ customers, he didn’t want me doing this and that. It wasn’t because he was any better or worse than me, he was trying to sell ice while I was selling a refrigerator! He was part of what I consider the “old guard” of the promotions business, you know, the guys that sell those glass awards you see in EVERY OFFICE but with a different logo and name and don’t even get me going on boring “personalized” pens and key chains.
By the way, we can not only make thousands of key chains but we can also make each one unique across a variety of material!
Price, price and more price!
Lots of business are held-up by one thing, and that’s PRICE. What they haven’t come to realize is that there is a price to be paid by going CHEAP. My goal isn’t to be the cheapest custom CNC shop in the world, that would mean I’d have to become an importer like the friend I spoke about in the previous paragraph. If the only thing you care about is the price, then you haven’t been in business long enough to realize that VALUE is worth far more than price.
Value is having something LAST longer than a cheaper alternative. That’s why we do not user Cermark (ceramic bonding paste) on stainless steel marking, we use a fiber tube. The cost of a fiber tube exceeds that of a car but the results are PERMANENT. When we anneal stainless steel, the results don’t come off. They don’t chip, they don’t crack and they certainly will not fade with time. That’s VALUE!
There is ALWAYS a way to shave corners off, whether it’s choosing a cheaper material, hiring incompetent staff or doing more than a machine was built to handle. What do all these have in common? They save you money NOW at the cost of future profits. They are “cheaper” but certainly not better. What is one of the first questions my industrial customers ask me when we meet? Where is our machinery from. I say AUSTRIA and USA with pride, that gets me in the door. The customer understands that very instant that what I’m offering is value and that I’ve already invested into the business relationship.
24 hour turnaround
The true reason why we offer 24 hour turnaround, though few customers actually take us up on the offer, is that it shows confidence in our ability and processes. I KNOW when I turn a machine on, that it will go ON. I know the tables are level and square. I know that our industrial air compressor (again, wicked overkill for a shop our size) will work.
We’ve also taken contingencies incase things don’t go to plan. For instance, our CNC laser has 2 spare lenses for EACH laser tube. How many times have we shattered or broken a lens during production? NEVER! When WILL it happen? When a customer needs something yesterday and is under the gun to deliver results… of course, it will be during a holiday when everything is closed AND the supplier’s inventory is behind schedule meaning stock won’t come in for a few more weeks.
I’ve worked hard to build-in excess capabilities, buying overkill, our jigsaw for instance is a 450$ jigsaw! Not because we use it often but because we need it to work when we turn it on and work properly right off the bat!
I recently bought a new orbital sander, again, top of the line… how many pads do we have at 80 through 320 grit? 50 of each! Overkill, yes but when we need it, it’s there and on some of the materials we work with, these pads don’t last very long like yesterday when I was sanding cement with them after paint filling a laser engraved unit made of it! If ever our orbital died, we have the same redundancy by the way, our polisher has the same grits available as well!
It isn’t cheap operating a custom CNC shop, but it’s enjoyable to have equipment that works well when we need it to. We invest in our equipment so that you have something on-time and on-budget.
