Wow! Six months of waiting with no set delivery date in sight. IMO this is poor business practice. If he has so much business, he should hire help rather than making his customers wait so long.
-Roy
Roy, this is easy to say and very hard to do when you are a small businessman for many reasons.
A lot of business choices revolve around 3 criteria: market size (projected sales); quality desired; finally, selling price/profit. It is hard to juggle these three. In a boutique audio business, the market is unstable and sales fluctuate wildly. It is hard to pay bills and eat when there are no sales. Quality is probably the hardest of the three when a peraon is hired to do a particular job in a field that is new to them. How many professional cabinet makers proficient in polyurethane construction do you know? The third is very tricky. People (myself included) want the higest quality at the lowest price possible. If Dr. Geddes was charging for the value of his speakers vs. the current marketplace they would easily be double the price.
I can only speak for myself when it comes to this part - My business runs from no orders to unbelieveably backordered at the drop of a hat. I provide the higest value /dollar in my field that is possible while maintaining the highest quality (for an ugly black box) that I can. People buy my products for what they do, not how they look. I have run the numbers. If I hired a person to help my (legally, which is the ONLY way I would do it) my price would need to triple in order to make the same living that I am now. This is something that I cannot and would not do. Besides, when business slowed down, I would have to lay the person off and provide unemployment compensation benefits through an insurance plan. If a person is hurt on the job who do you think pays? In the coming economic climate I would have to provide healthcare. Teaching someone how to do something is a long process. Even then there is no guarantee of product quality from another persons' hand. You should try to hire competent help at what a job is worth not what the employee wants to be paid. My zoning allows me to work out of my residence as long as I do not have employees. I cannot afford to do what I do for the price I get while maintaining a manufacturing plant. Then there is security that must be dealt with as well as all of the OSHA requirements.
It is easy to judge anothers' performance in any particular field of endeavor. In our industry something is either worth the investment, in the context of dollars and time involved), or it isn't. That is up to the buyer not necessarily the spectator IME.
My $1.98
Dave
