FunctionovaForm

Hows everything going for you Markku?

kranked91dx

Sorry to hear that,

my shop story came to an end, just like many of us, I did a lot 3 years ago, but I lacked space and time.
since my main job was about 6 month a year at that time, I though that building a larger garage, with all space needed to work with ease on more than 1 car at a time was the key.

I did, but now, I got a great paiment on the garage, my main job became 12 month a year, and I was short on time, so I put small job on the side getting more into large job that can wait a little to get complete... that was not a wise decision, I sould have keept small job running and kept away from large time consuming fab. Changing clutch, ball joint doing exhaust and such work's pay, and pay fast, alowing me to reach the end of the month clear of any debt.

I'm not into your situation, I can still use my job to pay for the garage. In the end, I end up paying upfront the job waiting in my shop, and searching for time to work alone on project that are not mine.

I love doing that stuff, that's why I still do it, but man, it's not an easy task to keep project going on, with a primary job and familly,

at least, as you said before, I got a place to store my tools and I can do my own oil change in a warm garage, I should be considered lucky, this garage is mine and is 50 feet away from the house.

-- Never loose your quality work's, that make you who you are, people will always be looking for good welder and sharp fabricator, and you can be proud to be part of them.

keep it up !

JP

chrisaddition

Wow for the last week iv been coming back to this thread and finally finished.
You do great work and I really hope you can find some kind of garage so you can keep fabin stuff.

Def

I came across this thread while searching for info on electrode sizes and ended up reading the whole thing - very riveting. I can't help but add a little analysis since I have some experience and formal education in these things (engineering, project management, business, odd side jobs on cars etc.).

This is an interesting case where I think there's a real disconnect between what the average fabricator views as value added, and what the general public views as value added. People want to buy THINGS - PRODUCTS - STUFF. The fabricator knows the ins and outs of their trade, so they see the value added of doing custom stuff that takes a ton of development time (usually more than the actual fabrication of the "stuff").

Few people of the general "car modding scene" really know much about the process, so they usually place little to no value on the difficult development/planning process.

I think there's still a place for smaller fab shops in the car scene, but they HAVE to leverage their development work into production runs. It's also a must IMO to go beyond a local market to help smooth out the "dips and troughs" in workflow. When you make a manifold people like - MAKE A JIG - MAKE MORE OF THEM. Your fab time will go down as you work along the learning curve, and as word gets out your volume should rise if you've got a strong offering in a market.

Going outside your local market as a fab shop speaks for itself. The full blown custom fab jobs seem like fun until you get back to that "people don't value development time very much" problem. They value time spent with a torch in your hand, but even then sometimes they have a skewed sense of how much it costs. Your job is to minimize both of those per product you're putting out. This doesn't mean cutting quality, but LEARNING on your products by making more of them. As an example, I highly doubt your first manifold of a design you make is going to be higher quality than the 20th or 50th one you make, even though the first one definitely took more time.

It's all about working smarter, not harder. I see lots of fab guys take the later approach, and wonder why they're not keeping their head above water.


I would like to thank Agtronic for this thread which brings you right along his journey of starting and finally closing his shop. It was painful at times, because I saw some of the same mistakes I made as I start doing various car jobs on the side (no fab, more on the engineering/tuning/design side). But you had way more at stake, and it was heart breaking to see you struggling.


Hopefully you take a break from it and start to enjoy it more in the future. You definitely had lots of talent.

SD_Lurker

iTrader: (4)

Curious what happened to you buddy? It appears you were gonna keep the shop after all but we've yet to hear from you.

dubseven

x2.

If you decide to move down south, I have a job open for you *any* time.

Stealthboost

Nice shop best of luck

RO_SUNNY

I think that Markku has left the scene for a while now.....which is terrible!

albertodsa

some years ago i started read this post, in that moment i felt envy about your shop, in a good way!

keep your equipment! right now i life in a different country and I brought with me my whole life tools.

all the best wishes!

Pimptegr4

Markku Thank you for the good read, took me 3 days to go thru it all, wish you had more luck with business tho. I thought I knew it all when I was 20 ... now turning 30 and it make me realize I don't know the half of it. Looking fwd to hit Mtl next week, beer is on me if you want free drinks!

mtflyboy25

iTrader: (2)

man this thread is both inspiring and a total bummer. I feel bad for you man. I started as someone who wanted it on the cheap, but now I will do almost anything to get it done the right way. I might mess up doing it myself, but if I pay I will pay for the best I can find. My cage in my crx might not be all that great, but the time that went into it by my builder was huge and so was the price.

i wish you all the best. Good Luck. Just dont lose your passion!

Agtronic

Hey guys, I thought I'd post an update. I hate to bump such an old thread, but I really feel like this one needs an ending. All of you who followed and commented in this thread deserve that much.

To keep it brief, I closed the shop on February 1st, 2013. It's been over a year now and that particular period was a pretty rough time so I don't exactly want to reminisce too much.

Now that I have had the time to decompress and reflect on the 5 years that I ran the shop, there are so many things I see now that I simply could not see when I was in the eye of the tornado.

Running a shop while you suffer from untreated ADD is a surefire recipe for failure. Add a soft demeanor and an inability to say no, and the problem is compounded. There are also a few key 'projects' that I should never have undertaken, which really put the nail in the coffin. When I look back at it now, it's like I was too busy doing what I loved (welding / fabricating / working on cars) to think about a long term strategy for the sustainability of the business. There were too many people hanging out for freebies, and I was too nice to tell everyone to f-off and let me work.

I'm still repairing (paying off) the financial damage that was left when I closed the shop (all customer deposits and parts have finally been returned.) I'm happy I was able to close it clean and not leave anyone hanging, even if it took a long time to get to that point.

What I miss the most is the actual shop, with my lift and my compressed air. I live in an apartment, so I can't even do my own oil changes now. It was hard to go from having a full shop facility to not having the basic tools to work on my bicycle. I have not touched a TIG torch since I closed the shop. Only now am I starting to really miss welding and fabricating.

I'm not certain I will ever want to own my own shop again. I feel that it was like a ball and chain in certain ways. I love the freedom I have now. I can literally pick up and move to Europe or California if I wanted to right now. I never had that freedom with the shop.

What's really crazy, is to see how fast everyone disappeared. I have not heard so much as a peep from anyone in the car scene since I closed last year. Like, people who were there every single day, or once a week, or who I spent a year working on their car for free, all disappeared OVER NIGHT. Not a phone call, nothing. It's really crazy. I wrote a lot more about this here, but I decided to remove it. In the end, it really was my fault for being so naive and such a sucker. It's been that way my whole life, but I seem to keep forgetting it. When I was 12, I got suckered into writing a song and recording it, so that a friend could use it to get a girl, which worked, by saying it was his song for her. When I figured it out, I went back to my hole and stayed friends with him. That's the kind of **** I gotta stop doing. Anyways, I didn't want to turn this into a therapy session.

I would like to revive the website, and finish posting the jobs I never posted. I have probably another 5 cars I am super proud of that I never got around to posting.

Anyways, thanks for reading this thread, and now that the journey has ended, we can let it R.I.P. ...

Bye guys ...

Agtronic

February 2013: (Shitty pics.)

Arsenal

It was always a great pleasure coming in here and reading about your projects and how things were progressing. Your skills were unrivaled and still are, so don't forget that.

Good luck in your future endeavors, just make sure you have an outlet for your passion. If you don't, negativity will creep in and it's a down hill spiral.

When we were young we would be banned from attending soccer practice if we misbehaved; I soon learnt that removing ones passion has a huge psychological impact in a positive way.

ForceFed Motorsports

Damn, good to hear from you buddy.

Hope you are able to get back in to fabrication work as a hobby so we can see some more of your amazing work.

It's interesting how quickly the freeloaders disperse once they no longer have something to leach off of.

Hopefully now with a different primary source of income you can enjoy your craft on the side without the stress of trying to pay the bills.

Hidenplanvew

Sorry to hear that, you and Toxic are who I have looked up to for awhile and strive to be like. I hope you can find something that will allow you to get back into your love and will make you happy!

If your ever in CO please hit me up... wouldnt mind learning a thing or two.

DC47A

This legitimately makes me want to cry! Really sucks, which sucks even worse is to see a craftsman with so much talent not be able to do that everyday and show those strengths and talents. You deserve to have a nice shop doing this kind of fabwork so much more then so many people out there in business hacking it up screwing people. Even after all this full filling your obligations and getting the projects and money back to where it belonged says a ton.

To that you are a mans man Marku!

FabChild

Good luck man! Your work was inspiring to say the least!

ballistic1350

iTrader: (7)

Wow I just read through this entire thread, I'm impressed with your skills to say the least. If you have the ability to rent a small garage or do side work you, and thats something you enjoy, I would attempt to pursue it. There will always be a market for high end custom work that can't be filled by joe blow welder. Pick and choose who you wanna do things for and let them know to not expect it anytime soon. Hell I waited a full year for a full turbo kit for my sti!
Don't forget that something your passionate about has huge effects on your personal life if you can't find an outlet.
Anyways best of luck to you, sorry to hear about everything that happened.

weiRtech

markku, I understand how you feel. it was difficult to close my shop more than a year ago now as well (same time as you). in the 6 years I had my shop I realized i'm a good fabricator but not a good businessman. i enjoyed the time I had in my shop and was lucky to be able to keep most of my equipment. I went back to my trade as a toolmaker working in a mold shop running cnc equipment. I was fortunate enough to have been offered a position with Vibrant Performance (which I started in Nov '13. having a passion for what you do will always open doors to opportunity if you keep an open mind and heart. how would you feel about moving to the GTA?

aaron

albertodsa

this is life! i saw this thread years ago and it was a beautiful shop!

Pro-SeriesFab

One of the best threads on HT despite the ending . . . great look into running a shop, the pros/cons and what can happen.

"When I look back at it now, it's like I was too busy doing what I loved (welding / fabricating / working on cars) to think about a long term strategy for the sustainability of the business."

A business is a business is a business and it's critical that anyone operating a shop either figures out a daily income statement or at a minimum a valuation for X amount of money needs to come in today (harder to figure out on longer projects where the cost per day is depreciated) to clear operating costs and then into profit etc.

It's usually why most shops start off in a metal building behind the owner's house . . . operating costs are near nil for a building you own and utilities that are combined into your home. Profit gains are much easier realized.

But again, thanks for the thread Markku and I hope you are able to learn a lot from the process and look into making another go at it. You have a great deal of talent on the fabrication side and there are a couple of places I know that would easily hire someone of your talent down here in the states.

redzcstandardhatch

you should 100% be working at a shop.... Please go work somewhere and take pics of your fab!

even if you don't, your stuff was inspirational man. Excellent