[TheForge] Re: File Making, sniffing up wrought iron

[Jerry Frost]

From: "Andrew Vida" <osan at netlabs.net>


>
>
> Well, I cannot really blame them, especially at 50#. 
> Startups usually cannot absorb costs like that.  I'm 
> in the middle of this at the moment with our company. 
> Without a goodly amount of working capital things 
> remain very tight.  Chicken/egg/fish/cutBait...
>

As you describe below people can be their own worst 
enemies. I offered to cover whatever it cost for a 
10lb. sample any mix, short pieces would be fine and 
they demonstrated they were NOT listening by saying 
they couldn't afford it. I'm not the only one who 
couldn't justify spending a couple hundred bucks to try 
it out but would've been happy to lay out $50. Even 
before USPS flat rates you could send 10lbs in a 1' 
tube for just a few bucks.

As far as I know there's only one guy here in AK who 
got any and he picked it up at a conference in the 
lower 48. Liked it well enough. Many of the Alaskans 
I'm in contact with now would've liked and been willing 
to pay $50 for a really small sample, 5-10lbs. Had we 
been organized then the club could've made an order 
from pooled resources. Still, a little short 
sightedness marketing shot a lot of potentials down.

>
>> Sent me an Art and Metal "T" shirt though.
>
> I still have two of those.
>

They could've sent me a 1lb sample for less and while I 
really like the "T" I would've liked to try the iron 
even more.

>
>
> This is precisely so.  I remember having this 
> conversation in 2000 with (I  think) Peter Happny at 
> the airport.  He mentioned that there was a guy 
> somewhere in CA I think, who made very mediocre work 
> but was a crackerjack marketer.  He was making money 
> hand over fist while some of the finest smiths on the 
> planet barely make it.  Marketing is the big key, but 
> also knowing how cost and price work is pretty 
> important and it is amazing to see how few smiths 
> know anything about any of this.
>
> When I was at the shop in Mesa my partner was one of 
> those nervous nellies - he'd NEVER price work 
> properly.  One day an expected customer showed while 
> he was out.  I priced the work on the spot (it was an 
> easy one to cost out) and the guy left me with a 
> check for the full amount. Terry got back, asked if 
> the guy came and I said "yes".  He asked  me where he 
> went and I told him what I did.  He blanched - I 
> thought he'd burst an artery on the spot.  After 
> letting him go on awhile I stuck the check under his 
> snoot and all he could say was "how'd you do that?" 
> He never learned the lesson and continued 
> under-pricing our work.
>
> Anyhow, the point is that smiths are generally void 
> of any significant business sense/knowledge.  What 
> has really surprised me is how few seem to make any 
> effort to remedy this situation despite the 
> importance of knowing how to run a business when one 
> is trying to.
>
>

Too many "artists" seem to have fallen into the myth 
that they need to be starving to be real artists. It's 
a load of BS in the extreme, mostly perpetrated by the 
middleman with no creative talents but a desire for 
good living.

We have one guy in our organization who lives an hour's 
flight from the nearest city and he does beautiful 
work. He has to pay a buck a lb to get coal or propane 
shipped in on top of buying it in the first place. He 
spends 30-45 mins hand forging and finishing (no power 
tools for him) a coat hook and can't bring himself to 
charge more than $10 for it. This is in a town where 
gas was $5/gl two years ago and is over $8 now. A place 
where shipping nearly triples the price AFTER it gets 
of AK.

What's he say when asked why he charges so little? 
"Well. . . they're just replacing a 16d nail after all. 
I can't charge my friends so much, etc."

If he were marketing his work properly the people in 
his town couldn't afford his work, it'd all be going 
outside to HIGH end markets. The snob appeal of having 
hand wrought iron work made from salvaged gold rush 
wrought iron in a log smithy on the banks of the Yukon 
River hundreds of miles from civilization would be 
irresistable.

Under pricing hand wrought will do more to drive off 
sales than over pricing ever will. People will happily 
pay a premium for bragging rights and brag about YOU 
where they'll lie about how expensive a bargain was and 
never mention YOUR name for fear of being found out.

Frosty
-------------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.