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At this point, we only sold seats, but we really wanted to provide a complete "Automotive look" for homebuilt interiors. We started to design additional products, and researched the manufacturing processes that would be needed to produce them.The problem was that most of these items were quite expensive to manufacture in small quantities and would require a large upfront investment. If we were going to offer them as a product for sale, we had to find a way to sell them at a price that customers would be willing to pay.
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| Our side panel package |
Unfortunately, the only way we could find to reduce the price was to cut out almost all of our profit margin. I hoped that if the new products were popular with customers, we could reduce some of the expensive part costs from our vendors by ordering in larger quantities and eventually turn a profit. In the mean time, we would have to get by on the profits from our seats.At this point, anyone experienced in business is probably shaking their head. It wasn't a great idea, and really set us back financially. Customers really liked the new products however, and the orders did start to ramp up. |
More products and more orders meant that we needed more help. I was apprehensive about the hiring process, and very nervous that we would end up with the wrong person. In addition, I knew each new person was a stretch for us financially. We were small, and adding even one person was a big increase in our expenses.As the number of orders continued to increase, ensuring quality also became more important. We moved from many parts being made strictly by hand, to the use of more automated processes. This was great for efficiency, but if the process was not set up correctly, it was just an efficient way to make a lot of worthless parts. We learned this the hard way on more than one occasion.It was a constant learning process. Just when I thought I had a few things figured out, I would realize how much more I still had to learn. We kept learning though, and as time went on things continued to get better and better.
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