So, I'm starting my own business

[lbhsbz]

And....we've got a website.



Ebay fees are over 20% and I'm getting tired of that. I'm writing the catalog line by line..up to 1200 lines so far....it's not fun, but it will be better than any catalog out there, it already is (it's just not complete). I started on this Monday morning at about 4AM...and with a bit of help, here we are.

Lots or work ahead cleaning up imported files, re-shooting pictures, etc....but it's a good next step.

Looks like we'll finish out the year with a grand total just shy of $320K in sales. I've added about 50 part numbers in the last 2 days, and will probably add another 1000 or so over the next couple months.

Full line brake pads for automotive and SxS are in the pipe, as well as a whole lot more caliper pistons, rebuild kits, and SS brake line kits.

Still haven't paid myself. lol. This just might work, we'll see what the new year brings.

 

[lbhsbz]

Well....not quite sure what's gonna happen next. The outfit that bought the company I used to work for and fucked everything up just bought out another company...both a customer and a supplier of mine. They're the ones who bought all the bolts last year, about $100K worth. I bought quite a bit from them too, probably in the $10K range. Friday and monday they started sending out letters to customers informing everyone of price increases, effective immediately. Lowest I've heard is 20%, highest I've seen (on my letter) is 200%.

After about 10 seconds of careful thought, I copied their letter and pasted it on my letterhead, changed the names, added a MOQ figure of 100K pieces (previously it was 10K pieces) and sent it right back to them.

Lots of customers are getting pissed off....many just changed over to these guys so they didn't have to deal with the assholes that bought my old company.

...should be fun.

 

[HNL2LHC]

Interesting turn of events in your business segment. Kind of like what is going on in a lot of other business areas. Maybe you can acquire more market share with these guys screwing things up and pushing people over to you. Then you can be bought out for MILLIONS!!!!!

 

[timstoy]

Seems to be the new norm in the automotive aftermarket.

 

[Ace in the Hole]

Gave your info to one of my friends. needing a 83 944 rear caliper.

 

[lbhsbz]

Gave your info to one of my friends. needing a 83 944 rear caliper.

Great...I have about 10 sets of those on the shelf.

Been a while since the last update.

Some time in mid December I made a deal to rent some warehouse space...up to 14 pallet locations and they would handle whatever freight shipping/receiving I needed....cost me $1000/month, which while on the high side, wasn't too bad I guess. The plan was to stick pallets of bolts there so I could keep everything in stock for that customer that ended up getting acquired in early January....lol. For the last 3 months, there's been one lonely pallet sitting up there, so I killed that deal and built more shelves in my storage container around the corner to put that on....have enough shelf space now to empty another couple pallets, and one of my other suppliers close by has offered to handle whatever pallet freight shipping and receiving I need. I gave them about $50K worth of business last year, so that's nice of them.

Kit business has been growing, getting some activity on the website, eBay is doing pretty well. $23K so far on eBay this year, up 70% from the first 3 months of last year, so that looks promising.

Having problems sourcing caliper components....since the acquisition of the primary supplier to the rebuilding industry, all the big players have cancelled their orders and sent them over to the 2 little suppliers that I used to use as primary...cleaned 'em out of damn near everything. I've been working with a couple factories in China the last week here and found better sources...better quality actually than I was getting from my US suppliers, shorter lead time and better pricing shipped DDP...so I don't have to deal with any import/customs BS. Also hooked up with a US supplier who manufactures for the outfits I was buying through....I hate going over their heads/behind their back but when they tell me they can't get me parts for 2 months and their factory can ship in a week....I don't really have much of choice.

It's going well I guess

 

[Roosky01]

Just curious…

What are the highest margin calipers you can provide? What is the highest volume caliper with good margin?

 

[lbhsbz]

Just curious…

What are the highest margin calipers you can provide? What is the highest volume caliper with good margin?

Most of my calipers are fairly low volume....If I sell 1/month of each part number that's a good month. I've had stuff sitting on the shelf for over a year. It comes in waves....there were a few months where I couldn't keep Porsche 944 rear calipers on the shelf. I was selling 3 sets a week, then nothing, then a month later its 84-89 911 calipers, then something else. I've had a month go by where I didn't sell any calipers at all....that was a bit disturbing, then the next month I'm shipping 2 sets a day.

Margins are pretty good on about everything. Average calipers sells for $150. Say I've got $15 into plating, maybe $1 into rubber parts, $10 into new pistons and $8 for shipping (I offer free shipping on everything I sell), a bit of labor....Call it $100 profit on each caliper. Sound like a lot, but....

In order to be able to do this, I've got $50-60K tied up in cores. There's about a 10% core scrap rate, then I've got to store all this shit too.

British calipers are a bit lower margin....mainly because British car people are not inclined to piss away money like Porsche people, and there are new Chinese calipers available for most of the british stuff for less than I'm selling my remans for, plus I tack on a core charge. Porsche guys don't want chinese reproduction stuff on their cars....british car people don't care.

I hate rebuilding calipers but I have to keep at it. It's what enables me to develop parts that I need (and everyone else needs) and figure out how to piece together kits that don't exist anywhere else. I have some Dodge Viper ACR (carbon brakes) calipers here right now with chrome chipping off of all the pistons. Nobody, even Dodge, sells pistons....supposedly they don't have the calipers either. I'm modifying some other pistons to replace the originals....hard anodized surface rather than chrome, with stainless nosepieces to limit heat transfer, and we're adding some titanium shims between the pad and the pistons for good measure. I'll put the pistons into production after this set is done....this guy gets the mickey mouse version because he doesn't have the time to wait 4 months for everything to get sorted out correctly.

I couldn't develop this stuff without a rebuilding program, it's a necessary evil.


Caliper rebuild kits is where the money is. I sell a 6 piston brembo rebuild kit for $30+, it costs me less than $3

I do a bunch of stuff at 30-50%, but it better be effortless or high volume. I have one customer that I deal with at around 40% on average, but he orders a pallet a week of new rotors and new calipers. All I have to do is pick up the calipers at my storage, pick up the rotors at my supplier warehouse on the way, and drive about 50 miles to his place and back.

 

[Roosky01]

Most of my calipers are fairly low volume....If I sell 1/month of each part number that's a good month. I've had stuff sitting on the shelf for over a year. It comes in waves....there were a few months where I couldn't keep Porsche 944 rear calipers on the shelf. I was selling 3 sets a week, then nothing, then a month later its 84-89 911 calipers, then something else. I've had a month go by where I didn't sell any calipers at all....that was a bit disturbing, then the next month I'm shipping 2 sets a day.

Margins are pretty good on about everything. Average calipers sells for $150. Say I've got $15 into plating, maybe $1 into rubber parts, $10 into new pistons and $8 for shipping (I offer free shipping on everything I sell), a bit of labor....Call it $100 profit on each caliper. Sound like a lot, but....

In order to be able to do this, I've got $50-60K tied up in cores. There's about a 10% core scrap rate, then I've got to store all this shit too.

British calipers are a bit lower margin....mainly because British car people are not inclined to piss away money like Porsche people, and there are new Chinese calipers available for most of the british stuff for less than I'm selling my remans for, plus I tack on a core charge. Porsche guys don't want chinese reproduction stuff on their cars....british car people don't care.

I hate rebuilding calipers but I have to keep at it. It's what enables me to develop parts that I need (and everyone else needs) and figure out how to piece together kits that don't exist anywhere else. I have some Dodge Viper ACR (carbon brakes) calipers here right now with chrome chipping off of all the pistons. Nobody, even Dodge, sells pistons....supposedly they don't have the calipers either. I'm modifying some other pistons to replace the originals....hard anodized surface rather than chrome, with stainless nosepieces to limit heat transfer, and we're adding some titanium shims between the pad and the pistons for good measure. I'll put the pistons into production after this set is done....this guy gets the mickey mouse version because he doesn't have the time to wait 4 months for everything to get sorted out correctly.

I couldn't develop this stuff without a rebuilding program, it's a necessary evil.


Caliper rebuild kits is where the money is. I sell a 6 piston brembo rebuild kit for $30+, it costs me less than $3

I do a bunch of stuff at 30-50%, but it better be effortless or high volume. I have one customer that I deal with at around 40% on average, but he orders a pallet a week of new rotors and new calipers. All I have to do is pick up the calipers at my storage, pick up the rotors at my supplier warehouse on the way, and drive about 50 miles to his place and back.

Wow. Thanks for the info and I find it fascinating. Always enjoy your updates.

Is there an additional avenue in the business that you think you could exploit that you haven’t? You obviously have the knowledge in this to accomplish a lot!

 

[lbhsbz]

Wow. Thanks for the info and I find it fascinating. Always enjoy your updates.

Is there an additional avenue in the business that you think you could exploit that you haven’t? You obviously have the knowledge in this to accomplish a lot!

Lot's of 'em! Sky's the limit

I expand as I find the time....lol. Remember, I'm a one man show. I have no fucking idea how I'm doing as well as I am....maybe it's because I'm good at operating with all the data in my head.

I'm the:

Catalog guy
Purchasing guy
Caliper rebuilder guy
Kit assembly guy
Research guy
Shipping guy
Customer Service guy
Website guy
Driver
A/R
A/P
Photographer
Marketing guy

....and I still find time to sleep here and there.

With the new website, I found an add on app called MRPEasy....inventory management, billing, purchasing....does EVERYTHING way better than the version of quickbooks I had to do this. I can build actual BOMs, and work orders, and....run it like a real business. Now I have to get eBay, MRPEasy, Shopify, and Quickbooks to all talk to each other....the only thing left is MRPEasy and Quickbooks...need some help from my accountant on that, lots of things to map to other things that I'm not smart enough to deal with. That should happen here next month. Then everything will be tracked.

Lots of populating special fields so there is unison between all the platforms, lots of making new part numbers because I sell things on eBay in various stages of different kits...each one of which needs it's own part number and BOM so as to suck things out of inventory appropriately. lots of work.

 

[lbhsbz]

Been down with Covid the last couple weeks....this is the first day I've felt like doing much of shit. Most of the symptoms went away after about a week, but just sorta didn't have any energy....wake up in the morning and start counting the hours until it's time to go to bed again....that sucked. Luckily, it was pretty slow.

Today is making it up for it. Got a $1400 PO this morning for pistons/kits from a great customer....second order this month from them, orders for 9 pairs of calipers and somewhere in the neighborhood of $1300 worth of rebuild kits all came in before noon. I wish I could take the rest of the week off. lol. This is a rare day.

 

[monkeyswrench]

Sucks to be down and sick, but at least you were slow. Good thing is, timing was good. If the orders came when sick, your normal turnaround may be effected. This way, the customer knows no different.

 

[lbhsbz]

It's been a while since my last update...

Things are going well I guess...and some changes are happening.

My buddy who I worked with for years who started the caliper rebuilding business down the street from me....who said he was never going to stock finished parts, just rebuild and return what customers sent in...has started buying cores and stocking calipers to sell on an exchange basis...just like what I do. He has also taken out ads in some of the Porsche magazines...which steps squarely on my dick. He said he wouldn't do that, which is one of the reasons that I DID do that...so we wouldn't be in competition. Oh well...I'll beat 'em because I'm better.

eBay and website sales have been pretty stagnant for most of the year....no real growth. I realized I hadn't added any new product listings to eBay or the website except for a few here and there...So I sat down for a couple days and figured out what other kits I could put together out of all the component inventory I had, or what other configurations of already listed kits I could put together, took a bunch of pictures and added about 100 items to the eBay store...now I'm at 250, up from 150. I've been stuck at about $30K in sales for the last 90 days on eBay for about the whole year so far...as of yesterday, that's up to $35K. I need to add more. Goal is to get to 300 listings by the end of the month, then 400 by the end of the year. Can't sell it if it ain't for sale.

I have some suppliers that don't know what they have....they've made stuff for someone once and have stock but no nothing about it....I've requested details on some of this stuff and found some pretty good stuff. I've got caliper rebuild kits and pistons in stock for the C8 corvette, which will come in handy when people start cooking them on the track...I've sold a few, but it's a new kit so it'll take a while to gain traction.

Wholesale business is up...I've been screwing around on my customer's websites seeing what they have (that I can get) and looking at their pricing...I know where they get most all of their brake parts. Where I can match or beat their current pricing on stuff I can get through my current suppliers, I'm sending quotes and picking up some of that business.

I just hooked up with a direct importer and now have access to a NEW aftermarket caliper program....mostly dime a dozen common applications but there are a few gems in there.

A while back I had a deal to buy about 200 core calipers from a junkyard in San Diego to rebuild for a customer of mine who goes through about 200-300 of this particular part number/year....so I ordered in all the components to rebuild those, then the dickhead at the junkyard decided he didn't want to sell anymore after the initial 25 sets....so I put kits together with basically everything but the casting and sold a complete "master caliper rebuild kit"....for more than you can pick up a rebuilt caliper at autozone...and I've sold 70 of them this year so far...at very good margins. I think folks are realizing that the commercially available rebuilds are just garbage and they can do it better themselves if they can find the parts....which I put all in one kit to make it easy. I'm expanding this into fleet applications (250/2500-550/5500 class trucks) and a few enthusiast market applications....we'll see if it sticks.

The all inclusive kits is where the money is at, so concentrating on those for the forseeable future....all the profit of 3 or 4 separate sales with only the effort of one.
Numbers are looking good...even without that 6 figure customer from last year...it's looking like I'll beat last years sales total...even if I matched it, that would be a huge win. Doesn't look like I'll hit the 1/2 mil mark this year, but it's definately in the sights for next year.

Got another storage can a few months ago at the boat storage yard for another $225/month (10% off when you rent 2 units...lol) so I've doubled my warehouse space lol. Plenty of room for expansion now. I might get a couple more just because. It's cheaper than getting a proper shop and it's 1/4 miles from the house.