Random Thought Thread

ferider said:
From a business perspective, and it's none of mine, so forgive me: if you don't need the cash, I'd say go for it. Lower risk for you and your family is a good thing, you obviously can generate the same buzz without pre-orders and your knives will sell. If you need the cash, there are other and safer ways to get it.
Click to expand...

Everybody likes lots of cash on hand, right? Until it comes time to pay taxes on that bank balance. Depending on the random nature of the timing of these things you can see a large swing from one year to the next with tax implications on one hand and cost of capital implications on the other. And, despite my best efforts to manage this shop intelligently, it does (unfortunately) look pretty stinking random when I look at it in retrospect.

Nathan's strengths:
Good machinist
High hand strength
Good at whistling
Pretty eyes
Good at judging lengths and distances
Handy with a charcoal grill

Nathan's weaknesses:
literally everything else, especially running a retail business + manufacturing concern <--- which is why I always try to keep things simple.


Losing Freddy and then gaining Ben created a whiplash in our production. We went from burning though materials (and capital) at one rate, and then a very different rate, and then a different rate again. This makes projecting lead times on complex larger runs require a crystal ball and it also makes long term planning for heat-lots of steel challenging. So, this year saw us ready for the next run of steel at a bad time (4th quarter), from a tax perspective, because we did the Shiv pre-order, and ordered the material for that pre-order, and now they have to make steel. The delivery of that steel is going to fall somewhere around the turn of the year. I probably should have done this a little differently, but I didn't do that already.

This makes tax planning difficult because I need to take different actions now depending on an early January delivery vs a late December delivery.

Timmy, do you have a crystal ball I could borrow? Or disk? Disc? Plate? whatever.


It ain't a big deal. We'll figure it out. Or Jo will.

Jo's strengths:
Almost everything

Jo's weaknesses:
dogs
 
Whatever it is or shall be, Nathan, I'm confident that you can count on the faithful to both understand, and see you through any changes in the business model. (Of course, by Nathan I mean both Nathan and Jo.) Change always brings a bit of angst.

Take your time with the course corrections to ensure they are taking you where you want to go.
 
Tax stuff is one the least interesting things in life. My mother just retired from the IRS right before Covid as an auditor, so I've been lucky enough to let her do all my taxes every year.

One benefit is that she's always getting gifts from friends around spring time
 
From what I've seen over the last few years, Nathan has ALWAYS honoured and delivered on his commitments, EVEN if it means increased cost on his end. Just look at the K18 as a prime example. It was originally priced around $1200. Pretty sure Nathan had to sell extras around $1600 (I can't remember the exact numbers), the true cost of materials and production. Did he go back to the original buyers to ask for more money? No.

I'll also add that no one HAS to pay upfront - just don't participate in a preorder and buy the knives through the friday sales.
 
I could see having 3 pre-orders open causing some concern, even though as pointed out above, your customers are in general understanding and certainly loyal. The lad who you quoted and led to thought of removing pre orders all together had on the prior page wanted to cancel his pre order? On the consumer end I wonder if having no more than one open at a time would work better for your business? You'll work it out %100
 
Here's my $0.02, not that anyone asked...


From a consumer's perspective: I like the pre-order stuff. What I'm not so fond of is the "Las Vegas gambling/Dakar Rally" version of buying. I took part in the SDFK sales and happen to luck-out. However, that hasn't always been the case, and has actually turned me off of a few Makers/Manufacturers. With a couple (*whom I won't mention), I finally just took the high & mighty "The hell with 'em" road. I got to the point where I thought, "If they wanna' sell me a knife, they'll make it to where I can actually buy one."

From a Manufacturer's perspective: I complete get how the pre-order thing could be a pain in the ass. Because I understand that, I try to pay my deposit/balance as quickly as possible and refrain from the everyday calls and e-mails with the "So, how long are we talking about?" nonsense. I completely get the production "unforeseens" that y'all have to deal with on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, but realize that-that might not be true for every customer. In my humble opinion, the pandemic really brought to light some things, and folks should've learned from those lessons...and when I say "folks", I mean customers. Hell, Jerry Busse just put the kibosh to one of his popular steels because the pandemic ate the lunch of some of his suppliers. Beyond all the above, I wouldn't have the sack to run my own business. So, I have to hand it to the guys/gals who do.


At the end of the day, it's your Shop and you have to do what's best for you/it, lest we all be willing to settle for CPK going the way of the dinosaur. Even a lowly parasite knows not to kill the host. For me, EVERYTHING is a matter of BALANCE.

If you do decide to go the "Friday Sale" route, I'd have to agree with JJ_Colt45 JJ_Colt45 in that it would be nice if there were larger quantities available. However, I realize that I'm a n00B and that my opinion...and $2.49...will get you a cup of coffee at your nearest convenience store.


Whatever you decide, I certainly wish you, Jo, and the crew all the good fortune in the World.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
The offensive thing about it is, I'm pretty sure the memory is already in the machine. They're just going to come out and change a hidden parameter variable from a 0 to a 1.
Click to expand...

100%.

It's why the right-to-repair movement is so important in the technology space right now. People don't throw things out because they're broken - people throw them out because they can't be fixed (and/or are designed to break via planned obsolescence).
 
I also like pre-orders because I'm not always available on Fridays for the sales. I'm a patient person so paying/waiting is not a huge deal for me. I don't even bother looking for status updates. I kinda just forget about it until Jo emails me LOL

Anyways, I can see a model where pre-orders are for only standard make ups with no customization to the steel at all. The closest thing to customization might be scale choice, which could be decided at time of delivery and options would be limited to what's available on hand. I firmly believe this would significantly simplify pre-orders in general. Take the recent Shiv preorder. 300 knives were made available. Imagine EVERY SINGLE ONE had customization. Nate/team would now be tasked with making 300 custom knives. I can see how this is not very sustainable for day-to-day operations.

Maybe custom orders should be based on a lottery system and made available whenever Nate/team has capacity?
 
Some of this is just the growth thing. When I first started buying CPKs, a lot of Friday Sales were fairly tame, and I was fast enough to score nearly at will. There was usually only one pre-order, if any, open. But Nathan and Jo's popularity has skyrocketed, as have the frequency of new models, it seems, so all the sudden even though I'm the same speed, I'm often on page 2+ of the post results during Friday Sales.

I think naturally this will result in some people being frustrated because demand for CPKs is going to exceed supply for a long time, and exceed the Carothers shop's supply ceiling, probably. Maybe some of them won't stick around because of how hard it becomes to get CPKs. That's unfortunate, but probably unavoidable.

Nathan gets most of my knife money, but I think some of us who have been around for a few years will just need to adjust our expectations a bit. Nathan has always delivered, and I can't think of another maker I'd trust with full or even 50% deposits on a single knife, much less the three different models I have pending with Nathan right now.
 
I had an iPhone 5s. One of their first with a fingerprint reading home button. The screen cracked and I wanted to get it repaired. I called around to third party repair shops, they wouldn’t touch it. They said Apple won’t even repair it because when you replace the screen there is a high failure rate of the finger print reader. I thought this a dubious assertion and called an Apple shop to see if they would repair it. They would not - only replace it with a new one for a mere $350. After some back and forth the tech gave me a website to go to. He said it was the screen manufacturer for Apple in china. I don’t know if that was true, but they did have the screen. $70 for the screen and $15 for a set of tools for opening up an iPhone. I did it myself. It worked perfectly fine. As part of my carriers plan, I get to upgrade my phone every two years. Turned in the 5s and got my new one. Was it worth the trouble? Yes, because I didn’t have the $350 and I needed my phone for work.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
I just spent $2,000 for 2 megabytes of memory for a machine controller.

things have gotten so weird, it doesn't even feel weird anymore.
Click to expand...
2MB for $2K? Is the machine from the 80's?

Did you see them install a few of these?
1200px-Floppy_disk_2009_G1.jpg
 
Enthusiasms need to be curbed. Both Marc and xx are spot on with their postings. I wish that preorder threads which are already completed and stickied (to not be confused with filled and finished as in all done) would be locked down to comments other than the Mods. This is becoming about as annoying as frivolous comments in WTB/S/T.

Nathan, whichever you decide to do it and if you should decide to make life a bit easier for both you and Jo by going back to the simpler ways and the simpler days, I will still support you even if it means that I score less CPKs specially the more customized one. That said, I am a cheater, I cheat and my cheating skills are top notch. I will get some in one way or another.

Totally unrelated: This is post number 12500. Holy crap! What an unillustrious career. About as bad and terrible as Liz Truss's. But at least I lasted much longer. Haha... Totally random but there you have it.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
Everybody likes lots of cash on hand, right? Until it comes time to pay taxes on that bank balance. Depending on the random nature of the timing of these things you can see a large swing from one year to the next with tax implications on one hand and cost of capital implications on the other. And, despite my best efforts to manage this shop intelligently, it does (unfortunately) look pretty stinking random when I look at it in retrospect.

Nathan's strengths:
Good machinist
High hand strength
Good at whistling
Pretty eyes
Good at judging lengths and distances
Handy with a charcoal grill

Nathan's weaknesses:
literally everything else, especially running a retail business + manufacturing concern <--- which is why I always try to keep things simple.


Losing Freddy and then gaining Ben created a whiplash in our production. We went from burning though materials (and capital) at one rate, and then a very different rate, and then a different rate again. This makes projecting lead times on complex larger runs require a crystal ball and it also makes long term planning for heat-lots of steel challenging. So, this year saw us ready for the next run of steel at a bad time (4th quarter), from a tax perspective, because we did the Shiv pre-order, and ordered the material for that pre-order, and now they have to make steel. The delivery of that steel is going to fall somewhere around the turn of the year. I probably should have done this a little differently, but I didn't do that already.

This makes tax planning difficult because I need to take different actions now depending on an early January delivery vs a late December delivery.

Timmy, do you have a crystal ball I could borrow? Or disk? Disc? Plate? whatever.


It ain't a big deal. We'll figure it out. Or Jo will.

Jo's strengths:
Almost everything

Jo's weaknesses:
dogs
Click to expand...
I'd have to bow to AI.

you could have the A.I. that makes those creepy art pieces with extra hands spit out a future prediction
 
tokerblue said:
2MB for $2K? Is the machine from the 80's?

Did you see them install a few of these?
1200px-Floppy_disk_2009_G1.jpg
Click to expand...

No, it was made in this century. There's no reason it doesn't have ten times more memory than it does other than Fanuc made the business model of selling a machine tool that costs as much as a house with as much memory on it as my mechanical wristwatch and then charging you a small car to enable the memory that's already on that machine and that's just how they do it now.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
No, it was made in this century. There's no reason it doesn't have ten times more memory than it does other than Fanuc made the business model of selling a machine tool that costs as much as a house with as much memory on it as my mechanical wristwatch and then charging you a small car to enable the memory that's already on that machine and that's just how they do it now.
Click to expand...
so they sold the machine twice?
 
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