Seattle Swap Shop

[SwiftE30]

I have the potential to have a full service shop where you could bring your car and have a full 24v swap done in your car within two-four days, depending what engine and trans you wanted.

This thread is meant to see how many people would be interested.

I hate working construction and thought if I had an available space I could help some people out.

[camip]

Price is the main thing we some broke mofos

[george graves]

I suggest working out of your garage on the weekends and evening till you know you can go full time.

I've see too many guys who grandma dies, they get a bit of money, think they have a great idea, sign a lease for a shop, drop thousands on tools and then find out there isn't a real demand.

[camip]

ps can I get an application?

[LuckyHenriksen]

I think you would be hard pressed to operate a full Time business doing 24v swaps. You would have to branch out to include all sorts of service and makes other than the E30

[StereoInstaller1]

Steven, you forgot to add "unless you are working out of your garage on weekends".

George nailed it.

People complain about what shops charge, and I gotta say, they just don't understand all the costs of running a business. Phone (gotta GOTTA have a land line and a phone book ad) is at least triple what you would expect. Water, sewer, DEQ fees (ask JParkr about DEQ bullshit) insurance, oh my god grab your ankles and lube up if you plan on heating your shop...all of this in addition to all the other attendant costs you already have such as housing and food and clothing...and it is hard to make solid money running a shop.

You think "$100 an hour!" when the facts are there are at least half an hour of dealing with bullshit per hour, likely about a 1/1 ratio of billable vs non billable: vendors, suppliers, credit card machine companies...hell, no one pays him $100 an hour do do the books, or take the trash out, do they?

The reality is that most guys (myself included) who own a small business would likely be better off financially working for someone else. Most fail, typically from mismanagement in one form or another. Second most common cause of death is failure to build a client base. Either way, I would love to see some solid statistics on the failure rate, but my educated guess has it as something like 80% of all businesses in the US fail before 5 years.

[Farbin Kaiber]

As said above, overhead is a bear. Building a client base is at least a 36mo. endeavor. You'll need to work on lots of other chassis to even survive.

Start small, keep your 9-5, do swaps at a discount for at least a year, get lots of cars out on the road with your work in them. The best way you'll get new customers is word of mouth from other owners selling you with a pop of the hood.

[ForcedFirebird]

I suggest working out of your garage on the weekends and evening till you know you can go full time.

I've see too many guys who grandma dies, they get a bit of money, think they have a great idea, sign a lease for a shop, drop thousands on tools and then find out there isn't a real demand.

Steven, you forgot to add "unless you are working out of your garage on weekends".

George nailed it.

People complain about what shops charge, and I gotta say, they just don't understand all the costs of running a business. Phone (gotta GOTTA have a land line and a phone book ad) is at least triple what you would expect. Water, sewer, DEQ fees (ask JParkr about DEQ bullshit) insurance, oh my god grab your ankles and lube up if you plan on heating your shop...all of this in addition to all the other attendant costs you already have such as housing and food and clothing...and it is hard to make solid money running a shop.

You think "$100 an hour!" when the facts are there are at least half an hour of dealing with bullshit per hour, likely about a 1/1 ratio of billable vs non billable: vendors, suppliers, credit card machine companies...hell, no one pays him $100 an hour do do the books, or take the trash out, do they?

The reality is that most guys (myself included) who own a small business would likely be better off financially working for someone else. Most fail, typically from mismanagement in one form or another. Second most common cause of death is failure to build a client base. Either way, I would love to see some solid statistics on the failure rate, but my educated guess has it as something like 80% of all businesses in the US fail before 5 years.

As said above, overhead is a bear. Building a client base is at least a 36mo. endeavor. You'll need to work on lots of other chassis to even survive.

Start small, keep your 9-5, do swaps at a discount for at least a year, get lots of cars out on the road with your work in them. The best way you'll get new customers is word of mouth from other owners selling you with a pop of the hood.

You guys are absolutely correct. Working nights/weekends and when work at my construction company was slow. It took from 2008-2011 for us to get a client base and even still only about 80% of our clients are e30's and about 10% of it is swaps. It has now been a year full time at the shop. I'm talking going to work at 7:30am, getting out sometime between 3:30 and 5pm, going to the shop until 12 or 1am, then doing it all again the next day.

We charge $65-100/hr depending job (we do fabrication/turbo installs/tuning/maintenance/repairs etc).

For our old smaller shop, it was $1200/mo just to keep the doors open, the new shop is 2400sf and is over $2k for lease/utilities alone. That means even working an average of 200hrs/mo (that's 50 hour weeks), you need to spend $10/hr just to keep your doors open and have a place to work. That doesn't include consumables, tools, rags, all the inventory to keep on hand like gaskets, starters, alternators etc etc. You have one slow week and you are digging deep into pockets. Have a slow month and you better have your bank account healthy.

[SwiftE30]

You guys all bring up very valid points, so thank you for the input. I have thought about everything that is mentioned and that's why I think my certain situation is a little different.

My friends family owns a stereo installation place and they have a big garage that they are not using at all. I would simply use this space and give them 10-15% of each job.

Again, this was simply an idea and that's why I wanted some other input. Thanks.

[george graves]

My friends family owns a stereo installation place...

Luke is your father?

[StereoInstaller1]

luke is your father?

lol

[ForcedFirebird]

Luke is your father?

lol

^^^ I agree HAHA.

[Killacortes]

So what would prices be like?

[BraveUlysses]

As long as the work is better than greg's swaps were...

[Dirtsquirt]

How many E30s have you built/worked on again?