Market Opportunities for Stained Glass??

Hmmm...I thought I tried that but couldn't get it to work.

Andy

Well giving the stuff away practically for free and not paying the overheads on business premises is always a good start.

Then you can try hanging around commercial glass makers, stealing their designs and bitching about "how much they overcharge".

Yes, it's great fun trying to compete with self-subsidising hobbyists!

Well? OK, bad day? I thought this thread was dead? Nobody likes any of that...

Reminds me of the stained glass studio owner who won the lottery. When asked what he thought he'd do with all that money, her replied " Well, I guess I'll just stay in the glass business until it's all gone."

Get serious!!! have you ever DRIVEN a Kia? K-I-A...an acronym for Korea's Imitation Automobile. Same argument was made back in the 60's about the French, British, and Italian cars being superior. Yeah, right. The POO-joe really made Detroit quiver. A large number of the marques in Europe are now under US ownership. Jag and Land Rover owned by Ford, for example. Daimler Chrysler sound familiar?

Ummm...somehow I don't see the necessity to engineer robotics to make SG lampshades. Sure, a certain amount will sell every month, but it isn't like there is this huge market that is not satisfied by current production. I can't imagine what a robot would cost that could foil pieces of a lampshade. The ROI would be minisicule.

Those poor Asians just haven't heard about your "turbo soldering" technique where you can do, what was it, 5 feet of beading in a minute or something?

Yeah?....that piece of advice is about as valuable as some of your other marketing ideas.

Oh, it's manual. No machine could do work that looks that ugly.

You've made assumptions about using technology that just doesn't exist to produce products that are low volume to start with. Your earlier mention of a "robot" to cut glass is nonsensical. A water-jet, maybe. The return on investment to automate the production of a SG lampshade would take "forever" to just recoup the capital investment vs. the labor savings.

Could automation be done? Probably. But why? The market isn't there to justify the investment nor is there enough competition to ever think that saving a few manhours would give one manufacturer a significant advantage over another.

However, there are lots of local

Yeah, right. More of your mythical subjects in your fantasyland, King Dennis?

Have you?

Not only have we driven one, we actually own one; an '01 Kia Sportage. In the first three months or so, we had a charging problem. They just replaced battery and alternator. It also developed some brake noise. No questions. New rotors and pads.

In the intervening 50K miles or so, not a single problem... unless you want to count the time we were offroad and hit a big ol' rock and the right front tire came unbeaded from the wheel.

Not having complete trust in the brand, we broke with SOP and bought the extended warranty. I'm happy to say it's thus far been a complete and utter waste of money.

When it comes time, we'll certainly consider trading it in on another.

Oh, most definitely.

Before I went into the glass business full time, I was sales manger at a local C-P-D-J dealership and we had a sister dealership across the parking lot that peddled KIA. I've driven 'em, sold 'em, and watched LOTS of them come in on wreckers to the service department.

The conventional auto loan banks wouldn't finance KIAs because of their poor reliability history. Buyers (no matter what their Beacon score was) had to go into the secondary loan market for real high interest money because of the very real risk of loan default as a result of the cars just breaking down and the owners abandoning them.

Tomorrow's another day.

You'd be one in a million.

"(Quote) A view from the other side of the Atlantic: Your government actively encouraged the export of technology (glass-making) to China and sanctioned payment via contra-trade, ie exporting of glass back to the US. (Unquote)

While that may be so, the majority of small businesses in the US did not support our government in this. Large, overbearing, dominant corporations shoveled money into the pockets of congressman to get all this passed.

Andy" =============================== Been quiet long enough............. ME personally, I watched both Bullseye and UROBORUS SHIP CRATES OF GLASS LABELED FOR CHINA! Think SPECTRUM does it too? I have survived the "cheap shit" sent from the orient by building a better lampshade, offering the customer what they wanted (subject to some fine tuning) and over 25 years been able to carve out a small niche for myself in HIGH END SHADES and small production panel lamps.........I have taken off a few months (a slow run down of energy due to 90% clogged arteries and finally a heart attack and a quadruple bypass)..........I have never had such a low inventory and it is almost worth retiring and not rebuilding it. I also have been collecting on an insurance policy I paid into from the 1958 to 1971 CALLED SOCIAL SECURITY and of course the stockmarket! I too, DO NOT FIX the crap from MEXICO and the ORIENT.......my advice is to take it back. My clients know quality, can afford it, and I can usually sell a finished piece to a list of past buyers. It is very un-likely that the "flea market" and ebay buyers will spring for an expensive shade ( upwards of $5,000), so I do not seek that market! No percentage to sell to "poor folk"! It is hard to compete on the bottom end..........so go for the top, but you will NEED a product that is worth top dollar. ===================== We ( the crooks in power) need to tax the crap coming in heavy enough to encourage going to a small business to get it "made in USA" anyone will to bet we WILL NOT BE SEEING $8,000 cars from CHINA in the near future, made from/by technology they have stolen from the rest of the world.......China does not invent, they COPY! just a bit of a rant from HOWARD

I was wondering earlier today why we hadn't heard from you in a while. Hope you are doing well in your recovery. Good luck, take good care of yourself.

Be careful what you ask for.

glad you made it through. I'm told crafts are good therapy.... ;>) m

I have taken off a

so that's it! y'all are drunker than us with extra xash in you allets so that's why you you feel OK to bash American guvmint wid da one hand and enjoy the froots of her capitalistic gains in ta odder pocket....hypocrite. m

Very easy...taxes...tax the shoddy import into the ground, make the 3rd world country find some other way to trade....of course, the stained glass lobby probably isn't big enough to come to the notice of congress....not enough billions.

Bryan "gotta be a better way" Paschke