Quote:
Originally Posted by
hometheaterdoc 
Well I think you know my answer given that I've sent 11 emails in the last 5 weeks asking if you were going to be making the 3.5 box (technically 10 in the last month since the first one on 12/31 asked about all flatpacks in general, including the SEOS speaker boxes, and when you'd have an answer on stock status, shipping date, website reflection of what you actually had, etc.)
Multiply that by about 300 and you'll get an idea why it's hard for me to respond to all the emails and also package things up by myself.
I've got about 40 PM's to get to later today and a couple hundred emails from the past week.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
hometheaterdoc
Either way, can you *please* make a decision quickly on what you are going to do with the 3.5 boxes and let folks know on this thread? If you're not going to have them made, I need to get on the schedule for my local cabinet guy to make boxes for me. Thank you.
If you have a local cabinet guy that can make you custom cabinets, then I'm not sure why you wouldn't go that route anyway.
I think people have forgotten that all I'm doing here is trying to get boxes cut that most people will need. I shoot for breaking even on all of this and package things up in my spare time. And I'm spending my own money to do that. Last month I sold one of my work trucks because a past employees needed one to start a side business. I'm using that money to help with these subwoofer boxes. As of right now, this audio stuff is not a 'for profit business'.....it's a barely break even idea/hobby.
Last month I spent $8k on boxes for the SEOS speakers. The 4cuft subwoofers were about $8k. The smaller sub boxes will total about $10k next week. The group buy money that was used came from getting some back from the SEOS-12's and compression drivers as they sold, then adding in the money from the truck I just mentioned.
As people order, the money comes back in......and gets rolled into the next project. If the next project is 3.5 cuft boxes, then that's what I'll get done. But if the interest isn't high, then dropping $6500 on 75 of those boxes isn't the best way to use the group buy money. Right now I don't know the answer to that. As mentioned above, the next boxes are 1, 1.25, 2.25, and 3cuft. If $6500 comes back in, then I have no problem getting them done. But I have no idea how fast people will order to make that happen, or if there's a big enough demand for 3.5.
The reason the subwoofer packs took so long was because I couldn't get a definitive answer on which boxes to get made first. So it made sense to focus back on the SEOS project. I'm taking a shot in the dark on the current subs and we'll see how it goes. On the weekends I can try to get some custom work done, like different baffles for different boxes and things like that. But I can't guarantee time lines.
Setting up the website to look more 'business' like has made people forget that it's just me ordering what I hope people want. And I've yet to have anyone say "Hey Erich, here's $10k to spend on the next project. Just give me back the money next year after they all get ordered."
So right now there's probably $75k of my own money just being ciculated around on new projects. That's how it started 2 years ago. If it's on the site, grab it. If not, you might have to wait until it comes up again. Some of the boxes have come back in stock when the CNC company made 5 at the end of a larger run. I list them, a couple days later they are gone. I had the sample 3cuft Baltic boxes up for a couple days in the 'limited supply' section and they went quickly.
The answer to all of this is fairly simple. Hire someone, add in extra per item to cover the cost of a new employee and a little extra for future projects. Of course I obviously don't advertise the site (I don't even post links to it). So outside of the AVS forum, no one really knows about it. In the past 3 weeks I've been giving strong consideration to hiring someone to help get things done quicker, and get more items made up. But if no one outside of AVS knows about all of all of this.......well, it might not do so good. I'll be making the decision in the next couple weeks before spring gets here and my busy season starts.
