I'm very happy to announce that our new shop is up and operational after taking a month to move the business out of the epicenter of Ann Arbor.
A couple of years ago Dave and his wife Karen purchased a new home on five acres a few miles south west of town. The property came with an out building that had been a workshop where an airplane was crafted by the prior owner.
Dave thought it was perfect for the next gen A2G (Ann Arbor Guitars) and so did I. So here it is or what we will show for now of the progress. I work on our first ever guitar in the new shop tomorrow.
There is an equally sized space in the back and more of the shop on the right side of the wall so lots of space for expansion. The back will be the tool room for all the machines.
Our business model is changing too. We were turning away around 60% of the work that came our way and constantly on guard to prevent people from shipping us work, we never did or wanted to do shipped in work. So we are far busier than we want to be. Even warding off work and taking a lot of our time to do it I repaired over 600 guitars last year working part time in the middle of the night. A repair is at a minimum for us a full set-up for around $100 and I did fret work, pup installs, cracks, bridges and countless other things too.
After a decade in the old shop taking walk-ins that's over for us and we are going to be much more selective now and by appointment only. On Monday alone Dave reported over 30 calls for repairs.
Our pro player/gigging musicians also continue to receive priority service and that was always a big hit with them.
Doing great work, guaranteeing our work and same day service or next day service on set-ups grew the business in leaps and bounds. My contention that the set-up is the user interface to the instrument and as such super important was shared by countless clients who left five star reviews. It's also a great stalking horse to other needed repairs such as fret work.
But Ann Arbor is expensive, highly regulated so much so that it's altered my personal politics to some degree.... and our overhead expenses were high.
This move cuts our overhead by 2/3rds which is huge and also permits us catching our breath and still having it all be worth it. For a business to cut expenses by 2/3rds is huge and very welcome here.
As for me it is once again Dave's business we had been equal partners in the past. I signed over my half as promised the last day of last year and I am now a contractor billing under the name of Hesh's Guitar Repair. This was always our plan and if you remember Stan who was an OLF member and apprentice for Bill Moll that's the model of my role now going forward. Going to work as much as I want going forward combined with some photography excursions such as Yellowstone next year. When I can't handle the valuable personal property of others anymore or shouldn't be handling it I will be the first to bow out for good.
But we are not there yet....
And best of all our shop has as Padma would call it "a bench doggie" named Kibbeh. She's Dave and Karen's pooch and very cool. She likes to push me around and I like it too. If I don't bring her something every day she makes me pay for it.
So wish us luck please. The OLF took me from a newb to co-owning a very successful, high volume, nationally known repair business and back again eventually to my rocking chair. It's been a wild ride but there is more hopefully to come.
. The space looks great, tons of light and space.