Just a coincidence in the light of this current (re-awakened) thread - yesterday's edition of our regional newspaper published the article shown below. A summary of some interesting points mentioned in the article:
1. This bloke lives just down the road from me, is a retired electronics engineer, is 72, and started up 5 years ago. He says he's NOT trying to make a "proper, paying business" out of his work.
2. He works out of a 5 M x 5 M double garage shop, as shown. Not shown is a separate storage room (size not quoted), said to be "piled high" with cartons of "finished" (my?) toys ready for sale.
3. He started out with an own-design money box/coins "rollway" 40 cm high, similar to the 2 shown in photo 5 below. This he made for a grandchild, "and other orders soon followed". He says all of these 20 or so different designs are individual in either form and/or colour, and he will NOT do series/batch production. (Makes you ask that if all his work is made in 1 offs, what's inside all the cartons stacked up in the store room - half-finished toys he's made on spec?).
4. The average sales price of such toys is CHF 185 he says (about 150 quid at present exchange rate). Just for some info/perspective, typical labour rates here for unskilled workers such as a cleaner or jobbing gardener are CHF 50 to 70/hour, and our local garage (main dealer) charges CHF 120/hour for servicing our Peugeot.
5. The tipper truck in photo 3 is clearly a scale model more than "just" a toy (even I recognise this - very popular here - 1950s/'60s vintage truck). He made it to special order from a local transport company who used to run these Saurer trucks - presumably as some sort of gift for someone important. How he found this customer is not said, nor the price.
6. He was asked to make the fire engine shown in photo 4 for the retiring chief of the local village volunteer fire brigade. It's not said how much he charged, but he visited the fire station to photograph the engine, it consists of 780 parts and took about 200 hours to make that 1 M long model.
7. He says that he personally, and most of his adult customers prefer "real wood, wax, etc, finishes", but children prefer bright primary colours. He says he has no problems selling against the brightly coloured plastic and wooden toys available in places like Aldi and Lidl (my note, around Christmas time those places, and other supermarkets here, sell wooden toys for typically between CHF 20 and 40) - "but my customers appreciate the individuality, craftsmanship, and robustness of my toys" he says.
8. Nothing is said about how he finds his customers, his numerical output or financial turnover, but he says he has no web site and doesn't want one.
In the light of the comments above, and recent posts here in this Forum (in several different sections) in similar vein, but about furniture making, scrolling, turnery, etc (look for separate posts from people like custard, Claymore, CHJ, and others), the single most important point that I take from all this is that for me, I'm glad I don't want to even try to make a living from such work
Thank goodness that for me, making a "real living" is not necessary, and if it was I would definitely NOT be trying any such work to pay the mortgage and feed the kids.
For me, if I want to sell the odd piece occasionally, that's a good way of making me just "feel good", and/or possibly contributing towards a new tool, or buying some nice wood. But for a living - I wouldn't even try.
That's my take on all this, FWIW.
AES
