Shop
So I’ve been thrown a big decision and I’m looking for advice and thoughts. First, let’s get this out of the way: I am both extremely fortunate and grateful to even be in this position. I’ve been asked about my interest in taking over my family’s shop.
My father owns a shop that has been in business for 30+ years. At this point there is no debt. All tooling, equipment and the building is owned. Got a handful of manual machines, a Cincinnati Sabre 1000 3-axis VMC (that I know inside and out) and an old Mori SL-10 that’s not currently operational but could be for pretty cheap. He’s getting close to being done, at 71 years old he’s had enough and is in a position to retire. He’s shopped the business for giggles, but nothing serious has come up. His best option would be to liquidate and take a few machines home to putter around with. Not sure what the terms of taking the business would look like as we only had a 5 minute chat about it so far.
I grew up in his shop. Spend Saturday’s there starting at about 12 years old just watching and sponging up information between doing homework on his desk and playing with the copier. Started working there at 16 pretty much full time until I finished school at 26. I went to school because if I wanted to be part of the business I was going to need a degree as a fall back in case thing went sideways. Another part of that was how the business absolutely broke him physically. He didn’t necessarily want that for his kids.
Today, I’ve been out with regular employment. 12 years as an Engineer at a large local, non competitive company. My employment is very stable and the company is mostly recession proof. We provide a vital service that nobody will go without, even if the economy is in the dumpster.
I still pop in after hours or on weekends when he needs a set of hands and I’m the CNC programmer and operator as he never had the time to learn the machine, so I’m still “in the game” a little bit. I like it enough that if I had the space, I’d probably have a bench lathe and mill at home just to mess around on.
Some of the negatives are that he put his eggs into just two baskets. It’s a job shop and he does repair and some new manufacturing for mining and process. There are two companies that make up 80% of his business. They seem to go in cycles and every 5-6 years, things slow to a crawl. He’s just coming out of one of those periods now and the customers are coming back strong, probably bolstered by the fact that they recently merged. They also want to move to just in time rather than on site spares. Given his work with long lead time materials (lots of 6AL-4V, duplex stainless, mostly net shape forgings or seamless pipe in those materials) this could cost the business lots of money on inventory.
I watched him through lean and rich times and there were periods when I was full time there that we all had to cut family member’s pay down to just enough to cover bills since it was so lean.
I’m really torn. I would love to get out of the rat race, but the steady check, benefits and stability are great. I also have time to spend with the kiddos, and based on my childhood, that’s less of an option when you run your own shop.
I’d also want to drum up new business and diversify, but with few contacts, I’m not sure how I’d start that up. I wouldn’t want to be in a position to depend on the whims of one or two customers. We’re also in the mountain west which seems to be slowing down when it comes to manufacturing, etc. our region is moving heavily towards tech.
Aaanyway thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Any thoughts out there?
So I’ve been thrown a big decision and I’m looking for advice and thoughts. First, let’s get this out of the way: I am both extremely fortunate and grateful to even be in this position. I’ve been asked about my interest in taking over my family’s shop.
My father owns a shop that has been in business for 30+ years. At this point there is no debt. All tooling, equipment and the building is owned. Got a handful of manual machines, a Cincinnati Sabre 1000 3-axis VMC (that I know inside and out) and an old Mori SL-10 that’s not currently operational but could be for pretty cheap. He’s getting close to being done, at 71 years old he’s had enough and is in a position to retire. He’s shopped the business for giggles, but nothing serious has come up. His best option would be to liquidate and take a few machines home to putter around with. Not sure what the terms of taking the business would look like as we only had a 5 minute chat about it so far.
I grew up in his shop. Spend Saturday’s there starting at about 12 years old just watching and sponging up information between doing homework on his desk and playing with the copier. Started working there at 16 pretty much full time until I finished school at 26. I went to school because if I wanted to be part of the business I was going to need a degree as a fall back in case thing went sideways. Another part of that was how the business absolutely broke him physically. He didn’t necessarily want that for his kids.
Today, I’ve been out with regular employment. 12 years as an Engineer at a large local, non competitive company. My employment is very stable and the company is mostly recession proof. We provide a vital service that nobody will go without, even if the economy is in the dumpster.
I still pop in after hours or on weekends when he needs a set of hands and I’m the CNC programmer and operator as he never had the time to learn the machine, so I’m still “in the game” a little bit. I like it enough that if I had the space, I’d probably have a bench lathe and mill at home just to mess around on.
Some of the negatives are that he put his eggs into just two baskets. It’s a job shop and he does repair and some new manufacturing for mining and process. There are two companies that make up 80% of his business. They seem to go in cycles and every 5-6 years, things slow to a crawl. He’s just coming out of one of those periods now and the customers are coming back strong, probably bolstered by the fact that they recently merged. They also want to move to just in time rather than on site spares. Given his work with long lead time materials (lots of 6AL-4V, duplex stainless, mostly net shape forgings or seamless pipe in those materials) this could cost the business lots of money on inventory.
I watched him through lean and rich times and there were periods when I was full time there that we all had to cut family member’s pay down to just enough to cover bills since it was so lean.
I’m really torn. I would love to get out of the rat race, but the steady check, benefits and stability are great. I also have time to spend with the kiddos, and based on my childhood, that’s less of an option when you run your own shop.
I’d also want to drum up new business and diversify, but with few contacts, I’m not sure how I’d start that up. I wouldn’t want to be in a position to depend on the whims of one or two customers. We’re also in the mountain west which seems to be slowing down when it comes to manufacturing, etc. our region is moving heavily towards tech.
Aaanyway thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Any thoughts out there?
