we have talked and are on track now.
I just want to add a little perspective from my position. This is probably not going to sound great but it's how I really feel.
I want to build cases and make stuff primarily because of the fun I can have doing it. The fun for me comes in the creation of useful stuff and finding new ways to do things. I set this business up to provide a stable income for my family and allow me the freedom to create.
When I did Instroke cases in 1991 I quickly amassed an order book filled with more than 100 orders. At first I thought it was awesome that people wanted to have me build them cases and I didn't say no to any requests. To be fair I was the one taking those custom orders and was excited to be doing so.
But I also had my own ideas of things I wanted to do. As the months went on and orders continued to come in I found myself increasingly pressured to get the orders done even though at that time I didn't even take deposits. Each morning I would come in and start working on other people's dreams.
So one morning I quit. I said we are not doing any more custom orders. We will make what we want to make and make a line of cases and that's it. And that's how the Instroke cases that most of you know came to be. I focused on creating production lines and did limited custom work. This allowed me to be able to let others handle sales and logistics and let me focus on quality and innovation. The word "custom" wasn't even in our company name after that.
Honestly when you build a little company like this in the billiard industry by yourself you're in kind of a catch-22 because there simply isn't enough business to hire much support staff and thus you find yourself trying to balance the actual building/creating with the order taking/logistics/shipping/bill paying/supply ordering/repairs etc... and it wears on you.
In 2003 I walked away from Instroke after 13 years. In 2006 I went to work full time with Sterling Gaming and they sent me to China to do quality control and sourcing and consulting for the stuff that they were selling. Part of my job was to help their case suppliers build better cases.
In 2007 I started building cases again in my apartment in China. I cleared out the living room and bought a sewing machine and a work table and started creating again. I was helped by my then girlfriend's mom, who is now my mother in law, to do the sewing. I hired a full-time seamstress and taught her leatherwork. I hired a full-time tooler and taught him design. And we started to slowly put out some cool cases that were concepts we thought of. And I once again put it out there that I could do custom work. And once again I got lots of interest. And once again I ended up working for everyone else and losing touch with why I wanted to build in the first place. The next catch-22 in this business is that it's hard to develop enough interest to fund the creation of art made for general sale but too easy to get bogged down with custom work and have to deal with a constant stream of people who want to talk to you.
So once again I created some standard cases to have a way to generate revenue and fund creativity. But, again I started to feel pressure to be at work every day making other people's concepts come to life. Along the way though we grew until I had a real business with up to 20 people working for me. So now it's serious, not just me anymore dependent on this.
But now a whole new set of issues come with so many people in the shop. Quality control, training, drama, lunch.... And each issue, each small fire to put out consumes the day and no time or energy is left to create.
So rather than continue to make this into a whiny bio I will just say that there are many days when I really don't feel like talking to customers about their dreams. I like to create and I like to see people happy with the case when it's done but I really don't like the sales process, I don't like the details process, the order taking, ringing up the sale and all that goes with it.
I like to build and don't like to sell what I build. Which seems SUPER contradictory considering the amount of promotion I did/do in various mediums. Marketing the cases is therapeutic for me, easy distraction. But sitting down to write up an order is torture for me, primarily because I don't have the shop set up the way I want it to be set up where my whole focus is ONLY on custom builds and creating new stuff. So I already know before I talk to you that what's going to happen on "big" builds is that you're going to be excited and I will have lots of ideas and creative suggestions that will leave you feeling awesome and that feeling will turn sour as the project stalls while I spend my days putting out fires and withdrawing into escapist activities like arguing about the social structure of binary political systems......
In other words, the thrill is gone sometimes. That's not your problem. It's mine. And I am working on it. But if you can be persistent and patient with us then the end result usually will be well worth the wait.
I understand John. I'll be here when you get to that point. tks
