Robert Barnes

Printwizard

It's a hard one. Remember we all print different sizes, different jobs, substrates, clients' competition and pricing structures. With that we have different overhead, cost structures, lifestyles etc. for example, Auckland is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in relative to an indexed average income. Some days and weeks we do amazing numbers with our three carousels, hand bench, and graphic printers, then we find the trend is smaller runs, and the odd slow week. I sometimes feel bi-polar in that you have a busy week and I tear my hair out and scream we need a machine, then I may have a week whee I only print maybe couple hundred shirts. I am a bit slammed with import jobs at the moment and am off to china next week for tradeshows and with orders and money to go to factories. When this comes back in we should have enough spare change for a 10 or 12 colour mustang. Possibly the smaller machine because I want to spend more on my website. What I'm getting at is we all have ups and downs and budgets, other opportunities, living costs, variables, and those are tough for people on the outside to understand another's full circumstances, and depending on the variables someone may look at stretching themselves in one direction, or perhaps have a second option where it's scaled back for another reason. Just maybe need to either understand another's business and reasoning how, where, or why they are juggling. Also when people type they are likely typing their highs as that is what the new machinery upgrade has to cope with and may be like in my case well off the average. I don't even know what the average is anymore.

eetherman

Agreed, we are located in the center of good ole Michigan probably the hardest hit state in what we call the recession. I started my business at the beginning of it and have made it this far. Commercial space is pretty cheap here. But this place is like a ghost town compared to the late 90's early 2000's. Where you once would see GM plants covering hundreds of acers of land, are now concrete oasis. Pretty depressing to watch your home town fall apart. Lansing's not even the worst of it Flint and Detroit. Search worlds Biggest Ghetto on youtube. You can see the sheer mass of the devastation, its a shame, this place used to be the manufacturing capital of this country now it looks like something out of a movie.
I've ran some huge hot market runs in early 2000, Redwings, Pistons, Michigan State. The size of the runs if I remember right around 110,000 prints on a the Wings Stanley cup win. When they won again in 08 not even half that size. Around 30,000. If we ever spring out of it, my business should be awesome but we have a long way to go.

californiadreamin

I thought OBAMA saved the auto industry, And all was well. I saw the other day the chevy volt, takes a 37 year payback.Now that is progress! Michigan
is a beautiful state with wonderful people. Is your printshop a Union shop?
The ads that were started in your last administration, and continued now,
are first class TV adds!
winston

eetherman

Funny thing is the Volt production has come to a stop. Chevy offered to buy the cars back because of an issue with side impact and the batteries possibly catching fire. Thing is there was many tax dollars spent on research and development on the Volt and unfortunately Chevy fell way short. Lets just say that the volt was less of a success than the Printex machines. Billions wasted.
As far as the unions, no my shop is not union, one did open a few months ago they are working on a UAW contract. From what i heard an 8 color M&R and 3 production guys. The place is smaller than my facility and they also run offset machines. No clue how they make it work. They use my buddy for separations and have about as much business printing t-shirts as I have being a brain surgeon.
I do love this state and wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I grew up on the Great Lakes and couldn't imagine not spending my summers on them. If we didn't have the cold winters this place would be just short of paradise.

jmd

TheDumper, TheGang, UsedPresses, hey fatso you're only allowed to vote one time. Dumba$$

Gilligan

LOL... Is that what the US Army was talking about when they said "an army of one"?

I have to wonder if the Volt wasn't sabotaged from the get go? Look at the original Saturn electric car... no problems, people loved it and wanted to buy them. But they wouldn't let them go... they called them all back after the leases were up and destroyed almost every single one of them.

Check out "Who Killed the Electric Car" for further information.

__________________
"you don't need a hook for the worms to dance."

Printwizard

Wow, that YouTube clip was seriously depressing. There are some beautiful buildings and architecture, but one can only guess the cost of refurbishing them. I can see you don't get many good earthquakes! I would be hating doing it tough in your neighbourhood. For me here the recession comes down to longevity in that over time you build a big network who come to you and that reduces sales and marketing expense as word of mouth is cheaper. The biggest runs we ever do in shirts are only about 10,000 in this country of 4 million, higher runs for packaging, bags and polishing cloths only, at a much cheaper price. Where I sit and quote is often against people weighing up production and importing from china, that's tough also. We have empty buildings here also but rents haven't come down yet. Most of the buildings empty are retail. Thanks to our big earthquake and the finance collapses there is a shortage of housing so that keeps rents up too.

Printwizard

What've a growing green market here and there are a lot of Toyota Prius being imported. US makers will eventually bend driven by competition and in some cases maybe regulation, didn't California set a target?

eetherman

The Prius is 2 or 3% of Toyota's market, The #1 selling American vehicle is the Ford f150. Don't you think it would be smarter to develop a green vehicle that would cater to what people want? Our economic thought process is so completely screwed. The american union drives the price up $1200 to $2000 per vehicle, makes it impossible to compete with the foreign manufacturers. The UAW heads the lobbying in Washington. $130,000 salary with 7 weeks paid vacation. Who would give that up? You gotta print a whole lot of shirts to walk away with that kind of cheddar.

californiadreamin

PW! The regulations,taxes,fees,rules,laws are KILLING California!
People in other states who live within their means, unlike those in
California, have No Interest in following the State of California
fall of a Cliff! It is not a matter of IF, But When! The amount of
screen print shops, nice shops closed within the last few years,
is sad! Unions,Lawyers & Politicians are Killing this Country!