hrmm, started to price everything together today....

 

tHIS IS WHAT STOPPED ME IN MY TACKS.



damn caps lock!!



When I did up my RX-7 and spent all that money. 90% of it was spent over the internet.



I am not the typical tuner. This F&F crowd will search the earth over looking to save $10 on a part. Most of them do their own installs to save a buck too.



I just could not see it working out.

 

nah... i could see it workin out, cuz, at least by me, the F&F crowd doesn't know how to do any work themselves. When i was in highschool i had to teach kids how to put in license plates. One kid i even had to show him where to put his "custom" oil filler cap.



it depends on ur location.



goodluck, keep us updated

 

we've tuned a few cars where they have whole catalogs of stuff on them but they dont run because the owner doesnt know how to make it run, just screw, glue, and stick stuff on it

 

This is the trouble with "custom" shops. There usually is not enough $$$ being spent there to specialize and stay in business. The solution is to take in "general" work, the downside being the NEED to have addtional diagnostic and testing gear available; which costs a lot of $$$$ weather you lease or buy. Once you have that equipment you have to turn over a certain number of cars a day/hour to justify and keep forking out the $$$$ for that equipment:=> Which leaves no time for "custom" work.



A few shops can pull it off, Petit, Mazdatrix com to mind: But they also have a large Internet base of mail order coming in also. They were also there first. they have the name recognition.



Its a tough nut to crack, but if you can there are rewards..





This was a painful and expensive lesson I learned back in the late 80's. We ran a small shop in Charleston SC, clled ADD-CAR. The shop catered to the Auto-Cross, import car crowd. Even then it was a struggle to match or beat MAIL-ORDER pricing, It was almost impossible to keep anything in inventory due to the cost. Near the end the shop was kept afloat by the window tinting that was performed.

 

start very small. I know someone, wont mention name but this person opened a shop and had everything a top notch shop should have. Bankrupt completely including personally within 8 months. start small.

 

^having a proper business plan and sufficient resources will mitagate the risk. The key word id PROPER BUSINESS PLAN

 

In business classes you can learn all the basics, to at least help you decide whether or not you would want to do it, and the difficulty associated with just the business side of things, let alone the actual work performed.



After learning all that I have in classes, it seems like anyone who wants to start a business from scratch is borderline insane, but I guess that's what makes them entrepreneurs.



Oh, and what you think is enough $$ to get started, like double or triple that. One of my teachers is/was a CPA, he said he would just laugh at people when they told him how much they had saved up to start a business.

 

alright, so ive decided on three things to do with the money i have saved up, i can either spend it on racing school, spend it on a car to start building as a shop car (making sure to do all work by meself), or to save it up for the shop.



all three of which i really want to do, but the only thing about saving it for the shop is that considering that ill be needing a loan for the shop anyways, and its going to be crazy expensive, im not too sure how much of the 2.5K were talking about here would be missed. so what would your guys recomendations be?

 

bitch you're only 17!