Not having been able to do it myf just because of a lack of street team/publicity and promotions staff or access to people who do websites/social media - everybody I know that DID do it either did the same as you (mama and papa using college money for this instead when it became clear the boy either had the ability but no interest or vice versa) or got the boy in with their P&P teams at the father's or mother's company and try to raise capital that way.platesrecords wrote:Can anyone give advice on where / how they obtained the capital to invest in a cutting lathe? We managed to borrow money and use our own savings
The only other way is to do the same thing but with an art music humanities engineering or legacy format society. 8 tracks have their own, cassettes are coming back (Cassette Store Day) reel to reels are making a return to the market etc etc etc. So all these folks have money to burn like we said bec none of these is going to ever be completely commercial ever again - you're just going to be selling to a hopefully increasing niche market and as you say be able to pay your monthly nut off of it vs going and e.g. shining shoes at the mall or something.
This depends on where you are and what other competition you are looking at. Obviously in the middle of London where your competition is EMI and British Decca and Chelsea Music and Mayfair Sound Studios and yadadadada - then probably not.platesrecords wrote:but now we are weighing up whether to spend another £10,000 to getting our lathe up to scratch for master/pro cutting.
But up there in the East and West Mids it would probably pay off in the long run if you can handle another couple years of feeding off biscuts and marmite with maybe some spotted dick for a treat here and there.
I say that because contrary to down in London who will use whatever is handy for the right price and have zero loyalty to local operations - people in the North Country are far more brand-loyal AND willing to pay a small or even medium sized premium in exchange for supporting some local boys so they can brag later.
This got its start in the Trent River Valley in the 50s and expanded to Merseyside a decade later so its no surprise that the practice would have hung on in the Greater Mids even after fading out farther South.
Like I said - the farther you are from the big city with less competition the more chance you have of having a successful go at it.platesrecords wrote:If people can share insight on their investments/how they weighed up if it's worth it/any feedback on the reality of the decision would be really helpful!
And like I also said - you have to be very tolerant of the skinny life for a good couple three years or so.platesrecords wrote:Also, if you did invest - how long did it take to break even? I have an idea for myself but interested to hear the experience of others
While £10K is not that easy to come by up North where everybody else is struggling the same as you compared to being able to get it down in the city - that's why I said check out all those other avenues - and make sure you have or can create or draft some kind of P&P team to be able to get the word out.
You will find that once you do - and once slightly higher-profile clients also from the East and West Mids as well as the rest of the North Country who are themselves loath to go tolerate the city - or mailing off or doing FTP to cutting engineers they will never meet and who might not have any kind of knowledge on how their particular genre is supposed to sound - says to me it's totally going to be worth it in the long run.
