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My Dad did picture framing from home for 25+ years until he retired last year.
One of the reasons I chose framing is the type of competition. It's either someone working from home (they're hampered by lack of a retail/high street presence); older people looking for a nice, sedate retirement/hobby business; or your typical high street shop that spends the first 3 weeks of every month earning money to pay the landlord, rates, bank etc.
I already had the high street premises so it was just a matter of tailoring the space. Almost all my work is passing trade, although as time wears on, I'm getting much more recommendations and repeat customers.
From my own experience, I've always found it to be a very stuffy, conservative trade, so I'm trying to inject a bit more 'modern thinking' into it, with an emphasis on contemporary products and image.
Seems to be working, and it's one of those businesses that doesn't transfer well to web/mail order, so hopefully it's a fairly safe sector to be in.
I popped in to see a bloke runninf a cycle retail and hire business out of what appears to be a shed last weekend. Its crazy in there, although I assumne there's some order in the chaos, and certainly an interesting and eclectic collection of cycles. Good coffee too 😀
[url= http://www.charliethebikemonger.com/ ]http://www.charliethebikemonger.com/[/url]
Quite amazed at the one man taking injectors out of sprinters. What a niche.
There's another dude who does it for Vivaros & Trafics, I believe.
I think my loudspeaker business would work pretty well downscaled to just me in a sufficiently large shed, if I wanted to do the hands-on stuff all the time - that's certainly how it started out.
But I prefer the design/engineering/marketing side of things so the business has grown to employ more staff, rent larger premises and gained the added stresses of a larger (but still small) business - but being that bit bigger has really opened up what we can do with the products! We might be diversifying from loudspeakers quite soon - watch this space... 😉
Some of the workshops on this thread are amazing!
Just remembered a client that builds and repairs globes. Far more complicated than I thought, various methods of making spheres and applying a map. Fixing dents, weighting them to spin freely and to settle in specific locations. Mix of insurance work, prep. for big auction houses and new builds.