We would love to sell them for a lot less, unfortunately the cost of materials, labor and overhead as well as what our CNC machines are capable of producing dictates that if we want to stay in business we actually should charge more. The fact is we are making a whopping 20% profit on these which is well below what any accountant will tell you is enough to stay open for business. We were hoping to be able to sell them for $400.00 or less, but there is little point in making something just to break even.
The US market has so many HUGE machine shops that will turn out parts on a contract basis there is no way to compete with the big players on price.
I spoke with a few of these shops about turning out uppers and frankly if we outsourced them to 1 of these "production shops" we could sell them for about 1/2 of what we do now. but then they would NOT be made here, just another imported item, which in my mind rather defeats the whole purpose. We could also outsource to China if the numbers were big enough for them to bother and then they would be real inexpensive but in either case they would NOT be made here, just another mass produced imported item, which in my mind rather defeats the whole purpose.
If we could sell many thousands of uppers per year it would be worth selling our $100K per machine CNC machines and buying $750K per machine CNC machines, I don't believe Canada has a big enough market to warrant that sort of investment. So we make them 1 at a time which is NOT the inexpensive way to make anything, but the quality is much higher.
with tombstones
