I figured some may wonder why I made SMFRC garage rather than just doing everything under Skillswitch. This is where I have had quite a few struggles these past few years, trying to transform what's in my head to a presentation, product, reality, an overall image.
When I started Skillswitch, it was the one aspect for all these years in the hobby that I could never find exactly what I wanted. Bodies. Bodies are the finalization to your creation. It's the first thing people and yourself see. Without a body, for the most part, RC's all look the same, it's the body that will make it different OR just like everyone else. I always looked for what no one had, something different, not another cookie cutter body in a different color.
So we all have our own "flavor", "style", "coolness: value. So starting out, I followed what people were asking for. That got overwhelming pretty quick. So fast, that I think now how these years have passed and I'm still sitting here with these ideas still and it feels like yesterday, I was just starting out. So for about 6 months now, I've been working on a solution on moving forward
So today, after years of making a few thousand bodies, over many platforms, shipping all over the world, learning people, learning trends, making mistakes, more mistakes, upgrading, upgrading, getting organized, frustration, frustration, a little more frustration, working countless hours, spending the months from November to May each year working 7 days a week around the clock, getting burned out, you name it. All these things taught me lessons. Lessons I can now implement into a much more enjoyable experience.
So if I were to have a product made by a manufacturer, It would cost a pretty penny upfront. Let's say I wanted a hard body of a SWAT armored vehicle. Now this is a guess but the manufacturer would ask me how many I want. I say one. They would give me a price of probably somewhere in the ballpark of $5k-$10k for one unit. The price would lower on how many thousand you want. Why? There is a person/people being paid to create the model, this could be 1-6 months of process, depending on how many people and depth of detail. Then you have to make the tooling to make the product. Again, depending on how many people, more hours of payroll. The cost of development alone is quite a bit. Then cost of goods/time to produce each item - how many people on payroll. Then profit markup while still being competitively priced. This is the real world scenario.
For me, I've been doing all this for the average going price. A whole lot of time for one unit, that might sell again, who knows when. All while being messaged a thousand times asking when it's done, do you have pictures, what's taking so long, and in some cases, people start crying for a refund. When on my end, after all the time/material, I did it for free and out some money. YES, I enjoy this and has become a hobby from my hobby, but on a business end, that's not very good business. So again, with everything I have learned, It was finally time to come up with a solution. Not fall into the desire to tackle a cool project, not jump on something I think will be fun. Separate my hobby from business.
My solution? Skillswitch RC will be a product catalog. What's for sale is exactly what's for sale. A product that can be cookie cutter, DIY, sold and shipped. Streamlined and productive. SMFRC Garage will be the custom stuff. This is where you will find the one of a kind items. This is where my imagination will be. This is where my signature will be placed. I'm currently going through the inventory and through the years, the best sellers will be placed in SKILLSWITCH RC. These will be cookie cutter products that can be made much faster and depending on demand, have a turn around time of a week. Produce, clean, prime, ship, done. This will allow me to spend most of my time creating and building things that are not offered, while at the same time, releasing my creativity.
So that is the basic idea of making the two entities. I believe this will give myself and customer a better experience and help prevent a bottleneck of orders when I get a custom order that takes more time than expected.
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