12 String Theory

When I set up the shop, I decided I was going to see how things went for two years and evaluate it again at that point. As my two year lease is up at the end of May, I've decided to wind down the operation as the profitability really isn't adequate relative to the costs.

Retail is tough in general, and for a small operator like me the margins are pretty bad, so between overhead and other losses the economics don't make sense.

The miscellaneous added expenses can be death by a thousand cuts if the margins aren't great to start with. I am very particular about what I sell, but the cost associated with quality seems higher than what the marketplace wants.

I have products which I repaired or modified if something wasn't up to my standards. A few products were pulled or repurposed because I wasn't happy with the durability. In all of those cases I have to absorb the costs. I make a point of only selling things I would use myself, but unfortunately that gets lost in a marketplace where the big operators just send out replacements to compensate for bad designs, shipping damage, poor quality control, or whatever. Some of the online stuff I've seen is amazingly awful.

I appreciate the support of my customers, the new friends I've made, and the last two years in business. It was fun, and now I have more stories to tell. - Eric

Someone was being sneaky at Godin, and reversed one end of one of the ribbon cables sometime between 2002 and today. It works much better with the right cable.