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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 12:44 pm 
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I actually did a European pick up, you save about $4000. Picked up the car in Munich, and drove over the Alps into Italy. Drop it back off at the factory in Munich after a week, and they ship it to your local dealer. It's a great offer, the car comes with insurance, plates etc for a few weeks in Europe. Everything but gas, just enough to get you to the closest station.

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 12:52 pm 
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Gearloose wrote:
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This is the the Precision Gem company car, bought completly by stones
.

There's the proof that debunks that old saw right there.
Some of us are willing to suffer for Art.
Image


Very nice Jon, and a lot more practical!

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:27 pm 
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If you are trying to make some money, its not possible to spend 6 to 12 hours or more on a stone and get every meet just perfect. In reality, this makes no difference and can't be seen anyway. These USFG competitions have no place for making money.


This is an important distinction, because I hear from hundreds of faceters a year, just in the course of doing business.
People have to be honest with themselves about why they are doing this.
MANY want to cut perfect stones and MANY want to make money at it.

This is almost mutually exclusive because nobody with an internet connection or a Rio Grande cataloge is ever going to pay someone twelve hours for a routine cut in a common material, even if they have an award that certifies them as Supreme Grand Exalted Master with Oak Leaf Cluster. Especially in quartz.
One CAN do both. Learn to cut well and fast, and then, perhaps once a year, set a week aside and compete with one. There's nothing wrong with that, and the critique from the judges gives you a peer review.
But to expect to take a day to cut a stone, and then expect a reasonable hourly shop rate is doomed at the start. For one thing, your quotations on jobs will be preposterous, and rejected flatly.
I do get paid to cut. I have set rates for recuts and repairs. I quote on special commissions. And after setting those rates, my pay depends entirely on my performance. And not one of these stones, in a lifetime of cutting, would get past a competition judge without a snicker. And neither I nor my customers care in the least, and never has a customer found fault, and that has to be the final test.
Maybe I'll retire and stop making laps some day. Then' Ill go back to cutting for pay, and only worry about rough prices instead of metals and raw materials prices. *shrug* It's all one and the same.

Truth is, most who actually MAKE things do not get rich from it, no matter what it is. The 1% trick is to plunder from those who do.
When you sell a stone to a jeweler who works by Keystone, who exactly is making the money?

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:29 pm 
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All your information is very valid and makes a lot of sense but you must understand exactly who is doing the complaining in terms of costs and prices.

Its not the experienced cutter who would complain about prices but rather the hobbyist and the newbie. A person cutting for resale understands time is money and that the less problems he has with his equipment, the more time focused on actually cutting gems and making said money.

The real problem comes in when you deal with hobbies and newbies. One common saying thrown around is "hobbies don't make money". For the most part this is quite true as a hobby tends to be an end user and most stones cut by a hobbyist end up being added to their collection or gifted to someone else. In this case, there is nearly zero return on any of the rough or equipment investments so it makes sense to go the cheapest route (or complain about prices). In the end, since there is no dollar value attached to their hours they are more likely to accept struggling with sub-par equipment at the cost of their time (and sanity sometimes, at this point a clever hobbyist would realize their sanity IS valuable and bite the bullet for proper equipment).

For a newbie, the initial start up cost is a big wall they must get over. Since they aren't making any money right now and especially because there is few chances to "try before you buy" you are likely to hear from them about high prices.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand your argument about proper equipment very intimately. At my day job, I design stuff. TIME IS MONEY, a single day spent troubleshooting and fixing equipment breakdown means lost productivity, tech resources to repair, and my time and headache fixing it when I should be designing the next thing. It is in my best interest to design equipment well and use the appropriate quality of components to ensure that things don't go bad. If I had a choice between a stamped metal component for 5$ or a billet machined component for 50$, there's no question that I would select the higher quality component, regardless of cost (a day spent fixing anything is literally thousands of dollars of company money in overhead costs).

The interesting thing is that I also design stuff at home as a hobby (not very often, I usually get my fill of fun at work), when faced with exactly the same choice, I will automatically jump to the cheapest option that will do the job. Why? simply because in this case time is not money and my resources don't have a dollar value attached (in fact, time spent not fixing things only means I'll likely be playing video games or faceting, neither of which can make a dime, at least not for me).

So, as a hobbyist, I will buy the cheapest option available to me and waste the time trying to get it to work (and curse at why it doesn't). As a newbie hobbyist this goes doubly true as I am trained by the North American end consumer market that things need to be dirt cheap and a large price tag represents a wall that I would rather go around than over (do you realize how much tech is packed into your cell phone? for 400-600$ it's a steal even though we consider it terribly expensive. Compare that to a sintered lap! Not knocking on you sintered lap manufacturers out there, things are priced to what the industry accepts and the cost of low volume production).


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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:35 pm 
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Gearloose wrote:
That's not a fair comparison, because truck drivers are often Teamsters Union members.
There was an article published a couple of years ago, that, analyzing internship, residency, insurance, college loans, and hours worked, showed that a UPS driver makes more after expenses than a doctor.
I gleefully printed it out for my UPS driver, who put in on the bulletin board of his coffee break room.

We needa UNION.

There are also non-monetary gains from gemcutting, a different dimension from the financial.
There is aesthetic satisfaction.
There is also a thing in Nature.

Why do some species of birds collect and bring home bright sparkly objects?
Because long ago, a bird tried it. And thereafter, for whatever reason, this bird had more hatchlings than usual.
This produced generations of tired but happy birds.

Image I'm in the Teamsters and I drive a 98 Corolla with 300k miles. M :D aybe I'll quit my day job and learn how to cut stones.

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:39 pm 
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Gearloose wrote:
Truth is, most who actually MAKE things do not get rich from it, no matter what it is. The 1% trick is to plunder from those who do.
And the 1% plunderers employ the services of MBAs and PR firms to facilitate their scams.

Gearloose wrote:
When you sell a stone to a jeweler who works by Keystone, who exactly is making the money?

Good point. Many jewelers have a sense of entitlement where they think they should make huge amounts of money and the craftsman make just enough to get by.

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:45 pm 
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(do you realize how much tech is packed into your cell phone? for 400-600$ it's a steal even though we consider it terribly expensive. Compare that to a sintered lap! Not knocking on you sintered lap manufacturers out there, things are priced to what the industry accepts and the cost of low volume production).


Yes, the High Tech/Low Tech distinction.
My wife just gave me a present that costs about as much as a couple of sintered laps.

Sintered laps do not come with an onboard video camera, gyro, mag compass, accelerometer, pressure altimeter and GPS Navigation systems that auto-land and auto-home. The technologies are literally a hundred years part.

Which one is cheap?

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:47 pm 
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I'm in the Teamsters and I drive a 98 Corolla with 300k miles.


I see the problem right there. You need a Brown Truck!

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:53 pm 
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One common saying thrown around is "hobbies don't make money".


It's more than a saying. It's an IRS regulation.

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 2:15 pm 
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Although a hobby is supposed to be fun. Years ago I did wood working. When I first started out I bought a cheap table saw and a few other cheap tools. It was frustrating working with the cheap saw. Eventually I bought a much more expensive saw, and the enjoyment level went way up. Now I didn't sell anything I made, so it was all out of the pocket, and I can see the problem for the hobby cutter, but then it was a lot nicer working with decent tools. The finished products were better, and quicker too. Wood working is a bit like gem cutting. Eventually the cost of the wood starts to exceed to the tools if you work with more exotic woods.

Nicky, the key is that the gemstones are not the day job, but something extra. With only a day job, there would be no Z4 for me either.

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 4:17 pm 
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It appears the same dilemmas in the the north as away down here in the southern oceans.
I only cut sapphire from our own mining claim.I have tried to work out the cost of mining to the cost of purchase of rough. Buying would be more cost effective if you can find the rough. But no where near as much fun.
I have tried selling to jewellers who say well cut, better than a lot of diamonds we buy (but like Gearloose said they would not go well in competition) nice stones but we can buy native cut from dealers cheaper and our customers don't understand.
All jewellers here want a mark up of 2.7.
Working with a bespoke jeweller with 35 years experience we try to target the small market that likes our story " we mine, we cut, we make our own product".
Our pricing is lower than most jewellers as we do not have the same overheads this causes some concern to would be purchasers as they think it cannot be real at those prices.
I started with a graves mk1 mast and quill on a badly made home base. I survived and now have two Fac Ettes the difference is how much quicker I can turn out a cut stone. I have not really figured the cost of machine as with out one you cannot facet.
Most cuts are rounds ovals squares. Some free forms but harder to sell.

I know I have a Hobby out of Control


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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 6:20 pm 
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All jewellers here want a mark up of 2.7.

Know what?
That makes me feel like a complete IDIOT for running this business.

Yeah. I want a markup of 1:2.7 too.
I also wanted a pony when I was a kid.
I also wanted an Aerostar 601, a 52' Bristol Cruiser, a redheaded nymphomaniac millionaire Lottery Winner who owned a liquor store, and a license from the federal reserve to print money.

So. I guess if I did not end up with all those, I can accept the 2.7 thing.

But still...

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 6:58 pm 
This is what ans Aussie gem cutter can afford to drive.I cant afford to run it on petrol so I run it on LPG(Liquid Petrolleum Gas).
How about this ,you employ me and I get one of those nice lookin cars.


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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 7:26 pm 
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????
Things are so bad here, I cannot even MOW MY LAWN like rich people.
I have to use LPG for THAT too!
The agony never ends!
Image
Image
Image

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 Post subject: Re: Economics of Faceting
PostPosted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 8:12 pm 
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One of the worse parts of jewellers mark up they get us to do repairs for them, all they do is collect the money albeit they do get the customer, we may charge $30 to repair a claw they charge the customer $80. Then we may not get paid for 1 month.
The customer thinks we are rip off.
to be fair some jewellers do appreciate what is done to help them make money.

I had to sell my ride on John deere to buy my fac ette but the hand mower keeps me fit.


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