jwar wrote:Chankgeez wrote:jwar wrote:JonnyAngle wrote:who bought the laser?
A company with money
Yeah, I'd hope so. I'd hope you didn't sell it to a company without money.
Honestly I answered that way because who bought it literally does not matter. Wasn't someone in the pedal industry! I'll say that much.
I'm sorry Jack, that was really rude of me. Sigh. I'm in a bad place mentally and am actually really upset with how the whole thing is going down. So I'll explain what happened.
So I purchased my machine in 2014 for 35k (not kidding), at the time it seemed like a great idea, business was booming! A year later Epilog, the company that makes the laser comes out with a better version for the same price. I ask about an upgrade, they tell me I'd have to sell the machine and rebuy at like 37k. So for 2k more and if I had waited, I could have been etching EVERYTHING. Stone, wood, plastics, glass, metal...you name it. So basically I'm pretty confident my sales rep knew this and withheld the info to move the older machine. Shady but that's how salesmen work.
So fast forward to this year. Sales have been down and I'm barely breaking even. I don't think I've even come close to recouping the costs of the original purchase. But it sure as fuck made my life easier in one sense and harder in another. The support they offer is fucking terrible. My machine misfires and doesn't hit in the right spots, so I've literally ended up with more work sometimes than if I was doing acid etching. Plus it honestly isn't as rewarding.
I decided I needed to sell for several reasons 1. I'm selling my home and need money to do some things to spruce it up for the sale (new carpet, painting...etc. It all adds up). 2. I got burned out by high need, low profit customers. Which is my fault because I tried to be as cheap as possible and under valued my service. Because of this my quality started to go down and I decided it was time to move on. 3. I don't want to move an 800lbs machine to a new home. It was a fucking nightmare to get it in my house to begin with.
So I tried to sell it second hand. Got lots of interest. I mean a ton. But no one brought the money. I'd offer it for 25k or best offer. That's a 10k depreciation over a little less than 2 years. No one bit. I lowered the price to 20k or best offer. Still no bites. I contacted my rep, he offered me 14k. 14k and I paid fucking 35k for it less than 2 years ago!!!!! I asked for 15 and he accepted. The only reason I did it is the longer it sits, the less valuable it will become. Sad. And sucks ass. I'm losing 20 thousand dollars.
So Acid Splash is going away for awhile, but not forever. I play on reinventing the whole thing, but it will take time and patience. I'm not taking orders for awhile and going to nail down a new process.
I may move to a laser again at some point, but you'd better believe me I'm not paying that crazy price and I'm certainly not getting an 800 lbs machine. I must have been high that day...good God.
Anyway, it's a sore subject and I apologize for overreacting. I'm just kind of bitter about the whole mess.
I'd be bitter too. I don't think you overreacted though.
