I would like to point out that the market was undercut for Scott Flint when the club sold all George Rankins leftovers. Scott Flint has spent Thousands of his own dollars to gear up to make side curtains. He has decided to not pursue the production after the club sold all those parts that he is or is planning to make. There is a perfect example of what Garlic Pete talked about. For all that were expecting parts from Scott you will have to find somewhere else to get your parts. - Wally

Kind of takes us back to my original post.....current thinking and leadership is killing this club financially.

I didn't at the time, and still don't, think that we undercut Scott with the way we handled the sale of the side curtains donated by George Logue. The parts we sold were not complete, having no latches or other fittings. We did a pretty comprehensive survey of the marketplace for all the parts we offered for sale and attempted to set the price at reasonable levels similar to what others in the market were charging for a similar part.

In our pricing, we took into account the fact that any purchaser would have some investment of time and money to make them useable as well as some risk about whether they got damaged or if they could even find someone to finish them.

I know that Scott was frustrated by our pricing. He hasn't spoken to me, but he has to others. Unfortunately, we didn't seem to include him in our survey about the pricing. We can't always do everything perfectly. It would be really unfortunate if a one time liquidation of a few donated, incomplete side curtains resulted in the loss of a supplier for the many restorers who I'm sure will need these parts.

I don't think we were unfair or incorrect in the pricing we set. We do have to do the best we can to protect the Club's assets and to maximize value for our members and it wouldn't have been right for us to not sell these at all or to set the pricing too high so that we'd be gouging our members.

Some have suggested that we should have run an auction for the parts. That was a possibility we considered. Some of the difficulties with that scenario were a small number of units available, our desire to limit our first pass offerings to Club members only, the difficulties of running an auction for those spread all over the world and the desire to include all Club members, not just those with computer access and ability, or the desire to dial in to a phone auction at a specific time.

I don't feel that we have been poor financial stewards or that we are killing the Club financially.

Much of the discussion in this thread has been focused on explaining why we are where we are financially, what we have done to manage ourselves out of that financial situation and the offering and gathering of many helpful new ideas which might be used to continue to move us out of our situation. This type of interaction, open reporting and discussion about what we do and why, and seeking of input from all members has always been a primary goal of mine. I believe it is also at the core of what most or all of our current Board members want. I know it has been helpful to me and I hope we can continue the discussion, and share in the success resulting from it, in the future.

Pete.

With such lofty goals and shrinking reserves I would suggest partnering would be the only approach for any new venture in manufacturing and possibly model sales as well. ACMOC is obviously not staffed with resources and knowledge to be running a business outside of subscriber published materials.

"brewzer" wrote:

I would like to point out that the market was undercut for Scott Flint when the club sold all George Rankins leftovers. Scott Flint has spent Thousands of his own dollars to gear up to make side curtains. He has decided to not pursue the production after the club sold all those parts that he is or is planning to make. There is a perfect example of what Garlic Pete talked about. For all that were expecting parts from Scott you will have to find somewhere else to get your parts. - Wally

This is exactly the point i have been trying to put over .The size of the market for any parts produced is extremely small .
Now it sounds like we have lost a source for these parts .

"brewzer" wrote:

I would like to point out that the market was undercut for Scott Flint when the club sold all George Rankins leftovers. Scott Flint has spent Thousands of his own dollars to gear up to make side curtains. He has decided to not pursue the production after the club sold all those parts that he is or is planning to make. There is a perfect example of what Garlic Pete talked about. For all that were expecting parts from Scott you will have to find somewhere else to get your parts. - Wally

It is my understanding that as of a year and a half to two years ago, Scott had over $75,000 invested in equipment and tooling to manufacture Caterpillar sheet metal, plus an outrageous amount of his time. There is no way he will ever recover his investment making sheet metal for others and sold metal to collectors so that they too would be able to restore their machines with an extreme attention to detail. I was not aware ACMOC did this to him. Unfortunately, I am not surprised.

I hope I can sell some parts in this small market with more competition. I've been making sheet metal parts in my spare time for ACMOC collectors for 20yrs now.
I have shared some of my information to other venders so their parts are made to the proper size. George Logue and I talked about this small market years ago and he told me
that he would never produce what I was already producing. When the market slowed down on producing louvers I asked him several times if he would let me buy his tooling to make louvered
side curtains since I already made top hoods for some tractors. I stopped advertising back around issue #50 because the price to run my add without shrinking it down in size was taking all
of the little profit I was making for a part time venture that I enjoy so much. I really enjoy helping out someone who doesn't have the resources to reproduce a part machined or fabricated and
going to a show and seeing some of my metal work on a tractor.

I do not see how ACMOC raffling off a small amount of parts would hurt his business.

If ACMOC kept the parts people would complain,
If ACMOC would have had an auction people would have complained,
If ACMOC gave the stuff away people would have complained.
Now you can see how hard it is to make a decision.

The part that is missing is nobody contacted current producers to see what kind of joint venture could be worked out.

Remember the raffle was a one time event

Here is a suggestion: if Scott has invested so much capital in making parts then he should write an article about what he can provide collectors or contact a person on the mag committee and they will help write it and get it in the ACMOC magazine.
That way he can educate the members about what he has to offer other than taking out a small classified ad in the back of the magazine.

I see ACMOC not as a manufacture but as a marketing tool for those that already make parts!
I will go ahead and put this out there: if you make a part and would like to sell it, contact the MM committee or the office and lets work on a deal for ACMOC to promote and help sell your products.
That way ACMOC is not competing with the producer but will help them sell it.