Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Your Own Sewing Machine Repair Business

By David Trumble

Have you ever heard that it takes money to make money? Have you perhaps invested several hundred dollars in a business opportunity only to realize it really did not offer results? There are literally thousands of books, courses, and programs promising a dream of working from home, but how many really pay off?

There are so many con jobs and rip-offs that most of us eventually get a little skeptical. There are endless promises, guarantees, assurances, and can not lose opportunities it makes your head spin. If you believe there is an ideal opportunity where you never have to sell, work, serve, or do anything but rake in the cash; wake up. If there were such an opportunity, I know I would have found it. And I have not.

Dont get me wrong, I still believe in my own home based business. I still believe people can make a living without a job. I assure you, I am not some rich guy either. You see, I still believe in work too. I just like to work from my house instead of driving to some factory job or office.

Working from home is exactly what my wife did for many years. Especially, when our five children were small, she would earn an extra hundred dollars a week or so sewing. We found that when she was teaching 7th grade, it just put too much pressure on the family for Mom to be gone so much. Her work from home really paid off.

By the time our youngest child was entering middle school, Donna wanted to do more than just an occasional project. So she started running a small ad in the classifieds. She passed out business cards, and generally let everyone know she was available to do custom sewing. She was already an expert and well known through church circles, but the advertising did help. Soon work was coming in by the bag full. An interesting thing happened, however, we also started getting requests from sewers for sewing machine repair.

I took a repair course with Allyn International in Denver. I found a repairman in Austin who would mentor me. I collected service manuals. Essentially, I learned to repair sewing machines so I could collect the dollars people were trying to push on me. Yes, within a few months I was repairing five to six machines every week all from my garage part time. Eventually, we opened a small store, then expanded, and expanded again. Currently, our company repairs about 150 sewing machines monthly.

I am amazed by the number of people I meet, who know nothing about sewing or sewing machines. It appears some people think sewing is something they to in China. When I tell them that I make a living doing sewing machine repair and selling sewing machines, they respond as if I were from another world.

The size of the sewing business is staggering to most people. In the United States there are some 85 million sewing machines in active use. Some five million new sewing machines are some every year. Passionate sewing machine uses are willing to pay $5,000 - $9,000 - $12,000 or more for the top of the line sewing machine of their choice. Just think of it. Every one of those sewing machines needs an annual repair service.

So, exactly how can you make money repairing sewing machines? You can quickly learn how to do the work. You can start part time working on your kitchen table or in your garage. Forget about overhead, large investments, employees, and loads of government red tape.

Start out by letting all your friends, neighbors, people at church, and everywhere else that you do sewing machine repair. Run a small ad in the newspaper. Pass out business cards. Maybe do a dozen or so machines free of charge. Then charge about half what the city sewing machine shops charge for another dozen or so. Then set your prices just under your competition.

Lets be practical. I make no promises because you set your own rates and you do all the work, however, what if you could earn an additional $300 per month or $4,000 per year and only work a couple hours a week? He is how it works. Say you do one machine each week. You charge $80 for each one. It takes about 2.5 hours to do a service. You have no overhead, no employees, no big investment; so you keep all the money. Do the math: $80 time 1 machine times 4 weeks = ______ or times 52 weeks = ______. Not too shabby for a couple of hours a week at home.

But what if you get aggressive. Maybe you are not satisfied with one machine a week. Maybe you decide you want to work your business say ten to fifteen hours a week and do say 5 machines a week. The numbers stay the same, but you multiply them times the added machines you do. In short order, you could be earning a part time income of better than $20,000 a year.

Now if you were to expand and set up a few collection sites in quilt shops, fabric stores, and other repair shops; what kind of potential do think you could achieve?

What is your maximum potential for full time sewing machine repair? Without opening a sewing store and without hiring employees, you will find that you max out between fifteen and twenty sewing machines per week. The more demand for your services, the more you can charge. The better job you do, the more you can earn. The faster you are, the more machines you can do. At $99 per machine and averaging 20 machines per week, you might see as much as $100,000 a year. Of course, this is really a pie in the sky estimate, however, you are in control. You set your own potential.

Sewing machine repair is a business you can do without ever opening a store, hiring employees, renting space, or investing thousands of dollars in empty promises. As long as there are people who love to sew, there will be a need for sewing machine repair.

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