Guys-- chiming in here as a performance shop owner at the Mustang Ranch. I have not met Craig in person, and this commentary is not meant to reflect personally on Craig or his organization, but - it is meant to educate and reflect in the circumstances under which one must operate in California in the year 2009.
1. parts: we as dealers on performance parts-- *do not get* the advantageous pricing that you might think we do,--- our costs for parts are about the same as many of the online vendors, if not higher.
The distributors quite frequently will quote us a wholesale price over the phone and then the item shows up at a higher price. This happens everywhere, not just a few vendors. wrong shipping and back orders are a problem and most vendors do not have a sense of urgency.
2. CA Costs: our beloved state of CA has so many costs and fees and licenses and expectations that I have a full time admin devoted to bookkeeping, and administration of governmental issues, this ranges from one of the 5 taxation entities ; CA Franchise Tax Board, County of Santa Clara Property tax , city of Santa Clara fire fees and tax, CA State BOE filings, not to mention Federal requirements. , EPA, and enforcement of some kind of code.
3. Employee issues , --good people can get and keep good jobs, but there is a bottom feeder component and sometimes you get a bottom feeder.--and they cost dearly in time, soft costs delays and repairs.
4. Banks; banks actively look for ways to delay our access to inbound funds and rip us off with service fees every month.
5. Shipping Costs : one national shipper I caught charging us a $20 week account maint fee. ($1040/yr)
6. Financing customer jobs, we have people who have us go 110% on a project , rack up a huge bill and then they dont see us for 4 to 6 weeks to pick it up. --this is few and far between but with no 30 day terms available from our vendors since the credit crunch, everything is from our perspective is cash management.
7.lack of warranty support from EVERYONE except SUMMIT AND ROUSH . ---every single other vendor has let us down or has declined to honor most all warranty regarding parts , including pistons being shipped wrong, cranks etc, and these are national suppliers.
We have ended up purchasing items from larger national distribution vendors at a higher cost, just so we can be assured that we can be protected in case of a warranty issue.
8. Flat tappet cams and modern
oil : all of our flat tappet engine rebuilds are now sold with 0mi warranty as we cannot control the
oil supply. -- this is a problem for consumers as they believe that
oil is better now and not worse. we have ended up self insuring several flat tappet cams due to lack of ZDDP. now that we are a ZDDP distributor and I found some information for consumers --this is getting better.
9. Land Costs: in they year 2009, you still need to pay the landord. and he is not cheap.
10. it is expensive to offer a professional services in the Bay Area !
--so before you are having an issue with how expensive a shop is, think of what they have to go through and stay open and make sure you are provided a top notch product. --
vintage and race cars, as well as replicas and restorations are best when you have some artistic freedom , this is closer to the entertainment business and the R&D business than it is to the traditional automotive business.
Sorry for the rant, but -- this one hit a cord.
if the only thing you can come up with is time and it was a little expensive then i would say that was a pretty good shop.
if our co-vendors had a sense of urgency, we would all be lot better off.
--Steve