How much pedals do you sell in a month as a pedal builder

[Kitarist]

So i'm curious how much pedals do you sell in a month as a botique pedal builder

[Gurner]

I don't make or sell pedals but if I did I wouldn't tell anyone how many I sold!

Let's say I sell on average 100 pedals a month - that's just an open invite for everyone to look at my product line & start doing what I do!

[culturejam]

About 0.1 per month. 

For me, making pedals is fun and often cathartic. If I start doing it for money all the time, I find that it starts to become work, and then I don't enjoy it.

[Kitarist]

Well yea everyone is different but if you enjoy what are you doing and even earn from it then its just awesome IMHO

[petemoore]

  I may not be as rich and glamourous as some pedalgeeks.
  I sell < .001 pedals a month, I think that's very respectable.
  This just barely exceeds my record album sales.

[deadastronaut]

@culturejam
agreed this is not work...its enjoyment...

@kitarist
27,000.000 units per year!.(gurner dont rip me off ha ha...)...

but seriously...
i spend most of my time on endless designing...rather than building now.
its not that hard to build a clone of a clone pedal, but its a lot more satisfying to me to design one from scratch..
rather than merely copy someone elses ..(with exceptions though!.)

but to go into this interest/hobby  with the soul purpose of selling, then i think you'd need a rethink on that!.
there are copious amounts of so called 'boutique'(i hate that word, sounds like a handbag shop   pedal sites out there...

i only sell/give to friends.who will use them and wont sue me for a wire that came off ha ha...
i have lots of money anyway ,so im not desperate for beer money....

enjoy it...and play!.....

[alparent]

Some for me ....... this is a hobby.

Most of the pedals I've build came from the mind of other people. And all of them state that the info they give out is for personal uses ONLY So I don't see in all good conscience how I could start making runs of them to sale them off?

From people I've talk to and question I've posted on this forum.......I gathered that nobody cares if you salel the odd one here and there to finance your hobby........but calling myself a "Boutique" and ripping off designs others came up with......is a no-no for my ethics. Unless your paying royalties or something?  And I don't think that changing the value of a resistor makes it my design ether.   But that's me  

[Kitarist]

Hm interesting

[Electron Tornado]

This is just a hobby for me. That keeps it fun.

A better question would be for you to ask all the musicians you know, how many pedals they are buying in a month. 

[puretube]

Sold my 1.st  pedal in `68, the second one ~ 4 decades later...
(that`s ~ 0.004 p/m)

(now is that what`s called: "botique" ?)

[jasperoosthoek]

I built one for a friend who paid for the expenses. That was one time and never again. It's the only pedal where I actually bothered to put some sort of decoration  or text on it . To me it was too much time and little reward. Time I couldn't spend playing guitar or building my own stuff.

So many people have asked me if I could build them this or that and that they would pay for the parts. To me that's not worth it. Right now I have a full time job so I have even less time than money. Time I won't spend making more money, then it becomes, ... , work.

[petemoore]

  Recently, the term "boutique" has started being applied to normally-mass-market items that are either niche or produced in intentionally small numbers at very high prices. This may be referred to as boutique manufacturing.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boutiques
  Something about having 'mass produced', 'manufacturing', botique, and 'niche' in the same sentence makes it hard to read.
 

[cloudscapes]

anywhere between 0 and 6. usually closer to 0

it would probably be a lot more if I didn't have a full-time job 

[diemilchmann]

ive sold about six in about .....3 or 4 years, mostly for friends/ people i know. I would LOVE to be able to sell more, but no one other than friends buy....i thought $60-$80 for a boutique isnt bad

[snarblinge]

been building for the last 5 or 6 years and sold about 20 pedals mostly to mates and mates of mates. only to feed the habit. though with hundreds spend on Germanium transistors from across the globe, chasing the perfect Fuzz sound....... it hardly pays for itself.

Still have a long shopping list that I assure my partner will make things easier for me. Dremmel, COmpressor and airbrush. nice parts drawers. etc. (she thinks food is more important!?!)

though I feel mine are mostly Fuzzes and boosts combined and tweeked, they are still not really my designs, and I disclose them as such. wouldn't consider going into mass production unless I had something really unique.

[MoltenVoltage]

Still have a long shopping list that I assure my partner will make things easier for me. Dremmel, COmpressor and airbrush. nice parts drawers. etc. (she thinks food is more important!?!)

Tell her the airbrush is to foam up her latte

[darron]

interesting question. i was interested to read results people posted.


i build things that only i am interested in, and offer some stuff on my website. in a month i sell almost nothing. a year ago i used to sell about 13 in a month though, but now i have given up on ebay etc. and am much happier working on more of my own designs. i've had years now of research into development techniques for the hardware etc.


THOUGH... i should mention, to put the hobby/business idea into perspective, i am offering (not outwardly advertising) loopers for as low as $69, which considering parts, powder coating etc. does't really cover any labour at all. this is so that people who know me by reputation or find me can share in the fun of hand made pedals.

i'd love to be able to sit back one day at the iron and breadboard exclusively, but i think for now you should pay respect to the guys who are working their arses off doing things the right way and stay out of their market unless you can REALLY can offer something different.

i get sooo pissed off when i see the things that come out of china in the volume/price that it does. if i'm in kmart and see some home decor art thing for $5 that hand-made someone would want a day's pay for, it depresses me to think of how impossible it is becoming to offer anything of personal charm and quality to people when they have these options blinding them everywhere.

i used to sell a couple/few pedals a week through my site and ebay, but now you can get something from china that's pretty much the 'same thing' for an average player for just over your own cost of parts. of course people are going that way.



work on being brilliant regardless of what else is around. don't expect to make more than a hobby from it though. and if you are going to do it, do it with passion... and wires!

[diemilchmann]

What  is your opinion on ebay? I have been holding back, but i feel like it would fun to sell some more, especially as my effects are becoming more "professional quality"

[Electron Tornado]

What  is your opinion on ebay? I have been holding back, but i feel like it would fun to sell some more, especially as my effects are becoming more "professional quality"

Your best bet is to search ebay and watch all the boutique pedals and see how they sell. What I've seen is that established names (i.e. Keeley or Analogman) will sell, but many others sell much lower or sometimes not at all. At the same time, some strange, one-off pedals have sold surprisingly well. Having a video demo seems to help.

I've done repairs and mods to several pedals and sold them on ebay, but the fees charged by ebay and paypal cut heavily into any profit. While it barely covers parts, it never covers labor.

This question comes up every so often, so a search might lead you to previous threads here.  A better direction for this thread might be discussing the best method(s) of marketing and selling pedals, especially if you're just doing it on the side.

[DougH]

I've been around the block and back to where I started, when considering this.

A few years back I was thinking of building a small run of some designs of mine, then I started putting together a parts list spreadsheet. And I never got any farther than that... I just couldn't sit there, night in night out doing this kind of drudgery in my spare time. It was just soul-destroying for me... I never even got to the place of soldering 50 of the same things, which when I think about it would be bad enough. I quickly realized there was no way I was going to happily sit there and try to pump out XX widgets a month in my spare time, when I have a day job that I love and already does more than pay the bills. I think I realized the proverbial story of "Taking a hobby you love and turning it into a job you hate" was going to apply, to me.

This is not meant to rain on anyone's parade. Go for it if you really have the passion for it. I didn't, but I don't have the right personality for it.

Think about this though, esp if you are considering selling on Ebay- Go to the Ebay guitar fx section and take a look at what's out there. How many new small mfrs weren't there last week? How many will still be there next week? Do you have something that's going to distinguish yourself from everyone else? Do you already have a name & reputation? Conversely, what will make people want to take a chance on you if you're unknown?

As an alternative I would consider selling to some local musicians in town and getting a rep "the old fashioned way-one sale at a time" and organically, before I worried about opening up shop on the innerwebz.

Just some things to think about.