traditional handmade cuemaking - a cottage industry or viable economic alternative

[teacup]

We been running a thread about cuemakers on tv but one Canadian contributor pasted a link showing pool cues being made very quickly and perfectly by machine, which got us thinking and our calculators out, estimating how long it takes to make a cue, material costs and marketing and roughly how many cues could physically be made by one person in a week.
Given that large machines and modern sophisticated workshops or factories are the way cues are made in China and Thailand and people seem to be happy with the quality of the Thai cues in particular, (to the extent that many UK cuemakers are having their cues made in Thailand but with their nameplate fitted and importing and selling as their own),............. is the traditionally handmade cue now being relegated to the back shed or at best cottage industry status, bearing in mind the cost and time of producing individually against the £40 perfectly produced cue, 2 extensions and aluminium case from JX or others on ebay ? And can anyone expect to make a worthwhile living of say £40k - £50k on what is now a niche market ?

[andy carson]

all depenmds on how the cues are made, what woods used and the skills of the person making

[ADR147]

machines still don't make perfect cues - the point is being missed here.

[andy carson]

machines still don't make perfect cues - the point is being missed here.

I would also go as far as saying even by hand you cant make the perfect cue as everyone wants something different out of one

[ADR147]

there is no such thing - that is the point.

[teacup]

the point is what is economically viable in this day and age - is it profitable to spend all week making 1 cue to what your refer to as perfect ? - you can't make a living out of that ! If you mark up your handmade cue by 100% you're only going to gross 50% then take off all your overheads, repairs and renewals, bank overdraft interest and the like and in order to earn £30k to £40k per year you've got to turnover £60k-£80 pa and that brings VAT into the equation That brings up the point of what one person is physically able to make by hand over the course of a year. The balance sheet we came up with for a dummy company didn't show a profit before wages, let alone someone taking £30k to £40k personally each year................. so we come back to the point of whether traditional methods of cuemaking can survive outside of being a hobby ?

[edemrulez]

I think the "high end" cues will always be done by hand. As with another goods...Rolls-Royce... A few, very good cuemaker survives in every condition! ..... I hope!!

[andy carson]

the point is what is economically viable in this day and age - is it profitable to spend all week making 1 cue to what your refer to as perfect ? - you can't make a living out of that ! If you mark up your handmade cue by 100% you're only going to gross 50% then take off all your overheads, repairs and renewals, bank overdraft interest and the like and in order to earn £30k to £40k per year you've got to turnover £60k-£80 pa and that brings VAT into the equation That brings up the point of what one person is physically able to make by hand over the course of a year. The balance sheet we came up with for a dummy company didn't show a profit before wages, let alone someone taking £30k to £40k personally each year................. so we come back to the point of whether traditional methods of cuemaking can survive outside of being a hobby ?

thats where you struggle..

a decent cue maker will not whack out a cue to your exact standards in 1 week... he will work on 10's of cues at the same time all at different stages waiting for woods to settle stuff to dry out, all sorts....

i think you actually need to research how to make a cue in the first place bvefore you do any more dummy runs on the subject....


(oh and i awaity MW's response to this with glee )

[teacup]

good point - many cues at one time does seem to be an answer, however you have to invest more money to get all these different cues underway, and not everyone is going to order the same cue, also you have to sell everything you make otherwise you've got money tied up in dead stock. The big factories can negotiate best prices for the volumes of raw material they take, so in some respects can probably have the pick of the best ebony etc, so ultimately the cues they produce should be technicallyperfect and with the best materials, and the fact they can turn round a finished product so quickly. This also turns their money round faster and gives them greater profitability, whereas the poor old handmaker is still toiling away and will probably get criticism because his handmade cue isn't as round or straight when compared to these others.
But we're still begging the question - is the traditional way of handmaking cues now consigned to the back garden shed as a hobby?

[Watford]

Absolutly not demand is growing.
Have you seen the lead times on top notch handmade cues?????
Three years ago you counted in weeks now you count in months.
Trevor White stopped taking orders he had so much work.
With this the prices keep going up too.
I remember not too long ago when a basic plain ash Coutts cue was £180 they are now £300.
Fact of matter is companies who make more cues don't use the best materials and that is a factor. You can see it in companies like Peradon where the quality is hit and miss.

The lathe isn't an new invention.
Machine cues have been around for years and if anything it is the big mass produced companies who are failing and the handmakers are doing more business.

Maybe if someone really starts turning out top quality on mass for good prices (maybe a Chinese or Thai concern)

[teacup]

good to hear and in many ways you've helped answer part of the original question by saying that these cuemakers are quoting inordinate lead times on their orders, thereby reaching saturation point on how many they can physically make. Unfortunately every cue that they cannot make or delay reduces their individual turnover and subsequently their profitability. We audit many companies with only 1 to 5 workers and in many cases the owners flog themselves to death and end up paying their staff more than they're able to take in the end..... perhaps only time will tell whether these people survive and whether the outside world lose their love affair with UK cues and buy from indigenous sources, who I'm sure will soon be making cues by hand in back street squalor for peanuts

[andy carson]

how can a cue they do not make reduce thier turnover?????

thier turnover stays what ever it is with what they have decided to make, refusing to do a cue on top of this does not reduce it....

[teacup]

that's the point - their turnover will remain the same if they don't do an order, by the same token every order they don't complete they don't receive payment for - however to become profitable they need to make a certain number of cues and more importantly sell all those cues, to reach a figure that will make them profitable. Our original point was whether they are physically capable of making and selling enough to make their businesses profitable and allow them to take from those profits a liveable wage of say £30k to £40k pa, which is not a lot in this day and age if you equate it to how much you'd need to declare in order to get a mortgage, or in the cold light of day has the profitability of the handmade cue reached a stage of hobbyists only - remember this is not pointed at anyone maker in particular but purely on economic and profitabilty grounds only given todays ecomonic climate

[andy carson]

again your argument is flawed...

a liveable wage in the UK is actually only around £15k not 30 - 40 k that is to live a very nice life in luxury....

go have a look at handmadecues.com and you will see how a true expert in cue making runs his business (beware he does have some sarcastic funny bits on his site too...)

[teacup]

Andy - I wouldn't get out of bed for £15k per year - and you miss the point - looking at web sites isn't going to give you a financial view of a company. Many companies have come to realise that if they are incapable of meeting demand they go elsewhere to have their shortfall made-up. Hence they cuemaker you referred to earlier, rather than lose sales, have gone to, Thailand for example, given them one of his cues and said I want exact replicas of that, which I'm sure they would've done provided the price was right and then used them to top up his shortfall. After all business is about sales and if you aint got the goods you aint gonna get the sales. Perhaps this will be the only way of survival for handmade cues in this country, because although a portion will come in from other sources, it will help makers up their throughput and maybe get to a gross figure sold to show breakeven or a profit