Thoughts on special orders

[TreverT]

Thought I'd post a link to this here, as the content may be interesting, funny, and (hopefully) useful, especially to those new to this stuff who may be finding themselves confronted with some of these issues. See my blog entry "Special orders and Not-so-Special orders" here:

http://www.talbertpipes.com/ppod.html

And let's be careful out there

[JHowell]

Yes, I have a few pipes on the site that were ordered by "Big Eyes" fellows. The line usually goes "Man, I'm sorry I didn't look at your site earlier, I certainly would have bought X. Could you make another?" Then nothing. But then, I don't want to take deposits and risk winding up bound to a Technician. On the topic of time invested per customer, though, it must be a real Gold Buyer who gets you to make four pipes to choose one.

[hazmat]

I've yet to sell pipes the way some of you guys, both full and part timers have. Most of my earlier work, prior to stepping away for a few years, was strictly commissioned work. I did 5 pipes on commission.. thankfully, none were the lower end of the spectrum Trever's talking about(flits?), but I did get one technician(thankfully, he paid) who absolutely drove me nuts. I finally had to ask him if he really, really wanted this pipe or just enjoyed being part of the "process" because, frankly, I had other pipes I wanted to make and my time was being wasted on an ongoing misadventure in making the "perfect billiard"... bleh.. luckily he was a rational man and we came to an agreement, but it was a definite learning process. Now he just gives me a general idea and lets me have at it.. thank you Jaysus!!!

One of my closest friends is also a bit of a technician. He loves to grab raw blocks or, even worse, works in progress, and tell me how he "thinks" I should make the pipe... do this.. nah.. do that.. flush fit the stem.. or better yet, put on a shank extension and... it goes on and on... finally, this weekend, I handed him a block of scrap briar I was going to make into a jig anyway, drilled it, stuck a stem on it and said "Here, take this home with you, make whatever shape you like, and then come back to me and tell me what you think... keep in mind all of the things that make a pipe a pipe, the lines, the symmetry(or lack of, if that's the case), the dimensions, the balance, the bend of the stem and how it effects the overall line of the pipe"... I think I scared him a little bit.. some flecks of spittle began to froth up on his lips and his eyes were a bit glazed over....should be interesting to see what he's got when he stops by my shop tomorrow evening I did it as an object lesson... sure, this is just putting two holes in wood to smoke tobacco in... but it's much, much more than that... maybe he'll go from "big eyes" to "now I understand"... we shall see!!!

[custom300]

Trevor,
I think you've put into marvelous words, the excercise and discerment every business owner must go through regardless of the product. How many times do we go the extra mile for the customer who strings you along,(purposely or not) only to find him/her lose interest at the close. I'm not sure if you meant your tome to be a catharsis, but as I sit behind my desk in the corporate world, it provided me with a smile nonetheless. Thank you.

[TreverT]

Actually, the reason I wrote it all out was to (hopefully) help the very people it's about. What spurred me to write it was a chat with a fellow not long back, who is a major Flitter-Away. He's a nice guy, really incredibly enthused about pipes, and will spend tons of time chatting in pipe forums and at clubs and shows, but I have to keep him at a polite distance because I know that he'd cheerfully waste tons of my working time if I let him. He was complaining about how difficult it was to get pipemakers to make the pipes he ordered, and I could not help but think, "Are you not aware that you've built your own rep?" Which got me to wonder just how many people there were out there, who were unhappy because they couldn't seem to have good experiences ordering pipes, and might not realize that they were their own problems. Ergo, the blog post.

I thought it might be equally useful to beginning pipemakers who haven't encountered these types before, too. As someone said above, the worst nightmare you can have is to let a Technician give you an advance payment on a pipe to be made to their specs..... 8O

[hazmat]

I think if you've done it before, it gets pretty easy to figure out who's what and which way they're heading. I just turned a commissioned pipe down for two major reasons yesterday:

1) I haven't been back into making them long enough at this point to feel comfortable selling anything yet.. and I don't want pipes I made floating around out there I don't feel confident in.

2) This guy wanted to be in my shop the entire time I'm making the pipe. While I don't mind company, I HATE having someone tell me what I should be doing during my creative processes.

I think you mentioned this, Trever, about how much it basically SUCKS to have someone breathing down the back of your neck every step of the way. It hampers me and I don't like operating under those circumstances.

[KurtHuhn]

Thankfully, I get a lot of Gold Buyers. These are the same folks that will gladly shell out Real Money for 2-3 (or more) pipes per year from the same maker, and give the maker loads of artistic leeway.

But, I have fallen victim to Big Eyes before. I still have a pipe that was made for a Big Eyes, because I can't stand to sell the thing. He seemed so excited about it....

[StephenDownie]

I recently finished a commission for a gent who actually made a blueprint of the pipe he wanted on graph paper. Never again. Another favorite of mine is the guy who not only wants a pipe, but also wants you to repair, wax, buff or restem some of his old pipes.

[JHowell]

You know, Trever, I'd be interested to hear what kind of customer feedback you're getting on this piece. I almost emailed the link to a fellow who had some very specific requirements for shape, sent me photos of a pipe (a Chonowitsch, naturally) that he liked. I made a pipe that I thought nailed the shape, only to find that he didn't want it because it was rusticated instead of blasted. It's ok, I half didn't expect him to buy it. He's a Technician, with a price point to boot, and I figure that's the deal, but maybe he doesn't realize that this is why he hasn't gotten the perfect pipe from me. Then I realized that EVERY customer sees himself as a Gold Buyer. The guy who asks for a one thing, then wants to hold out for the one that's EXACTLY right but doesn't really want to spend more than $200 considers himself a Gold Buyer doing the pipemaker a favor by being interested at all -- after all, he could be putting his $200 in somebody else's pocket. I'm not sure there's much upside in telling someone he's not a Gold Buyer, even if it's true.