R&D is expensive. It appears that your new business model is to rely heavily on new motors in new case sizes, and which require complete retooling for testing, which are all R&D expenses, while starving your existing customer base (including me) who have significant investments in pretty blue Loki cases. It’s like you’ve picked the trifecta of how to blow through capital.
Not at all Steve. You're guessing like many others that you know how to best run this business. I can count on both hands the number of people who have been in my very small shoes with this type of APCP busines, and about half of those people have past on now. You're not on the list.
My business plan is to do all the possible things I can do for my customers a portion of that plan includes doing the things they have been asking of me since I purchased the companyy over 10 years ago.
"When are you going to make 98mm motors again??? I'd love to buy one if you started making them again!"
This is but one portion of what I am doing for my customers. What is slowing me down, keeping customers waiting, are the NFPA requirements that must be met with the extreme variance in materials and pricing that I've had to deal with over the past 2 years. It takes quite a great deal of time to make sure everything burns exactly within spec year after year when materials keep changing due to the supply.
I've had plenty of vendors go out of business or refuse to take our purchase orders any more (we're too small for them to bother with any more) where new materials have had to be sourced. It takes time and money to work through all this. The evaporation of remaining surplus 200AP is only one of those instances we have had, and continue to work through.
These Exempt motors and Demonstration motors are just one portion of the profit area that is available to a manufacturer per the NFPA as I read the codes in context with each other. I see the TRA codes and claims of "we can't insure it without changing NFPA" from preventing manufacturers from accessing this quite large profit area growing within the university system. Major companies are throwing MAJOR money at these universities in order to train them for the positions that keep popping up left and right in the commercial aerospace sector. These motors I make fly from time to time, legally, at other venues, but they are extremely limited because of THE TRA'S RULES.
My market could explode if these Exempt motors were allowed to fly, and the Demonstration motors be recognized at every TRA launch. The people in high places, running things like the Argonia Cup, they know all of this, but it seems they don't want it to happen.
I'll tell you another thing. You and others keep telling me I need to expand my dealer base. Well guess what. That will take another full time employee, one that will be here after 6-12 months and not move on. I cannot afford to whip out $50k for a new college grad that might go poof after a year and start all over. Been there done that several times with part time help. You have zero idea how much product my two main dealers purchase each year. They keep me out of stock for the amount of product one and a half people running this business can make.
What I can afford to do is make Exempt motors and sell them for profit because they can be flown anywhere in the country. It may not matter if I ever make that motor again, but I can profit from it very quickly. I can measure Pc in flight and get acceleration data as well today. You could hardly do this 35 years ago unless you were NASA, and because of that, the codes might have been needed, back then, to prevent others form trying to make home made rocket motors..
Today you are encouraged to learn how to do rocket motor research and given a VAST trove of resources and knowledge in order to be successful at it. The safety concerns of 35 years ago are not the safety concern of today, but they are the hook which the TRA keeps hanging its hat on.
It is time for a change, an overhaul really, but for now, I'm just starting with trying to be able to do all of the profitable things the NFPA codes currently allow. Then I might be able to afford a real employee a salary they will stay here for. Then, maybe others will easily be able to start a company like this one, and then you will see the inovation and selection of brands
really take of.