I woke up this morning having received 3 overnight orders from EU customers, that's 7 from the continent this week alone. For the tax year '15-'16 I had a total of 4. In fact, my YTD EU sales are now into the 20s.
My margins have shrunk slightly as the cost of parts have increased (not by much, but I'm sure they will) and I haven't yet adjusted prices accordingly but compared to this time last year my net profit is up 18%.
Is anyone else having a huge sales volume increase to the EU, especially since Brexit?
*I no longer offer replacement speaker baffles*
Rift Amplification
Handwired Guitar Amplifiers
Brackley, Northamptonshire
www.riftamps.co.uk
Comments
All swings and roundabouts innit?
This.
Prices to import have gone up, but at least one of my EU suppliers has increased my discount to compensate. Plus I have received 2 orders from Europe in 1 month, quite a rare event for me.
Life goes on.
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
Stockist of: Earvana & Graphtech nuts, Faber Tonepros & Gotoh hardware, Fatcat bridges. Highwood Saddles.
Pickups from BKP, Oil City & Monty's pickups.
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Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
At the risk of sounding like a boring jobs worth don't forget to adjust your business insurance to reflect the turnover changes for different regions, especially if that turnover is US/Canada based. Insurance companies are funny buggers (not haha funny).
Bottom line - it's almost certainly going to be more difficult for UK based guitar builders to trade in Europe, but just how difficult we don't yet know.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Post Brexit, if the UK has a similar process to the US I'll go on the web, click a few button, pay by Paypal and a week later the pickups would arrive in customs. Some time later (possibly several weeks or longer) I would receive the pickups, together with a bill for duty and a further charge for the privilege of having been charged duty. (The last order I placed with StewMac had a price of $50 and ended up costing me about $80.) That's why I never buy stuff from the US if I have another choice. It's slow, and it's expensive.
If the UK simply becomes one of the 'rest of the world' there is a real danger that it will seriously damage the UK economy and - more importantly - it could have an adverse effect on UK based guitar builders.
As a post script ... I export lots of pickups to Norway ... they don't seem to have too many issues with the complexities.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Am I right, do you know? Or do customers pay duty on their purchases?