Never Enough Money wrote:
I'm in my early 50's and have been a programmer, designer, and manger
of same for almost 30 years. I feel it's time for a change but still
have to pay a mortgage and 3 kids in college.

I'd love to open a Woodcrat store. Does anyone have any idea how much I
could take home? I know it depends on location, location, location, and
other things like the qulaity of help, etc. But are we talking $40K and
that's a struggle or $400K? What should be my expectations?

I know someone who runs another woodworking store. He's been
established for quite some time. I don't know exactly what he makes,
but it's definitely not 400k.. He says he's "surviving". One
interesting thing he told me was that since most of the big machines
(tablesaws, etc) have gone to China, the margins have evaporated. Every
year, the cost of fuel and steel goes up, and they have less margin.
His store has the 10% of Jet/Delta/etc days once a year. He told me
that many customers are not impressed, making comments like "that
doesn't even cover tax".. but he told me that the only way they are
able to do those sales is by having Delta absorb 5% of the discount..
in other words, they don't even make a 10% margin on the machines.

He said they make a decent margin on accessories.

So basically, you definitely aren't going to get rich off it. If I was
you, I'd look around the other woodworking stores locally and see what
kind of volume they do (look to see how busy they are). Since so many
people buy woodworking stuff online now, I think it would be very
difficult to start a new store. My guess is it would take awhile to
build a customer base to be even just "ok" proftiable.

If any of the information I gave above is false, it's unintentional.
I'm just going by what my friend told me.