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Cabinet Shop Growing Pains-Suggestions for Smooth Transitions

August 15th, 2009 Leave a comment Go to comments

When a cabinet shop first opens, as the owner, it seems as though you are working uncounted hours and you are. When you are growing there are a few things that can help relieve the amount of time that you, as a cabinet shop owner, have to dedicate to the business. By thinking smarter, you will not have to work harder. Eventually, after a few months of opening the cabinet manufacturing company, you will discover that you cannot do everything on your own.

Identify Your Strengths

By examining your skills and accepting the fact that there are certain things that someone else would be more efficient at doing, you can save yourself money and headaches in the long run.

A Few of My Weak Areas of Business Where I Outsourced

1) Bookkeeping- I hired a book keeper from the very first day when I opened the cabinet business. I actually had figured this cost into the cabinet company business plan.

2) Tax Returns- Accountants attended college for a reason, understand that it is a specialized filed. Even though there is a lot of information out there that will teach me how to do your own business taxes and an abundance of computer software programs, this is something that I decided to leave to the professionals.

3) Payroll Companies for Cabinet Shops – This turned out to be a giant plus for our company. We were able to outsource our entire payroll to an agency. This allowed us to save a ton of money because we did not have to carry cabinet company workers compensation insurance.

4) Hire Part-Time Employees- This is something that we made a regular practice in our business, hiring part-time workers. There are excellent mill men, cabinet assemblers, countertop specialists and fine furniture finishers that could use some extra money. If you can find someone that you can trust to give a key to and to close the shop and lock things up when they are finished working, this arrangement works well for after hours employees.

5) Order Pre-Assembled Materials-Rather than build everything yourself, consider paying cabinet supply companies to provide materials that already have something done to them to reduce the amount of labor on your end. We used to order all of our kitchen cabinet materials in pre cut sizes with edge banding already on them. This saved a ton of time.

Those are just a few of hundreds of ways that a cabinet shop can survive the growth stages and the pains that are associated with time dedicated to the business and profit making. The more that you can focus on what you are good at and hire others to do what they are good at, the transition stages of growth will be smooth.

Categories: Business Planning
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