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Re: (ET) ETs After Bill Gunn



I too talked to Bill (before reading Don's post) and heard much of the same information. I was toying with the idea of a field trip to physically look at all he has, but I like Don's choice to send a formal letter and will be interested in the response.

From what Bill described, his stock fills a 30' x 40' building and if all the complete machines and cores etc. are included more like 70' x 100' space would be needed. He roughly estimates 2 or 3 tractor trailer loads to move it all. So a significant amount of "stuff" to move and store (which is somewhat at odds with an earlier poster saying there was almost no stock left?).

In a many ways access to the drawings and the "brain dump" may be the more valuable asset. I like like the idea of selling an ET kit... this then gets new machines out there that conveniently use the same parts as the old ones... and may encourage some refinements and friendly competition as people produce modern accessories.

Meanwhile maybe if Don shares his address, everyone could send along $10 to help defray his costs for elec-trak.org?


Don Barry wrote:
Folks,
Yes, I've been very busy and have not had any time to work on the site for a quite a while. It's hasn't been much of a priority, since about all the document-related infomation I have is already up there. I've asked several times in the past for help on the site, and outside of the efforts of Geof and a few others it's been all talk and no action. I've spent a great deal of time, effort, and money (about 2K) in getting that site together and acquiring the info. So I don't appreciate the *itchin' About the time I brought up the issue of using a WWW-based discussion group, much like most other enthusiast groups use, that idea was pretty much shut down. I still think it would be nice, as members could post pics, and then the messages are in categories, and searchable. And most of us are guilty of buying things outside of Bill (example: belts).. so Bill's business has become unprofitable. So in talking with Bill, 1) He's not retiring, he's leaving the business. 2) Selling the business is not profitable as well - the last offer he had for "everything" was about 10K, but that also required Bill to inventory, tag, and box everything. It's a lot easier for Bill to sell the stock to a Scrapyard/Recycler who will simply forklift up the pallets, pay him, and leave. 3) Bill has contractual aggreements with Wheelhorse and GE on some information he's not to disclose, for example - names on prints. To clear this hurdle, Bill may have to edit some documents (and time costs money). Probably need a lawyer's time, too. $1-2K at best. 4) A lot of the things Bill sells are assembled from parts. There isn't any electronic version of this stuff. I've asked Bill for: 1) What he would want for a "forklift pickup" of everything. 2) How much Bill would want for 40 hours of his time, during which Bill does a brain-dump of knowledge. Need a steno for that, tpo. 3) Cost to transfer vendor info, CAD drawings, etc. 4) If Bill would consider a Royalty agreement on parts, etc. (to lower the price of the forklift pickup) I have now sent him a confirming formal letter about making an offer for the above. What to do with it? 1) Ideally, it would be nice for some specialty tractor dealer to pick up the business. But it would take a lot of effort to get the stuff "in shape" to sell. 2) As far as marketing goes, it would be a interesting project to see what it would cost to make a "kit" to build an ET. That could be sold as somewhat of a premium price to generate income. Virtually all of the work could be outsourced. 3) From Bill's inventory, items with plenty of stock could be put on an EBay store. 4) Things that need manufactured (like sheet metal) would need to be pooled up, and the standard "group buy" done on them. 5) We can put the info (assuming legal issues cleared) on the Internet. Changes as I see it
1) Parts will be more expensive, and in some cases may be gone forever.
2) If we get somebody to take over the business, as a group we'd better be unified to support them by always using them. ET's are still plenty cheap, buying your belt from Bill instead of the auto store, and paying a couple more bucks goes a long way. Don


_________
Jim Coate
1970's Elec-Trak
1992 Chevy S-10 BEV
1997 Chevy S-10 NGV
http://www.eeevee.com