[Job Heesakkers Acres Instruments]

Hey Tony, thank you for your info, and sorry for the late reply. I don’t spend much time in the loothgroup..

You have an amazing setup! The sheetmetal underneath is genius! I have to build something like that for myself.

In the end I did do 2 heat treatments, overbowing a tiny bit. The trussrod was working, but didnt change the bow that much. Once I got it out of the heat treatment after a few days, it was almost perfect! I’m very happy with the results!

Thank you again for sharing!

[Job Heesakkers Acres Instruments]

Hey Ian! Thank you for your info, and sorry for the late reply. I dont spend much time on here.
It was definitely refretted, the owner told me and it was obvious. In the end I did use the heat treatment and it worked like a charm! It just always feels a bit sketchy to me because I feel like it’s gonna warp right back again, but I think that’s just in my head… I’ll do this more often!

[Job Heesakkers Acres Instruments]

Hey Matt, thanks for the reply! I prefer not to work in his shop, because I have my own shop directly next to my house and with my own tools, workflow, etc. Also, it would feel like stealing his customers if I built up a reputation there and left with the customers.

We’re doing some try-outs, and in a few weeks we’ll see if it works out. If not, I’ll just keep working in my own shop.

Him referring customers to me would be perfect, let’s hope he wants to do that!

[Job Heesakkers Acres Instruments]

Hey Ethan, thanks for the reply! We decided to do a tryout month. I pick up guitars at his shop and charge him for the work. This is just to see if this works for the both of us. If not, no hard feelings. I’m from the Netherlands, so I don’t have to worry about health insurance luckily, but vacation time would be nice! I don’t really have ambitions other than this, so I think I just have to keep growing the business, and take repair jobs from this shop for some extra cash for now. Thanks for the insights!

[Job Heesakkers Acres Instruments]

Wow Doug, that’s a lot of insights! Thank you so much!

A little info about my history as a luthier; I’ve been working on guitars for close to 10 years, 6 of those years were profesionally in a guitar shop in my area. I also went to a luthier school in Belgium for a few years at the same time. I gained a ton of experience from both the school and the job, working on hundreds of guitars. Unfortunately, the manager and I didn’t really see eye to eye on too many things and I left to work in my own workshop. At this time, I had my workspace for over a year already and was collecting all the equipment and tools I needed, although you’re never really done collecting tools.

At the old job I wasn’t the most talkative, so I didn’t really build a reputation for myself, or not as much as I could have, so I basically have to build my customer base from nothing, with a few exceptions.

Last year I decided I want to do this job from my own shop full-time, and have been building towards that. I’m working more efficiently, my website is up and running, and I just spend a lot more time in the shop. I do still have a side job, but that’s just an occasional thing with not that many working opportunities, so I’d like to change to full-time loothing as soon as possible.

I’m based in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. It’s a very musical city, but not a very big one. There aren’t many places where they offer repairs to instruments around, but the one that are here are institutions, and it might take a lot of time to prove myself and grow the shop in this environment.

Now back to the current situation!

Al’s suggestion of the other shop referring his customers to me would be ideal, but as you said, I don’t think he’ll go for that. I might offer him a percentage of every repair he sends my way.

I do like to work from my own shop and I definitely want to keep it that way, so as you said I’ll try to do the pickup/drop-off thing.

I have talked with the owner in the meantime and he would like to work together, but he also doesn’t really know how. He does trust me though as he knows my name from the old shop I used to work at.

Since we’re both very open for anything, I think I’ll suggest we start with a pickup/drop-off situation, I’ll charge him a percentage of what I would normally charge, and that we just see for 2 weeks or something. If it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings. He has a few less repairs in his shop and I have some extra cash. Do you have any suggestions on what the percentage should be? I was thinking 60/40 or something like that.

Hopefully in some time I can do the same as you and don’t have to worry about taking on work from other shops. Guess I just have to keep working at it!

Thanks again for your advice!

[Job Heesakkers Acres Instruments]

I have a fb page, instagram, a website, and a google page. Especially the Google page has helped for me to find new customers. I haven’t tried posting on local musician pages and other fb groups though! That’s a good one, my facebook page has basically 0 traffic. Yelp isn’t really a thing in the Netherlands, so luckily I don’t have to deal with that.

[Job Heesakkers Acres Instruments]

Hey Al, thank you for the reply! You’re absolutely right that it would be best if I could just work for myself and maybe let the other shop just send customers over. I know the guy a little bit and he seems very open for any kind of help, so I might just give your way a try. If he’s not keen on the idea of sending them to me and not gaining anything for himself, I might offer him a percentage of any repair that comes my way through him. You’ve given me some stuff to think about!