cant build a box for profit

Hi guys.

Sorry for chiming in late, but I would like to add my 2 cents to what has been said. I definitely agree with Carol and Rob as well, but retaking the thread from the start, I would like to mention Rob Cosman. He is a box maker, but he only started making money when he started making those ww videos, teaching about dovetails, the box hinge and so forth, later taking advantage of the momentum he started selling his own brand dovetail saw and fret saw.

With so many skilled hobbyist woodworkers in USA losing their jobs many of them will try to make a living or at least make some money out of it. IMHO this means that the competition will increase for any kind of woodworking project. With a lot of them making shaker, mission, colonial or any other style furniture, or boxes depending on their skill and tools I think that will make the potential sale prices go down even more.

Is it possible to make a living out of woodworking, sure! why not? there have been always professional woddworkers.
Not everybody can or want or have the time to make their own cabinets or chairs like many of us; and they hire a professional woodworker to do it, at what price? that I don't know but there are some members of the family that are pros and maybe they have something to say to that respect.

On the other hand, while years ago a hand made thing, be it a piece of furniture or a clay pot or whatsoever used to be highly regarded because it was hand made, for an unknown reason, nowadays it seems that for that same reason " being hand made" it has to be cheaper, because it is "artisan" specially if you see it on a crafts show, and potential customers even dare to bargain with the maker/seller. However if that same thing is displayed on a shopwindow it takes a different flair, doesn't it? One may buy it or not but the perception is completely different.

We all tend to think through the lens of our own taste, experience and budget, we always say " I would not pay that money for that" I would suggest once you make a piece ( a box for instance) try to take distance from it as if you've never seen it and think if you would pay what the seller (you) are asking for. If the honest answer is NO, then why should any other person buy it?

were drifting away from the original topic.

Im not talking making videos, manufacturing tools, ofcourse there are people making money doing that.

Im talking the weekend warrior, the guy in his garage, the Dans of the world, the Vaughns, all the turners I see at shows in their booths, these guys trying to make money selling their products.

I can sell my boxes. I can sell them easy enough if I charge 40 dollars. Probably sell a few dozen if I charge 25 dollars. so what. Just because I can sell something that cost me 10 dollars in material, and make 30 dollars on that item, doesnt mean Im making money.

Toni-I took the box inside my house, and showed my wife. I asked her, what would you pay if you wanted this and were at a crafts festival and knew it was hand made by a local craftsperson(no, I dont call myself a craftsman). She said 35-50 dollars tops.(and that is after finish is applied)
She is my target customer, the middle class female american consumer, the woman who loves to go to arts and crafts shows, the woman who likes to spend money.

I dont need to ask myself, Im prejudice. I often see products with large price tags that I understand, but still would not fork over the bucks the craftsperson wants.

I think chuck mentioned, or someone did, a person makes 500 dollar humidors and sells them. If they are spending more than 10 hours on it, thats not impressive. And, if they put them out at a crafts show, I think it would be a total waste of time.
Now, maybe a cigar store in Manhattan,los Angeles or Montreal, that is selling 25 dollar cigars, there might be a buyer in there, but not so much a craftsshow.
People want unique, handmade, but people refuse to let go of their hard earned cash.

I can sell an adirondack chair made out of PT pine for a 100.00 us dollars. When someone asks me for a better species of wood and I tell them 30-50 dollars more a chair, they look at me like Im trying to rob them. (and thats working for 20 dollars an hour for them)

Allen,
I totally get where you are coming from. It is almost impossible to make a real profit from making the things we do. Even if you are just trying to make enough to cover materials and your time. If you are trying to do it as a business, then I thnk Rob K has valid points. Even though crafts people are supposed to run their booths as businesses, most don't really. Making your booth fee and covering materials is what most seem to be after-at least most of those that I have spoken with.

My example is my wife and I. She is a potter and quilter and I'm a woodturner. All extremely labor intensive crafts. We have done a few shows but don't anymore because it is a huge waste of time for us. Pottery is bulky and heavy and fragile. We can, however pack it in the small quilted item she makes. Packing, loading, travel, setup, sitting and schmoozing, repacking, loading, travel, unloading, unpacking-we end up losing our shirts even if we have a good show. You are so right when you say our time is valuable. I still work full time (thankfully) and my wife is retired with a pension (again thankfully) so we don't need to sell things to eat. If I had to rely on my or her work to get by, it would be a very different and difficult story. Production is only 1 aspect of making a living. There is, as Rob has shown, much more to it. Just keeping books, tracking materials and inventory, getting products to the customers-the organizational stuff a lot of us don't think about. It all takes time and our time is worth something. It all has to be factored into the price of our product. Most customers have no idea what it takes to produce a ceramic bowl. Sure they can be fired in batches, but each is fired twice, let alone the throwing, drying, trimming, more drying, glazing. And the customers balk at $20 for a nice 6" bowl. And that is still a loss for us. A wooden bowl? Forget it. Unless you are a crafts person yourself, you don't get what is involved in producing something with your hands. It is not well appreciated or valued by the general public.

Now if it's ART, then that can be a whole different story, but you still have the business side to deal with.

I get you Allen-totally! And agree all the way. That is not to say I take anythng away from the hobbyist who truly does it for the fun and social aspect of it, or to make enough to get a new tool or whatever. To each their own. I turn wood as therapy.

I think this has been a great thread and got a lot of people thinking and talking. Sorry this got so long winded.

Hey Allen, no offense taken here either. Like I said earlier, I don't really disagree with you on this. Building and selling boxes, turning pens or whatever is not going to make you a bundle of cash. They can be fun to make and fun to sell but don't count it to put food on the table.

Allen I get what you talking about and just to be clear I was not directing my post at entirely your comments.

I fully agree its a non starter if one approaches any hobby selling this way expecting to make money.

Vaughn many moons ago mentioned the sociable aspect to being in a booth and chatting with folk at a show. I think thats a part one has to enjoy and see as part of it.

The issue of price you are dead on with. In fact in my view your $40 bucks is high. What we need to keep in mind examining the craft show / flea market side is its an impulse buy. There is only so much that people will pay for an item in impulse that is not something they really need.

But good salesmanship and showmanship will go along way to making a sale.
I have seen people at these shows sitting in their chairs at the back of their booth and giving one the feeling one is bothering them if one happens to want to ask a question. In my mind thats a impulse killer and i move on.

I do think that with all the uncertainty floating around in the world since 2008 that much of the heat has gone out of crazy pricing for a great deal of things.

But i do believe given the way society today writes off specifically men over 50 yet with most of them having a good 30 years or more to go, that starting ones own small business is a very viable opportunity for people prepared to learn and put in the effort. Doing woodworking is only one example of what could be done for a living.

I do not buy into this concept governments are coming up with for "retraining" sounds like a Mao re education center to me.
I would argue there is a mental health side to the aspect of all this that is not considered and i urge people to look at the security self employment offers. Sure it aint for everyone. But i would sooner work 80 or more hours a week than live in constant fear of being laid off.
Where i personally think we are going very very wrong in the business world today is in the area of social responsibility. We should be looking to use the experience a man has had after a lifetime of work to educate the next generation about things that are not in the books or built into technology. In my formative years that was prescribed requirement for anyone in management and i was a beneficiary of passed down knowledge and mentoring i will never ever forget. Sorry did not mean to hijack your thread.



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TLDnR; Try raising your prices to make it worth your while you may be pleasantly surprised at how well things still sell; pitch it more as a functional art piece not against econo-box. Work on reducing your production time, I'm eyeballing that it may be possible to beat 30m/box at the same quality level with sufficient jigging and layout and batch processing. Worst case you're back where you are today, best case its more feasible than it first appears.

Marketing is complicated, marketing woodworking and art pieces is more so. I'm going to disagree (sort of) with Rob on the price being to high. I believe that Rob (and many of us, myself included although I recognize the bias and try to fight it its easier to do looking at someone elses work than my own) undervalue our products in many of these cases and when we see work similar to what we can do tend to undervalue that as well. Its a subtle form of familiarity breeds contempt (contempt is the wrong word, but the thought process is related).

The problem (as I know you know ) really boils down to either:

1. You aren't charging enough because the quality is indeed worth the time spent in which case the price is to low
2. The product is over engineered/or under productionalized for the currently set price so the time/box needs to be reduced substantially

Ideally you could do both (raise the price and lower the time/box while maintaining quality).

I'm also unconvinced that lowering your prices helps you sell more. Perception of value is not rational. If something is "to cheap" people perceive it as being worth less even if it is better quality/etc.. Charging more (or at least appropriately) often raises the perception of value and can paradoxically make more people want to buy it. It helps to also have to have some basis (concrete or otherwise) to raise the perceived value of something in addition to the price. This is where the differentiation of "type" of product comes in. If you are selling to compete with the walmart "made in XXX box" you loose, they can source labor and components at several orders of magnitude cheaper than you (and frankly with rare exception the quality is not in any way comparable so selling against it is double the fools game). So you are left trying to make a differentiated product that has some other added perception of value. You can spin the "local" and "craft" and "hand made" but what most of those really boil down to is marketing your work as art pieces instead of (strictly) functional pieces (the area of overlap for functional art is I think a place where there is some room for clever folks to make some niche markets that can make some meaningful if not superlative profits in todays market).

I would perhaps suggest setting up an etsy or other "blind" sales account and try selling some boxes at ~$200/each and some at $100/each and some at $50 each and see what actually works. I could well be all wet (wouldn't be the first time ). Another strategy is to have "differentiated value" where you have some very expensive items (a few like 2-3 really nice boxes at ~$200+ each on display, extra shiny, premium woods) and them some not quite as nice but similar boxes that can be made faster/cheaper (splines or box joints instead of dovetailes, fit and finish may be differentiated, etc..) and people will be drawn in to look at the pricy boxes and then be more apt to buy the cheaper box than they would have without it because it now seems "reasonably priced" in comparison (more bait and sell than bait and switch ). I realize that to you (and many of us) its a "simple dovetailed box" but you need to move past that and treat it more like how the general public should perceive it, as a functional work of art that should be cherished and handed down from generation to generation and set the value accordingly.

I believe that under priced sales by hobbyists and "don't have to make a living at it" folks have directly impacted the ability of people actually trying to make a living at woodworking (and I see this in some other crafts as well) because so many set their prices to low (possibly because of perceived or real lower quality, possibly because don't need to, maybe other reasons). This lowers the value floor for everyone and long term is - imho - bad for the livelihood of the craft. I don't mind giving something away because there is a value different than money attached to it (like with Allen helping his family build cabinets, that's for love not money ). I realize that its rational at the individual level to "just cover costs cause I don't need to make money", but in the end its a sad race to the bottom. We need, as a community, to work on changing the perception of value and the expected lifespan of products.

allen levine said:

I never did a bit of market research in my life.

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Until today

allen levine said:

Toni-I took the box inside my house, and showed my wife. I asked her, what would you pay if you wanted this and were at a crafts festival and knew it was hand made by a local craftsperson(no, I dont call myself a craftsman). She said 35-50 dollars tops.(and that is after finish is applied)
She is my target customer, the middle class female american consumer, the woman who loves to go to arts and crafts shows, the woman who likes to spend money.


I think chuck mentioned, or someone did, a person makes 500 dollar humidors and sells them. If they are spending more than 10 hours on it, thats not impressive. And, if they put them out at a crafts show, I think it would be a total waste of time.
Now, maybe a cigar store in Manhattan,los Angeles or Montreal, that is selling 25 dollar cigars, there might be a buyer in there, but not so much a craftsshow.
People want unique, handmade, but people refuse to let go of their hard earned cash.

I can sell an adirondack chair made out of PT pine for a 100.00 us dollars. When someone asks me for a better species of wood and I tell them 30-50 dollars more a chair, they look at me like Im trying to rob them. (and thats working for 20 dollars an hour for them)

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Sorry Allen - just had to point this out. Please forgive me.

I don't comment on a lot here but I think I may have something to add to this discussion. My wife and I did "crafts" for some good while as a way to supplement our income and give us some more time to work together. I had a fairly well equipped shop and we put together a collection of projects both small and large to place into the inventory. We also went to a couple of wholesale shows and found out what was available to us for purchase to resell. We opened crafts booths in craft malls first in Hardey, Arkansas. It's a small sleeply little town in north central Arkansas that has become a tourist trap and a place to shop for "crafts" We had two booths in two different craft malls. Our sales were good some months and not so good in others. All in all though we were making a pretty good profit. We expanded into four more craft malls in Branson Missouri. All four malls were in high traffic areas of Branson and we got a lot of exposure. I'm sure some of our stuff made it to every state in the nation and no tellin where in the world. We also did well with that venture, purchased more tools and equipment and had a good time in Branson too.

We had a lot of traffic in our booth, some with lots of $ and some with only a few dollars to spend to take a small gift to a family member back home. EVERYTHING had to be able to fit in a midsize car trunk or it would not sell. I did have some success with blanket chests to go with the quilts my wife did but mostly the stuff we sold were small items. There has to be a diverse selection in your offerings, some very low priced items, some mid range, some high priced. Something for grandma, grandpa, dad, mom, and the kids. Something for wives, husbands and friends. We had woodwork items of all sorts, string puppets, printed signs, quilts, some glass items, and just about anything we thought would sell. One of the things we did was to save most all the scrap blocks from other projects and figure out a way to repurpose that stock to make something else and did that successfully. I had a pattern for one "hot" item that wasted a bit of 1/4" ply just about the right size to make a small sign. I would stain it spray a bit of sealer on it and sand it lightly, drill a couple of holes in the corners and take them with us on our trips to the malls. My wife would have come up with some "sayings" to put on the sign and would take a sharpie and write that little quip on the piece of wood, tie a pigtail wire and a ribbon on it and we sold 100's of those for $3.00 each. Converting scrap to booth rent makes the rest pay off pretty well.

My advise to you would be to diversify and repurpose what you can.

Rob Keeble said:

Well this topic should be one we add to the CoC for as much as politics and religion get peoples blood boiling this topic gets mine boiling. .................................

Just because a guy gets laid off or retires, has built a hobby shop and kitted it out with machinery and wood does and taught himself to make a joint or two and to finish the wood does not mean he is in business or has a viable product or business strategy......................................................

Go to any SBA office and they will tell you to start with a business plan. ....................................

Ask a small business person how many times they look at their p&l during the course of the year. The typical answer is once when the CPA does the tax return.

Then ask about a budget. What do you mean budget?

My apologies for my rant because that's what it is.



Oh I could go on and on and on but I think you get the point by now...................................................


Its not woodworking that's the problem, its our knowledge and attitude towards what is involved in any business big or small. From one man shop to large plant. The only thing changes is the scale of the activity but the phases and processes do not suddenly evaporate.



And we have not even mentioned things like understanding your competition and defining who your target audience is and on and on...

My apologies if I have offended some of you but this subject comes up now and then ......................................

I rest my case. Have a great day.

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Rant on Rob! I loved it! You stated your case clearly & objectively. Well said!

I happen to agree totally with your position as I also believe that most failures, regardless of endeavor, are due to lack of up-front preparation, as well as ongoing assessments of business realities. Due diligence is difficult, time consuming, in many cases years, and not at all fun to do, but it's absolutely necessary for success.

Jim Hager said:

I don't comment on a lot here but I think I may have something to add to this discussion. My wife and I did "crafts" for some good while as a way to supplement our income and give us some more time to work together. I had a fairly well equipped shop and we put together a collection of projects both small and large to place into the inventory. We also went to a couple of wholesale shows and found out what was available to us for purchase to resell. We opened crafts booths in craft malls first in Hardey, Arkansas. It's a small sleeply little town in north central Arkansas that has become a tourist trap and a place to shop for "crafts" We had two booths in two different craft malls. Our sales were good some months and not so good in others. All in all though we were making a pretty good profit. We expanded into four more craft malls in Branson Missouri. All four malls were in high traffic areas of Branson and we got a lot of exposure. I'm sure some of our stuff made it to every state in the nation and no tellin where in the world. We also did well with that venture, purchased more tools and equipment and had a good time in Branson too.

We had a lot of traffic in our booth, some with lots of $ and some with only a few dollars to spend to take a small gift to a family member back home. EVERYTHING had to be able to fit in a midsize car trunk or it would not sell. I did have some success with blanket chests to go with the quilts my wife did but mostly the stuff we sold were small items. There has to be a diverse selection in your offerings, some very low priced items, some mid range, some high priced. Something for grandma, grandpa, dad, mom, and the kids. Something for wives, husbands and friends. We had woodwork items of all sorts, string puppets, printed signs, quilts, some glass items, and just about anything we thought would sell. One of the things we did was to save most all the scrap blocks from other projects and figure out a way to repurpose that stock to make something else and did that successfully. I had a pattern for one "hot" item that wasted a bit of 1/4" ply just about the right size to make a small sign. I would stain it spray a bit of sealer on it and sand it lightly, drill a couple of holes in the corners and take them with us on our trips to the malls. My wife would have come up with some "sayings" to put on the sign and would take a sharpie and write that little quip on the piece of wood, tie a pigtail wire and a ribbon on it and we sold 100's of those for $3.00 each. Converting scrap to booth rent makes the rest pay off pretty well.

My advise to you would be to diversify and repurpose what you can.

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again, im not talking about buying merchandise and reselling it, which is what I understand what you did along with your homemade crafted items.
thats no different than me running a retail store, other than you adding some homemade stuff.
I can buy wholesale and make money, but that isnt what the purpose of my original post is. I dont see how making homemade items can turn over a profit.
your little signs at 3.00 each, if you figure in time put in to each one, anything more than 3 minutes per unit, I dont see any profit for craftpersons time.

with minimum wage going to go up to near 10.00 an hour within a few years, every hour put into a project has to bring in an additional 30-50 dollars profit or I dont see why its worth it.
shops and machinery have to be maintained, updated, air conditioned, heated, lit, it all cost money.

xxxxx

allen levine said:

again, im not talking about buying merchandise and reselling it, which is what I understand what you did along with your homemade crafted items.
thats no different than me running a retail store, other than you adding some homemade stuff.
I can buy wholesale and make money, but that isnt what the purpose of my original post is. I dont see how making homemade items can turn over a profit.
your little signs at 3.00 each, if you figure in time put in to each one, anything more than 3 minutes per unit, I dont see any profit for craftpersons time.

with minimum wage going to go up to near 10.00 an hour within a few years, every hour put into a project has to bring in an additional 30-50 dollars profit or I dont see why its worth it.
shops and machinery have to be maintained, updated, air conditioned, heated, lit, it all cost money.

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Well I just assumed you were looking for a way to make your boxes work. I'm just telling you how we did it and made a profit. Enough in fact to fill a shop with tools to the point that I opened a successful cabinet shop. Sometimes just one item will not make a great deal of profit while a variety will. Kitchen cabinets make good money and probably always will but if it weren't for the small jobs that come between the big ones I might not be able to keep the doors open. Often times we miss the forest for looking at the trees.

jim how many years did you your misses do this? and how was she able to make anything on quilts those are very time consuming.. my wife quilts and i know the time frames for them..

sorry steve, you are missing my point.

my thread has nothing to do with be happy or content.

Id give up woodworking tonight if one of my kids told me they are thinking about marriage and starting a family, would I be available to help with childcare. In a heartbeat, thats happiness for me.

Im talking about what is my time worth if I want to make money.

whats the old expression, a bad day at fishing is till better then the best day at work?

Im amazed that people will pay a plumber or electrician, or auto mechanic ridiculous fees because of that persons skill, but think their woodworking skills are worth 4 dollars an hour.

thats my real point. I cant seem to find anything I can make that would actually turn over a profit, a profit that I consider worth the effort in todays world.

all this talk about making things and socializing, not caring about money, yeah, whatever, for me, thats just people enjoying the boost it gives their ego.

when the contractor asked me to make him radiator covers a couple of years back, I got an ego boost like Ive never gotten before. Whooooshhhh.........had to pull me off the ceiling, then he told me what hes willing to pay, and that was that. Maybe he wanted me to clean his bathrooms and wash his car also. Seems he liked my work, but didnt respect any of the talent, whatever and how little talent it took to make one, regardless, I will never work for nothing.
It has nothing to do with what it cost for me or you to live, or where we live.

Its obvious from pictures of me, I eat quite well, too well in fact, and Im content with my lifestyle.

I make chairs constantly, for everyone, I make boards for people, I make boxes for people, I make window seat, book cases, this week Im making a component unit to roll under a staircase, I made built ins for someone, and Ive even cut some stuff for a contractor who needed some tapering done on some pieces. (as a favor for all the stuff he does for me free of charge)
Thats my ego boost. Im not the best at what I do, but I do a decent job, passable.

What I cant figure out is how, again, how to make a product in my garage and actually consider my time and how on earth to turn over a profit.


oh, wait, I might have found one item, that vampire box I made, someone might want one, I told them 200 dollars, and they said they will talk to their roomate. I might actually be able to turn over a 40 dollar per hour profit build.

allen you mentioned your contractor that wanted the radiator cover, his hourly rate was something yet he doesnt want to pay you or another like you that rate? the plumber walks in looks at a job and says you owe this much, possibly a electrician as well, but a carpenter walks in and gets nothing till he gets the job. most in my area all do free estimates.. woodworking doesnt have a rate, its a product for said price. like carol mentioned the repair work dave does gets paid a good rate. the mechanic also has the customer over the barrel its this much and they all are doing the same thing..might be a few out there moon lighting but the cars today require to many noew tools and equipment to make the part timer out of luck.. the sales of other items makes the total picture look more inviting.. what do you look for at one of these fairs what sparks your fancy? i went with tom to a high end art fair last year and talked with many exhibitors,, it was very enlightening.. anyone looking to step into this woodworking jig should do it sometime

I understand what your talking about Allen. I can make stuff and sale all day long, but making stuff and making a wage is completely different.

The rocking horse I made last year for a friend's first baby. I made it for her because she's a really nice lady. They'd had a hard time getting pregnant so I thought I'd make her something nice. She said several people asked what I'd charge to make one. I told her no less than 500. As slow as I am that's still probably breaking even when I factor time in the equation. I haven't had any takers, and I'm fine with that. It's a hobby for me and not a business. I like you make stuff for family and friends when I can and don't expect pay. Some do and some don't and again that's fine. I realized a long time ago that what I'd have to charge and what people want to pay is way off. It's the Walmart mentality.

Brent Dowell said:

Now that's some wisdom. Right there. Did you read it?

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Yeah, we need a LIKE button

larry merlau said:

jim how many years did you your misses do this? and how was she able to make anything on quilts those are very time consuming.. my wife quilts and i know the time frames for them..

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Sorry to tap in here Alan but Larry asked. She made some quilts that she pieced the top on but the majority of quilts we sold in the craft malls were those that were cheap enough for most to be able to afford. They were printed quilts, she would purchase the quilt top, add batting and backing and quilted it on her Gammill Quilting machine. Lots of hand pieced tops are available out there for little money too. We crafted about 6 years.

I've been asked several times to make another chess set, if you remember the one I made for my daughters HERE
I know I had well over 250 hours into that set, I know I could most likely cut that in half if I built a second set, as I have worked out a lot of the problems I had making the first set, but even if we got it down to 100 hours at $20 an hour (cheap!) and you add in materials, wear and tear etc I said $5000. That shuts people up pretty quick

You can buy this VERY nice set from the House of Staunton for about $800....

That is a very nice set, made from wood, and some of the pieces are hand carved, I think it is the most that most anyone would need.

I don't think a small operation can compete with a large company like The House of Stauton, or for that matter Ikea. I think that if you have rent, etc to pay in the city, you have to find something that you can build a lot of, very well, at a good price. Guys like Jim Hager do it, but Jim too did something else for a long time while he did the kitchen cabinet thing too.

Allen I think in the right market your boxes are worth a lot more than you are trying to sell them for, but finding and gaining access to that market is not easy. We sell booze, and very rarely do we sell the really good wine, but we have it, but mostly we sell the daily wine (less than $12 a bottle) and the other cheap booze, that is the market where we are. Sometimes we sell more expensive stuff, but if I had to pay the rent on just that I'd be out of business.

I guess you have to either do it as a hobby and accept a low wage, or go full scale and deal with running a larger business. The economy of scale really counts here.

Read Carol's post again she was there and did that, it's not easy.

Cheers!

@John. I got forced out of the rocking horse business by a harsh reality. I had designed two rocking horses that were highly stylized and very, very different from what is usually available. Indulgent grandparents were buying them at $750-$1000 a pop 20 years ago. Then my business mentor asked me if I had liability insurance. Well, no. He pointed out that if a child were hurt, I'd be sued out of existence. People are mindless when it comes to their children. I looked into it. At my scale of production, that insurance would have driven those horses to over double what I was selling them for. I destroyed all my templates and never made another. Harsh reality. Don't overlook it. If you, like most people, worked hard to assemble your shop, do you really want to risk it and everything else you own or may own? This is not the place to discuss the merits of giving things away as opposed to selling them, or whether your homeowner's insurance covers you. It doesn't. Talk to your agent. To a lawyer, if you own something, you are fair game to them. Even if you win the lawsuit, the cost of defending yourself will ruin you.

BTW, I would not have been able to stay in business for as long as I did without my business mentor. He was a very generous man who developed shopping malls. He was smart, busy savvy, marketing savvy, and very, very good to me with his time and advise. Never charged me a dime. Wouldn't even ever let me buy lunch. He said he was just passing on what had once been given to him. Rob remarked on this passing on information in a previous post. This man came from a lower middle class family and worked his butt off to get where he was. When I knew him, he was quite wealthy. And before you ask, I met him at church.

That harsh reality is also why I declined to do seating. The liability rates for toys and seating are number one and number two on the list of high liability insurance premiums.