I'm considering getting in the business of commercial radios and potentially ham radios too. I'd love to get some insight on this, as to how much money should I have, and where to begin. Feel free to advise me of a good location. I'm thinking of Texas.
Thanks,
Asad
Well your about 20 or 30 years too late. Back then you could make a good living running a radio service shop. You could sell radios and make a living at it. Almost didn't matter what the brand was. Since then it has been a down hill slide. Many of the radio shops I use to know have either closed up or changed their line of work.
Want to know what has happened? Well blame a bunch of the changes on the cell phone. It all really started back around the late 90's. Cell phones started to become the big thing. You could carry a telephone in your pocket and make a call from just about anyplace around a city. The demand for the business two way radio started to fall off. Why go out and pay for a radio for say $1200 when your cell phone will work just about anyplace. Your radio only works when your close enough to hear another radio.
Then you figure you don't have to pay the high rent of having the base station on a high tower each month. Your cell phone can be had for say $60 a month. You don't have to pay a repair bill on the order of $100 an hour to repair your radio plus parts. If your cell phone breaks, you go get a new one for less. Plus it will probably be a brand new one, not just a repaired two way radio that might break again next week. Instead of only being able to use the radio over say a 20 mile range, the cell phone will work just about any place in the county except way out in the boonies.
Many of the people who I use to know that ran the radio shops are now making more money renting PA systems for events or putting in surveillance TV systems to watch stores and warehouses. Maybe even getting into the installation of network cabling for computer connections. The hay days of the radio service work are long gone. Unless your a huge radio service company, your not going to make much of a living at it anymore.
I use to run my own part time radio service shop. Made good money doing it. It brought in more than my full time job that I got paid well at. But for the most part, those days are gone.
You asked about ham radio sales. Again, there isn't that much sales where you can compete against some of the larger names like Ham Radio Outlet and a few others. They will sell to just about anyone and do it over the phone and internet. The way they make it work is volume.
I work close with public safety agencies and travel frequently around the country. These agencies are finding it hard to get good service these days. The service shops are bringing in the younger kids and not paying them much. The kids get little or no training and the shops expect them to do a good job. The company I work for has hired some new blood and is expecting the new kids to learn by being taken under my wing or one of the other older people.
There is just some things that they can only learn by being out in the field and doing it them selves. Even with me being there, I can't get that new kid to get the feel of just how tight to turn the screwdriver without him doing it. I have the hardest time trying to get these kids to learn that your drill will last longer and cut into the metal better if you don't run the speed of the drill up to max. By the time you see the smoke coming off the drill bit, they have just destroyed that bit. Trying to trouble shoot a problem is a skill that these new kids just have to learn on their own. You try to show them it is faster to split the problem in the middle. Then decide do you look to the left or to the right of the split point you picked.
I may have strayed off your main question, but you need to know how the stability of the radio sales and service got to where it is today. Your going to do as you please, but at least I have tried to paint a clear picture for you of what you can expect.
