Lee, I'd love to start my own drum gaff, run it as a .com company for the first couple years to save on overheads then build it up as a "shop" shop, but I simply don't have the capital for it It takes a large investment to get it going, and the drum market isn't the most profitable market to be honest. It's only the big names that make lots of money from it. The mark up on stuff is generally rubbish, so it's only when you are buying on 30-40 kits per order or 500-1000/2000/3/4/5000 cymbals at a time to you start making any real money.

For example somone orders a kit from me - I buy it in at say £499 + VAT. RRP is suggested at £699 inc VAT, but the more established drum shops are doing them at discount cos they bought multiple kits in (cos they have the capital) so they do em at say 25% which is £524. So we have to match to be competetive, but we don't get the trade discount.

So the big shops pay £499 less 30% (mutiple kit deal discount) = £349+VAT, and sell at £524 = £175 profit. I still pay £499+VAT and sell for the same £524 so only make £25 profit.... Thats a big difference!!!

Some of the guitars we sell, we actually sell for LESS than we paid for them!!! In fact 99% of all Fender and Gibson guitars we make a loss on when we sell them. The idea behind it is that the more QUANTITY we shift the higher up the dealer chain we go and become eligable for discounts etc. Then we generate more orders due to company recognition in the market place, we get more customers and more orders, so we buy more guitars (and get discount, coupled with the higher dealer ranking discounts) so e start to make money back on stuff....

It's no easy thing setting all this up and working out how you make money when we are selling stuff for less than we paid for it in the first place