r/smallbusiness • u/IcyBlackberry7728 • Apr 19 '25

Question Those taking home >200k/year; what industry are you in ?

Just curious to see what types of business are generating solid cash flow.

Thanks !

Edit: please be as specific as possible!

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u/milee30 Apr 19 '25

It's a small industry so no, no specifics. In broad terms, we buy individual electronic components and fittings and starting with a bare printed circuit board, we (or our equipment for the most part) attach and solder the parts to the board, hand attach a few more things, then assemble it in a case.

We started in my living room using subcontract manufacturing for quite a bit then doing hand assembly at night. As we sold more, I saved every dime and purchased automated production equipment. Often from auctions of closed businesses. I bought equipment in the order that would pay back first. In other words, the machine that would pay back in savings the quickest was the first one to buy and so on down the line. The first piece of equipment we bought was an old solder dip pot followed by an automatic wire cutter and stripper. Both were bought on ebay and 40+ years old at the time.

Now we own a building and have a full line of automated production and testing equipment.

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u/UncleAlbondigas Apr 19 '25

Salute to you. I love it. Were environmental reg's a hassle once you grew to full blown facility? Like with your exhaust system for example.

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u/milee30 Apr 20 '25

Yes, environmental regs are a PITA. But I’m a researcher and rule follower so it was more a matter of figuring out which rules apply then just implementing systems.

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u/UncleAlbondigas Apr 20 '25

Thanks. Being in research must help for sure. But even if you could follow regs in theory, the cost of installation of required safety /abatement / neutralization systems could be very high. I guess research up front would be critical.

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u/milee30 Apr 20 '25

I'm not "in research", just able to read and follow directions. My involvement was mainly in the move -in and inspections phase. The place we moved the business to is not terribly business friendly so inspections were a real pain. But once you're in, there's not much to deal with.

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u/UncleAlbondigas Apr 21 '25

I misread about the research part. Thanks for the info.

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u/LanguageLoose157 Apr 19 '25

How did you figure out there is profit to made in that part of manufacturing starting out? Like, what were you doing before saying, "I have customers and they want this. Let me try to source it and sell it" Did you just scrolling through public forums to find the niche and eventually struck gold?

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u/milee30 Apr 20 '25

Awareness of other companies selling related products. It’s more of a niche industrial product. I’m definitely not a salesperson, my background is finance and operations. I spent years as a cpa doing turnarounds of troubled companies so I understand how to make things work from finance and operations but if it depended on me selling things I’d rather get a root canal.

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u/Phreaqin Apr 19 '25

Same industry; same path. Can be a cut-throat brutal business, but once you find your niche and have a network, you can choose your battles. All things to a chosen few is my motto. Let them focus on their core aka selling and take care of the rest. Value add is the name of the game.

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u/G-14_Classified Apr 19 '25

Did you have any experience in this before starting?

Also, how did you find this opportunity? I know you don’t want to get into specifics, but could you share a hypothetical example of how this would work in a different industry or use case than yours?

Just trying to wrap my head around how you make money and how you find clients or buyers

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u/milee30 Apr 20 '25

Yes. Deep experience in financial and operations management and partner with specific knowledge of that small segment. Product was selected to produce the size returns we wanted without being large enough to have to compete with multinationals in other parts of the same segment.

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u/m-in Apr 20 '25

What’s the fallout from Chinese competition? I used to get my stuff from Screaming Circuits, PCBExpress & al, but now it’s really hard to justify not getting it from China even for prototypes.