Business partner wanted

IIRC We made our own at EW Mold & Tool.

BTW, There are lots of expired patents on molds & mold components ..
a prolonged patent search could be very profitable for some mold shops.
These days such can be done on the Web (at least in the US for
the US patent office).

 

Defining what it is specifically that will give you an edge in today's
market, and then deciding if you will want to do that job is a big step
to deciding what piece of the American Dream you will attempt to grab.
I look at today's magazines, which are advertising through and through,
and I see articles about people who specialize in one way or another.

Some people are expert at design, some at machining and some at
building things. Finding a niche that allows you to become very good
at something that gives you an edge is likely going to let you
specialize, and maybe let you achieve more control of the American
Dream.

I have a brilliant engineer friend I went to school with who has a
complete machine shop on his own land & buildings, and can do damn near
anything mechanical in machinery and do it very well (better than me in
machinery), but he never developed and nurtured a specialty, nor did he
develop his own proprietary product line or become a major supplier to
various other firms.

My friend is now 60, and I think he has finally realized he can't crank
handwheels forever, and his income stops when his hands give out, as he
has no one else to work with. Though he is brilliant in solving
problems with machinery and design, he was never able to become a
person who managed and tought others in a specialty, where he would be
in high demand, and could then have a chance of an ongoing business
based on his intellectual property rather than his back.

The whole history of man since the end of the last ice age has been a
progression from a person & family that "did it all" to the current era
of more & more specialized work is the norm for a given person. It is
just that specialization that has allowed the rise in the standard of
living, as these individuals are very efficient in doing what they do
much faster than a "generalist" would, using lower technology
solutions.

Just my 4 cents worth for the decades I've been at it.

Yogi Bera always said "When you come to the fork in the road...take
it.", and such is life.

Bo