Shopsmith Forums

Ed in Tampa wrote:Okay let me ask it another way. Since it is my guess there are far more Shopsmiths out there than there are Ridgid TS3650 tablesaws which are only sold by Home Depot I would think most accessory tool manufactures are missing the boat when they include Ridgid TS3650 exclusive products in their product line and not Shopsmiths. Is that a reasonable assumption on my part or not?

Maybe! Us SS folks tend to be almost as narrow-minded as SS was when it comes to third party gizmos. We tend to be 'faithful' to the SS brand. Perhaps those 'third party' folks perceive this as a reason NOT to market to us SS folks.

Unless there are patent issues I do NOT understand how SS could 'prevent' any third party from manufacturing and marketing any thing for use with a SS.

All that said, there HAS been discussion on this forum about third party 'accessories' that do work on or are made for the SS. Therefore it must be POSSIBLE to 'offer a SS version' of any product.

JPG40504 wrote:Unless there are patent issues I do NOT understand how SS could 'prevent' any third party from manufacturing and marketing any thing for use with a SS.

All that said, there HAS been discussion on this forum about third party 'accessories' that do work on or are made for the SS. Therefore it must be POSSIBLE to 'offer a SS version' of any product.

Shopsmith is a trademarked company name, we use it like it is the name of the machine. Kleenex, Xerox, Intel386/Intel486 and Refrigerator all lost their trademarks because the names became generic.

How would a third party describe Shopsmith Accessories without using the Shopsmith trademark incorrectly and getting into legal hassle. I heard in the past Shopsmith contacted third party accessory makers and raised this issue (I don't know if it is true).

As for offering them, of course it is possible but promoting them without Shopsmith help/permission may be difficult. Even Kreg needed Shopsmiths help with the Specs for the bandsaw accessories.

Here is a thought as to a count of active shopsmith users and if they are active then they might be in the market for goods related to shopsmith. From that we can come up with a guess of how many shopsmiths might exist that a sale might be coming from.

These are the 4 active groups that I know of with membership counts.

1800 yahoo 10er group
2266 ssug.org
5025 yahoo ssusers
4270 this forum
-----
13361 total.

Now some belong to more then one so let's off the top of our head say that number is 25% of the total. This user base would have people that have either sold there shopsmith, died, lost one to flood or fire,or ? and for grins let's say that is 10%. From this we then remove 35% of the total, or 4676 leaving 8685 or so owners.

Now I know that there are members of other woodworking forums who are not members of any of the 4 above. I know that not all users are into internet and thus are not in this count. I know that some people are only simi-active but should be counted for this purpose. So I'll reach into the hat and pull out the number of 1000. We can add that back in and have a total of 9685 owners.

Now we need to come up with the number of shopsmiths per owner. I know some people who have more then one but let's be a bit generous and say if we say the average is 1.1. Then total shopsmiths is about 10,653.

So as a marketing group that is about what we are.

This might sound strange but I took several marketing classes and they use this fuzzy math all the time. The people who are good at marketing get these number to come out close... and hey for a guess this might not be far off.

If we had the numbers for all the unused machines or almost unused machines that number could well be more like 300,000 given the numbers we have been lead to believe about production.

So I say it is 10,653. You can do your fuzzy math and post your number.

Ed

paulmcohen wrote:Shopsmith is a trademarked company name, we use it like it is the name of the machine. Kleenex, Xerox, Intel386/Intel486 and Refrigerator all lost their trademarks because the names became generic.

How would a third party describe Shopsmith Accessories without using the Shopsmith trademark incorrectly and getting into legal hassle. I heard in the past Shopsmith contacted third party accessory makers and raised this issue (I don't know if it is true).

As for offering them, of course it is possible but promoting them without Shopsmith help/permission may be difficult. Even Kreg needed Shopsmiths help with the Specs for the bandsaw accessories.

Making a product for use WITH a SS model xx and Identifying it AS a SS are two different things. Yes SS is a trademark and others may not use the term to describe a like/similar ITEM. An accessory/attachment NOT produced by SS but made/designed to be used on a SS is(IMHO) not infringing on the 'trademark'. Even if SS does make a similar/identical item, there is NOTHING wrong with stating an accessory is intended to be used with/on a SS. You are not infringing[IMHO] on the trademark NOR making it 'generic' s long as you are NOT referring to it AS a SS. The 'trademarks' referred to above became 'generic' because others manufactured the SAME THING.

Use of OR displaying the ss TRADEMARK is another thing. NO one else has the right to do so without the permission of SS. I can understand SS not wanting to be connected to third partys through THEIR trademark.

Liability issues with display/use of ss equipment by third partys is another animal. After all ss has NO CONTROL of what the third partys display etc.

reible wrote:Here is a thought as to a count of active shopsmith users and if they are active then they might be in the market for goods related to shopsmith. From that we can come up with a guess of how many shopsmiths might exist that a sale might be coming from.

These are the 4 active groups that I know of with membership counts.

1800 yahoo 10er group
2266 ssug.org
5025 yahoo ssusers
4270 this forum
-----
13361 total.

Now some belong to more then one so let's off the top of our head say that number is 25% of the total. This user base would have people that have either sold there shopsmith, died, lost one to flood or fire,or ? and for grins let's say that is 10%. From this we then remove 35% of the total, or 4676 leaving 8685 or so owners.

Now I know that there are members of other woodworking forums who are not members of any of the 4 above. I know that not all users are into internet and thus are not in this count. I know that some people are only simi-active but should be counted for this purpose. So I'll reach into the hat and pull out the number of 1000. We can add that back in and have a total of 9685 owners.

Now we need to come up with the number of shopsmiths per owner. I know some people who have more then one but let's be a bit generous and say if we say the average is 1.1. Then total shopsmiths is about 10,653.

So as a marketing group that is about what we are.

This might sound strange but I took several marketing classes and they use this fuzzy math all the time. The people who are good at marketing get these number to come out close... and hey for a guess this might not be far off.

If we had the numbers for all the unused machines or almost unused machines that number could well be more like 300,000 given the numbers we have been lead to believe about production.

So I say it is 10,653. You can do your fuzzy math and post your number.

Ed

There are POLL results here on the forum that give you an authentic ratio of owners/machines and 5xx/10e.

These are not statistically accurate because the size of the universe is only about 100 but maybe better than a WAG.

reible wrote:. . .

So I say it is 10,653. You can do your fuzzy math and post your number.

Ed

Fuzzy math! Looks like SWAG method to me. Since nothing can be 'proven' it really doesn't matter. Such 'educated guessing' is really the only thing possible with something like this which cannot actually be measured/verified. Like ED said, the good guys come close.

JPG40504 wrote:Fuzzy math! Looks like SWAG method to me. Since nothing can be 'proven' it really doesn't matter. Such 'educated guessing' is really the only thing possible with something like this which cannot actually be measured/verified. Like ED said, the good guys come close.

How Fuzzy? Well, I am a member of three of the listed forums so I have been counted three times to get to that 10,653 number. I think many of us are the same.

Like has been said, this is an impossible statistic to arrive at without some help from Shopsmith.

dusty wrote:How Fuzzy? Well, I am a member of three of the listed forums so I have been counted three times to get to that 10,653 number. I think many of us are the same.

Like has been said, this is an impossible statistic to arrive at without some help from Shopsmith.

A number that might not be quite so fuzzy is XXXXXX. This is the number reported to have been built from 1954 to the end of 1987 (I think).

Reason for my confusion - what is the number that we read in these charts. Examples: the 222390 reported in November 1987 - is that the first unit built or the last. I interpret the chart as the last.

Then there is the first number recorded in the chart, April 1954 (263051). Am I to conclude that there were 263 thousand units built that year. I doubt that number. What is the serial number of machine #1 and what is the serial number of the first 510? Then there is that month when the chart indicates that 4040 units were built in one month.

Still fuzzy! If you start doing some cross comparison between the two "official" serial number charts contained on the shopsmith.com web site they get even fuzzier. The two charts disagree or should I say don't appear to agree.

https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewtopic.php?t=1061&highlight=vertical+mode

I don't know. I did a spreadsheet that shows something entirely different. I don't think we are suppose to know and these charts do a good job of making the data fuzzy. I withdraw all my estimates.

dusty wrote:. . . Then there is that month when the chart indicates that 4040 units were built in one month.

Still fuzzy! If you start doing some cross comparison between the two "official" serial number charts contained on the shopsmith.com web site they get even fuzzier. The two charts disagree or should I say don't appear to agree.

https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewtopic.php?t=1061&highlight=vertical+mode

Yeah 1981 WAS a good year(especially the 'spring'). I do not see where the two 'charts' are contradictory(fuzzy). The ss'# chart indicates sn at Beginning of year. These same sn are on the other chart under Jan for each year. Does get a little strange in 1986 due to startup of 510 production. Me thinks the sn in chart broken out by month are "starting sn's".