Always wanted to start with this.....

Not for me, asking for a friend!

I know someone, retired, who has recently gotten a bug to get into industrial engraving, having had work done for various boats and equipment over the years. He and I have been discussing the topic and have come to a few conclusions so far.

1) Pricing is low, or at least it is low when you go looking for it online.
2) Service levels are expected to be quite high, 1-2 day turn around (plus shipping) seems normal. Not sure if that is again a bias based on what is advertised versus a silent majority.
3) Rotary Machines are the way to go. Trotec's maybe, but certainly versus a chinese laser (like I have for cutting acrylic mostly).

There is an old thread here with another member who was getting into industrial tags, and the dollars she mentioned didn't seem too exciting compared to what a full time business with overhead, etc....ie what I run normally, would need. It might be OK for part time work from home but even then, not sure. I know in our business, any job has a minimum time it takes to cut, finish, invoice and possibly ship the finished part, but some of the sites online (small outfits) have a $2 approx and 1 tag minimum and $4 shipping.

Now, if that's just because the orders are normally larger and they get so few small orders, I get that, but if you need to run 100 different tags at $3 each....that seems (to me, again, not in the business) like it might take a while and that's still only $300 in revenue......and much worse if those 100 tags start getting split between multiple customers / materials / colors / sizes / or job sites.

So, before it's too late, am I missing something? Is industrial engraving a niche that might be worthwhile on it's own (not as an incremental add on) as a business or is it closer to just "self-employed" earnings? I know the margins on revenue versus materials are great, but I still can't see it without pricing the operator labor dirt cheap or unless volume and average sale is a lot higher than I would think.