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Alright dakka, I've got a situation that's popped up, and I want your thoughts on it.

A member of my family worked at a deer processing plant (plant makes it sound big, it's really quite small, maybe 6 or 7 employees) some time ago. Being good friends with the manager, she would work there during deer season and net some extra cash on the side while her husband was off work (or sometimes working). So this went on for a couple years. Recently she got a chance to see how much money the owner (her good friend) was making. Well, now she wants to make her own deer processing center in the same small town, and she thinks she can make a profit.

My thoughts - Wow what a b!tch. Friend making some nice money with a business he's ran for a while, and because he's making money she wants to make an identical business and cut into his profits, perhaps by under selling him or something. Sorry, but you don't do that to a friend.

As long as she is ok with torpedoing the friendship I don't see an issue.

I also wonder if she knows/understands all the costs he is incurring as well as how much she would need to start up.

Also he presumably has an established client base.

How much better is she able to process the deer? If any.

Why doesn't she just help to expand her friends business?

Ahtman wrote:As long as she is ok with torpedoing the friendship I don't see an issue.

I also wonder if she knows/understands all the costs he is incurring as well as how much she would need to start up.

She's never ran a business, so I doubt she's got the know how to do it. She's got a lot of her husbands backing though, so the money is there. I hope it fails, she's a wretched person for more reasons than the original one listed.


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Medium of Death wrote:How much better is she able to process the deer? If any.

I'd say not much better. She isn't a hunter, and her friend has been doing it for years.

Medium of Death wrote:Why doesn't she just help to expand her friends business?

Greed I imagine. Her line of thinking appears to be "he's making a lot of money, I want some of that so I'll do it too".

The thing is, it's a deer processing center in arkansas. I believe I heard he was making 50k before deductions. The concept of a place like that making 50k after deductions seems a tad crazy to believe. I went there myself and put a few hours in to learn a thing or two, and the place was busy but it's not like they had a truck full of corpses to process every day.

It's not a very nice thing to do to a friend, but it's also probably a stupid business move.

There's already a deer processing plant in town, and it's likely got close established ties with suppliers and clients. Unless she believes there's some part of the process she can do in an absolutely superior way, then all she can do is start a price war (paying more for supplies, and selling the end product for less), and that means making very little money until something breaks. And most times, what breaks is the finances of the new competitor.

Is this processing place open year round as a smoked meat and cheese place? That's pretty much how most of the established brick and mortar places in Montana are set up. She would've better off trying to buy equity in a partnership because of start up costs, experience, established cutover base etc. All that aside 50k for a relatively short season is quick money but its not big money and it may not be representative of the whole picture.

My experience with this mind of thing goes like this.
My dad absolutely loves to garden, our house in town had very little grass in the backyard, just around the house itself and nearly an acre of dirt and an extensive greenhouse.
So my dad gets two ideas at once, he thinks, "I love to till gardens, I'll start a garden tilling business. And beside it he also thought to him self,"I love to grow lettuce and tomatoes (I have always suspected my dad grew pot and tomatoes were a front) I'll increase my production and go to the farmers market."
To put it in perspective my dad worked a union job that paid the bills but sure as gak didn't make us rich, and half if not more of our diet came out of the backyard or the woods...so vegetables at market was food off the table.
Both businesses together probably made my Dad a quarter of what he could have made working less hours of overtime at work. Looking back now (it's been about 20 years) he didn't do it to make money, he loved it. He loved the people he met, talking about the earth, and building relationships. If he had made buckets of money he still would have loved it.
Businesses like that require a certain kind of person, who loves what they do. She should find that dream, not take someone elses.

How close would the two business be? If its right on top of each other then thats an issue. Isn't deer processing like word of mouth though? Friends recommending friends to someone who can process the deer? To me trust and reliability going to factor into the decision on who I take my deer to.

This isn't really a business question, per se, but an ethical one. And yes, it's unethical to do so if they are friends, unless she has her own much different method.

Perhaps they can work it out, though, and have her run an expansion of the business under his wing. On the other hand, it might behoove him to just wait her out and wait until she goes broke. Depends on how much of a better person he is than she.

Businesswise, she'd be better off investing in the friend's plant for a share of the take. She'd also keep the friend.

Either she's stupid or a... female dog. Or most likely both.

All is fair in love, war and business.