One thing I find interesting in our industry is the hourly labor rate.
Today ... 2014 ... Auto Dealerships, Copier Repairmen & most Technical Trades with repair technicians commonly charge customers a little over $100 per hour for a pretty common service. It has always seemed odd to me that ultra talented shops building trick race cars, customized show cars or some combination in between charge less per hour.
I'm not suggesting shops raise their prices to $110 an hour, as you may price yourself out of the market. But it does seem odd that common repairs of production cars, copiers, etc, are billed at $100+ while work performed by rare talented craftsmen is billed at a lower rate. It makes the business of building race/custom cars more challenging to be profitable at & harder to keep employees long term.
I owned a race car chassis building shop & starved for a couple years until a mentor taught me the "business of business" ... and I made my shop profitable & smooth running. But it is no small task. I am sure there are ProTouring shops that do a great job at both ... making money & keeping employees. But it is very challenging in any business ... and even harder if the market pays less for higher grade work.
