WORKSHOP

My father had a saying that I first heard over 30 years ago: “The time you spend doing one thing, you can’t spend doing something else.” At the time I remember thinking, “Well… duh.” Fifteen years later, after being a full-time taxidermist for seven or eight years, the wisdom of those words hit home. Now, after 22 years of full-time taxidermy work, its simple meaning is quite profound.

Taxidermy is quite simply a manufacturing business. Forget about the artistic nature of the business, forget about the fact that we sometimes test our abilities at state or national shows. We begin with basic products—some natural, some man-made—then we add our labor and end up with a finished product. The quality of that product varies greatly from taxidermist to taxidermist, as does the price, but it is manufacturing, pure and simple. The end product is a mix of materials, labor and expertise.

The unique aspect of taxidermy is the demand for the product. Many businesses have slow periods where production comes close to or exceeds the demand, however, that is rare in this trade. Most of the full-time taxidermists I know are pedal-to-the metal-six-days-a-week busy. The daily grind of the day-to-day business becomes a race with time. If you spend more time than is necessary for one step of the procedure, the minutes or hours wasted are time that could be spent on the next customer’s piece, and so on. I do not advocate that we rush through our work in an effort to beat the clock and thereby shortchange the quality our customers expect. What I do suggest is that we analyze our methods, refine our techniques, and implement simple changes to improve productivity and lower operating costs.

...Continued in the Fall 2004 Issue of Breakthrough.

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