I've recently completed my first full HO scale kit, Kowalski & Smith Welding. It is based on a Z-scale scratch build that I did a while back which was based roughly on bits and pieces of real buildings. The HO version is the smaller, "original" part of the building gussied up 
a bit for a larger scale. I added a shed to one side, some awnings over the doors, and, being a good Southern boy, a big old 2, 10, 4 sign on one wall.
The design, I like to think, is appealing. The building fits on a roughly 4" x 6" rectangle of real estate. The siding is Northeastern's aged clapboard. I've included metal roofing: both standing seam and corrugated metal. You get: Tichy windows and doors; laser cut glazing for the windows; laser cut tar-paper for the shed; Masonite bases and jigs; strip wood galore; bracing galore; Bollinger Edgerly Scale Trains castings of pigeons, vent, oxygen tanks, acetylene tanks, an oil tank, and a welding cart; paper signs; plywood bracing; and material to make window shades. In short, everything you need to make the kit minus the tools, glue, paint, scenery, and time.
But that's not really what I'm selling. To tell you what I’m selling, I have to go back to when I was in my twenties working as a carpenter’s helper for AHIP, a local community housing program. I was making minimum wage. My wife, Tami, was just starting out as a secretary with a big construction company. Dollars were tight and hobby money was especially tight. Tami and I were visiting her folks in Dallas and she was indulging my desire to hit every model railroad shop in the metropolitan area. After careful consideration, I bought a craftsman kit of an old frame house. Now, this was pre laser cut kits and I knew that I was basically buying a box of wood and sticks with some templates, but I was curious. I winced, then plunked down fifty dollars for the kit and thanked my lovely, supportive wife.
When I got home to Virginia and pulled the kit out to build, it was pretty much what I expected. Die cut wood walls, strip-wood, and templates. But I quickly discovered a problem. The house was designed to have a wrap-around porch. This was a feature that gave it character and drew me to the little kit. The template for the wrap around porch was an L shape with a score line drawing off the forty-five degree angle from the outside corner to the inside corner. Now this is all well and good if you are building a flat roof. However, if you intend to angle the roof even just a little, that forty-five degree angle quickly turns the ninety degree inside angle into something a little sharper.
You might imagine that I uttered some unkind remarks in the privacy of my workshop upon making this discovery. Of course it was easy enough to fix but it galled me that I had to fix that problem. It was clear to me that I’d paid fifty dollars for a kit that the manufacturer had never put together himself.
So how does this story relate to what I’m selling? I’m not selling a box of materials. I’m selling the design; the engineering; the skull sweat; the fact that I’ve built all my kits over and over and stopped to fix the problems; worked out elegant solutions to make the kits easy for you to build. I’m selling the clearly written and clearly illustrated directions. In short, I’m selling a porch roof that fits.
