By custom I mean a unique design that say the head pastor may have thought up. It is often accompanied by a sketch of what is wanted, sometimes someone in the church has even produced engineering style drawings, or even full computer aided design 3D model of the desired acrylic lectern.
There are several issues with custom designs:
1. They are often expensive. Making things over and over enables savings in two main areas. Firstly, tooling like a mould may be produced. This is a large up front cost, but makes each part relatively cheap in comparison. Secondly making many parts is a lot cheaper than making one offs. For example in most cases a set up cost is required. If the run is only 1 part, this will make the acrylic lectern expensive. If the set up is for 2000 parts, the set up cost is divided amongst many.
2. They look great on a drawing or in the mind of the person who thinks it up, but in reality the may not look so good. When doing a design or computer model it is easy to imagine glued joints and welded joints as perfect. In reality such joins do not look this way. These details can sometimes spoil the desired result.
3. They are often heavy because they have not been optimised. This is when several prototypes are made in succession that gradually improve the product. For example testing different thicknesses of steel tube to see which thickness gives the best result for the least weight. When making a custom acrylic lectern, this is not possible because making several lecterns to get one would be expensive. When the final result is only one lectern, the final costs a lot of money. When the result is 1000 lecterns however, it is well worthwhile making several prototypes. This is because the 'development cost' can be divided over a production run of a thousand.
4. The acrylic lectern could require a lot of labour intensive finishing (for example, complex wood veneering, welds that need grinding).
5. Because it is a one off, mistakes may be made that need to be corrected. This would compromise the final finish of the acrylic lectern.
6. They are difficult to ship because the pastor designing it probably didn't think of disassembly.
For these reasons it is worth considering an existing proven podium, rather than an unproved idea. All in all you tend to get more bang for your dollar by purchasing something already available. Click here to see our Arc range.
