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I've been Asked to be a Contractor

I

ikarasu

Active Member
foreverking said:
I'm going to set up in my formal living room. Nothing in there right now but some book shelves and one chair. I'm going to just be cutting vinyl in there and set up a small table for weeding and taping. At this point, I wouldn't need to consider a larger place.
I guess I'm going to need to figure out if I am a business owner. It's nothing I've ever tried besides doing freelance artwork for some people.
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Slippery slope.. I started with a graphtec in my basemeent, now I have 2 wide format printer, laser cutter, and a graphtec... Once you see how much money you can make, its worth it!

I'd say go for it. Personally... I'd tell them if they let you have the plotter / everything else for XX dollars, you'll give them a discounted rate that they can put towards your payment to pay it off. So you may not make any money for a few weeks / months / whatever... but you're also not dropping a big chunk of change on a cutter after just getting laid off... especially when your only client is said client that laid you off - For all you know they could just be trying to offload their equipment, then they never send you an order.... or they know theyll only need 1 order a month now, so they dont want to keep the equipment around.


BUT the good thing about having it in your living room is you can have a normal job - Do their work after hours / on your own time, think of it like a side hustle until you decide you want to do it fulltime.
 
I

ikarasu

Active Member
2B said:
you will have to figure out your overhead (Insurance, tools, equipment, licenses) and then what you want to handle Simple to Complex
You also have to figure out how cutthroat you want to be

here is a good example of a recent install that was lost over $
* 138 s.f. of 1st surface perforated window vinyl.
* install must be done during business hours, the manager must inspect/sign off on the quality of work before payment is made
* standard window prep, there is no removal.
The winning bid was $1.95 SQFT
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Those are the people that price you out of a job. print time, finishing time, travel time, cleaning time, application time, aproval time... you're probably looking at a full days worth of work, for $280.


Theres a lot of people around here who will do it at that price... just to get their foot in the door with big companies and get to know the purchasers. Which is dumb, because almost everything goes out to tender... luckly most of the people we work with would see the $2 a SQFT price, know it'll be cheap or shoddy materials, and not go with that bid even if the next was at $10 a sqft...
 
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Reactions: 2B
2B

2B

Active Member
ikarasu said:
Those are the people that price you out of a job. print time, finishing time, travel time, cleaning time, application time, aproval time... you're probably looking at a full days worth of work, for $280.


Theres a lot of people around here who will do it at that price... just to get their foot in the door with big companies and get to know the purchasers. Which is dumb, because almost everything goes out to tender... luckly most of the people we work with would see the $2 a SQFT price, know it'll be cheap or shoddy materials, and not go with that bid even if the next was at $10 a sqft...
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That is the sad part of this, they are cutting their nose off and when they (the installer) say "pay me more" after doing X number of jobs and building the "relationship" the GC will fire them and get the next lowball to do the work becuase it worked for the GC already, and will work again
 
P

PW66

New Member
foreverking said:
I've been asked to work up a price list of what I would charge for installs per hour, vinyl charges, paper patterns, etc.. This is where I'm lost, I've never priced things. I've always just told what our costs would be per square foot, but have no idea what it should cost as a contractor.
Is there any guides or formulas to figure out what average costs should be in this current sign climate?
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Will your former colleagues not give you some idea as to how much you can charge?
 
N

netsol

Active Member
i think of the chamber lobbying for general motors, or some other "small business" with 3000 employees or more

50 years ago i was involved (vendor & former employee) with a company who called themselves a small businesss but they had over 2200 employees and 375 locations
their concerns were different than ours (and they were constantly in contact with the chamber)
 
C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
ColorCrest said:
The way this is works in my neck of the wood is the company offers the layoff an opportunity by giving the machine and materials and setting the prices they're willing to pay for services.
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Equipment Transfer.jpg
 
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