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But that doesn't leave enough room for the creative side or the love of craft for many of us, which is what motivates myself and others. If ROI is the primary motivation, there are so many other ventures that can provide so much more with so much less effort.

The badly done ones stick out like sore thumbs. Scott literally wrote the book on window splashes and both his caricatures AND lettering are first rate.

We already do. The overwhelming majority of our revenue is derived from doing signs that are made in and stay in our community. Its a huge percentage of our total revenue but that's not really the point that unclebun, myself and several others are making. His last post sums up the quandary so...

This.

We use the GF 6mil Semi-rigid with removable adhesive for bumper stickers and shorter term decals. It generally doesn't leave any adhesive when you peel it off.

I don't quite understand how a craftsperson goes from selling, designing and building signs and marking up the materials involved anywhere from 1.5-2x and then adding our labor costs and profit expectation but if its a "commodity" product which must be code for projects we just don't want to...

Hey Scott, I lived and worked in Portland from 1989-2003 and we've met several times. My work has always been more of the permanent variety but I used to love seeing your work and your "shop vehicle". I've traveled this entire freaking country and you have few peers at what you do. Glad to see...

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the VP-300, we have a VP-540. Does it have four individual printheads? Are you using new manifold(s) or the old one(s)? What we discovered when changing out a printhead on ours was that the nipple that ink supply hose attaches to deteriorates over time from the...

I think you make some really important points for everyone to consider. Often when this sort of thing happens to us, the client or potential client is so outraged by the difference between what we quoted and the barely marked up price some unscrupulous or uninformed vendor offered them, they...

$3 each? That's $27 per square foot. What legitimate client has 3,000 locations and did you try to educate or explain that the other quote couldn't have been for a diecut, weeded, taped vinyl product. I can see that these might be diecut, but does the vendor who quoted .40 each know this? I...

Trim cap is a flexible product that comes in a variety of widths and colors that is used when making faces for channel letters, etc. Try calling your sign supply store or look online.

Trim cap?

A lower end, run of the mill UV flatbed printer with a 4'x8' bed is going to start in the high $50k range without many bells and whistles, delivery, set up, RIP software, service contract, etc. How much room do you have in your shop? Flatbed UV printers and contour cutters have a large footprint.

How far out is your offset on the blade? Could it be catching and then dragging the blade because there isn't enough gap between the tip and material? Maybe something up in the chamber not letting the blade spin freely?

Absolutely! Well said. There seems to a huge variation in pricing on everyday, run of the mill sign products that most of us make and i really wonder at times how well folks research and calculate what their shop needs to make to remain viable and profitable over the long haul. We just...

Right. Here we consider $5.75 per square foot for banners unreasonably low given our cost of living and doing business. If $200 plus per hour for your shop rate is both your normal going rate in Wichita Falls, TX and you command it on a regular basis, then all I can do is congratulate you on...

No, really? I've never dealt with a fellow project manager in all my 40 years of doing this silly trade. Nobody has accused you of anything except inconsistency. On another thread you quoted Wichita Falls, TX adjusted prices for banners, but then jumped to New York City pricing for drilling...

This job is for another sign company, not some preoccupied project manager at a construction company juggling a ton of other projects. Isn't your relationship with other colleagues one of mutual respect, cooperation and appreciation for what each other does for the other? Either way, we've...

All inaccurate assumptions and judgements aside, I don't set his prices, he does. If thats the hourly rate he has established for himself how does that have anything to do with us "taking advantage" of him? I guarantee you that he's plenty busy, fully licensed and insured and we typically have...

Whether the desired durability is 1 day or 10 years, the process of accounting for all the costs and expenses and profit in our pricing is the same.