How do you price vinyl?

[royster13]

I have to get at least 90.00 margin out of even the simplest job to make the 1 to 2 hours it takes to process the order worth while...Take the time to track how long it actually takes and you will see that 30.00 margin is only about 20.00 per hour on the average simple order.....

 

[signswi]

Right royster. If I'm profiting $30 I better not be spending more than 10 minutes on it and have almost no costs. $30 is less than our minimum design charge. If I'm even going to bother with that job I'm going to do it in a way that has almost no labor, makes the customer happier, and has marketing and market development upside.

I will say in response your big boy statement that the little shops become big by leveraging their capabilities and resources while taking on market growth initiatives. That's kind of the whole point . Anyway, good discussion, I'd just ask people to think outside the immediate and look at the big picture, think about your marketing and customer handling as part of your product pricing and deliverables. Before I was in production I was a buyer, I increased our buy so many times if the vendor did things like offering more units for lower per unit cost and I came away happier with the transaction. I'm sure you're all doing this at some scale, just consider taking that scale up a notch and examining the potential benefits. You may be surprised.

 

[TopFliteGraphics]

Lively discussion. I've enjoyed it.

 

[anotherdog]

I guess I side with the charge the most the market will bear group. I want to be making $30+ per sign rather than $30 per 10. If my market was saturated with garage based vinyl pickers I would either drop my prices or drop the product line.

The economics of signage are no different from selling beans, charge the most the market will bear. If the result is profit you are doing it right, if loss you are wrong. It's really very simple, if you are making $30 per 10 you are either doing it very fast, outsourcing to the guy next door or losing money.

...and if you are selling 10 signs retail for $70 you are a blight on other sign shops in your area (fortunatly you won't last long).

(that last bit was to throw more gas on the fire).