A Digital Printing Network
Pricing, Few basic questions
Hey everyone, Looking to simplistic my pricing structure. The paid programs and all that jazz are way to time consuming and a pain if you ask me.
I was wondering what you all thought of this.
Find out your raw costs for digital vinyl with laminate and ink and mark it up whatever you would like (8x or so) then have that as a flat PSF charge and have a minimum of let's say $100. Anything priced under that minimum will go to $100 or you can give the customer as many of what they order until the minimum is reached.
Pricing per piece would always be the same but i think this would be very simple and easy to use for pricing.
If something is going on a vehicle you can do the same PSF price then add in a installation charge for the install time.
Thoughts?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kathy MacMannis on -
I don't know John, I guess it depends on the type of customers you have...... The majority of my customer base are High School students, parents and organizations that support the schools. A $100 minimum would be crazy for my customers, and they simply would go down the street. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding you, but you're saying for example if after you figure your costs and markup, it comes to say $60 you would bump them up to $100??? Ya, that just wouldn't work in my area, they would simply either go down the street, or more than likely simply go on line and order it that way.
Kathy Mac
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Permalink Reply by John Miller on -
a $100 minimum for digital print work isn't alot. These machines are $13,000 and up plus the repairs on the machine aren't cheap so doing a $20 job isn't worth turning the machine on.
On cut vinyl, that's different so the minimum would be less.
Just a thought
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Permalink Reply by CYW on -
I'm with Kathy .......we do plenty of orders, plenty under $100
I don't understand why you say it wouldn't be 'worth it to turn the machine on'.......that doesn't make sense to me
Heck, my embroidery machines are worth way more than $13,000
With that strategy, I would be out of business!
Do a couple of those quick under $100 jobs and see how fast they add up
In my opinion, as long as I'm making a profit on the job, big or small, I'll do it
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Permalink Reply by Butch on
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Any job big or small we try to do them all ! Small jobs is how my business started and if it were not for those I wouldn't have been able to grow my business.
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Permalink Reply by John Pralle on
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John, your customers don't know or care how much you have invested in your equipment, all they want to know is how much is it going to cost them for their one or two shirts. Price it so you can live with it, But don't scare em off. I agree with Butch, doing one or two shirt jobs can be tiring but it will bring em back for the bigger jobs.
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Permalink Reply by Kathy MacMannis on
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Ya, I'm also wondering why your machines are ever turned off?? I was told never to turn the machine off unless told to do so by a tech, in fact I get nervous when I haven't used them in a couple of days because I think they perform better, so if I can make $$ keeping their juices flowing then even better. Some of my best embroidery and printing customers have become so because I WILL do the small annoying jobs, and they know it. I am the only embroidery place around that allows people to bring in their own stuff. Do I hate it, yes, do I make money on them, probably not, but you never know who is the next league director. Perfect example happened over xmas, a guy came in wanting to have a robe embroidered. My competition who is literally across the street refused and basically told the guy "go see the chick across the street" (he likes to think he's screwing me). Well I got the last laugh, not only did I do the robe for a whopping $10, with a smile on my face, but the customer came back in last week and surprise he is the administrator at one of the local high schools who is in charge of all of the spiritwear and school store. That lousy annoying robe just turned into a $3,500 opening order. Just trying now to figure out what kind of fruit basket to send my competion ;-)
Kathy
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Permalink Reply by John Miller on
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Roland versacamms have a auto cleaning function so they don't need to be turned off. If they aren't used much it's alright because the auto cleaning function can be set to do a clean every 8 hours to keep the heads fresh.
It's all really on how you look at your business, I wouldn't do anything singly for $10 because by the time you set up the file, produce it and hand it to the customer your time is worth much more than $10.
Thanks for the info
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Permalink Reply by Kathy MacMannis on
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John, you made the comment that it wasn't worth turning on your machine for a $20 job. I was just pointing out that we are not to have the machines turned off (because of the auto clean function) so if they are always on why would you turn away $20??
As far as my $10 robe job, to set it up, sew it, clean it, and hand it to the customer was under 6 minutes. That is $60 and hour with just one machine. And as I said sometimes it's the bigger picture. Do you honestly think that if I had said no to him, that he would have come back to me with his school order?? At xmas time where we had a ton of names to put on customers items we averaged about $180 and hour, with just 3 machines going, we did that for 3 straight days, at 6 hours a day. Over that 3 day period I brought in $2500, the only thing is cost me was thread, backing and tylenol (ok, some alcohol too). All of my other costs were fixed, rent, electric, staff so I'd be paying those regardless, so I guess I'm just confused, with your business plan I should have simply told all those customers no?
Kathy
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Permalink Reply by John Miller on
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Not suggesting no but a minimum would be great for small one off orders. It's great that this little $10 came through with a larger order but you can't base one situation off thinking every small order will do the same.
Not sure why you are defensive, I was just making a post asking about thoughts on a pricing process i have seen a few shops locally doing and thought about possibly doing myself.
Thanks
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Permalink Reply by CYW on
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Ya' know John, there seems to be 2 separate thoughts on this subject
I didn't take Kathy Mac's response as being defensive at all
Sounded to me like she was giving a perfect example of a scenario that could VERY LIKELY occur
It's happened to me, many times as well
If you want to turn away 'small' jobs that don't make your minimum, that's fine
You asked our opinions.
If you want to try and justify your business profile, that's fine too.
There are just some of us who don't agree, simple as that.
Not sure how long you've been at this ...........we started in 1978 (in one form or another)
Yes, I'm old
But the point I'm trying to make is that I'm still in business
Now, if you're a high end, established shop that normally gets more work than you can handle....ie. plenty of car wraps and really large orders............I can see why you wouldn't want to bother with anything under $100, I guess.
Actually I'm still not sure about that.......because if you are making money, even on smaller orders, you're still making money.
I don't think anyone is being defensive. I think that we're trying to explain to you why we do what we do
.............in case I haven't mentioned this before, you're welcome to send all those piddly jobs my way. If I can make $$$ on them, I'll do them in a heartbeat! (smile)
Lady Di
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Permalink Reply by Butch on
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John , shops in my area have a $25 minimum, I'm not one of them so I get a lot of small jobs which I try to combine. I have had several small jobs that turned into large profit jobs by not turning away a prospective customer, also had others that never returned .
I would much rather have a customer leave my shop smiling than go down the street and tell everyone how I refused to do work for them. The people they tell will not hear the whole story and probably not the whole truth - just the part that where they make your shop look bad.
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Permalink Reply by Kathy MacMannis on
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Sorry John, not meaning to come off defensive at all :-) And your certainly right, all small orders don't turn into large orders, but I would say it happens frequently enough where people are so pleased that we will do their small order that next thing you know we're doing their business stuff, or whatever. I am not kidding, it happens ALL the time. Maybe I am just lucky, but I know one thing for sure my competition across the street who won't do the small things happens to be the best sales rep I have, so my only hope is he continues doing what he does best, saying no :-) Again, pricing is always a crazy topic, too many variables such if you have a store front with walk ins such as myself, or working out of your home, or in an industrial park. Hard to compare I guess, so you will get a wide range of opinions on such a topic, but honestly it was just an opinion, that works for me.
Kathy
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