posted
I've noticed a few posts concerning new 'plotter owners' that think all you do is 'punch it in & the computer does the work! (I mean people out of the sign field that purchase sign equip... not all of you who just bought new plotters!)
We have new Cuisinarts, pizza ovens, latte machines, etc. available. Do we sell food & beverages to other people? No, we go to the restaurant that makes it best.
People (between jobs usually)are now buying sewing machines that embroider. Another come & go group.
Home Depot sells everything so you can 'do it yourself'. Do we sell those services? No.
Why is it that people think this bus. is so easy?
You have to offer a good product & manage productively how you make that product. That's business. I really don't think a lot of the new 'plotter owners' are at all aware that this is a serious business.
I have had very ignorant people say to me after 15 years in the bus., can you make money at that? I'm sure you've all heard it. It takes all I can do to hold back. I then ask them if they make money in the bus. they are in. straight away!
I've seen the weirdest businesses start & succeed, I would never think of asking if they can make a living.
I tell them, drive down the road & use your peripheral vision, signs are everywhere you look. Look around in any business, signs everywhere.
They just aren't looking.
Everyone is a designer also. Some people aren't bad, but most love red with a black shadow, put it right to the edge would ya?
It is very frustrating & I'm sure we all have stories.
The truth is we can always overcome the new 'plotter owners' with our expertize & bus. knowledge.
Just be patient & they usually go away.
-------------------- Michael R. Bendel Bendel Sign Co,. Inc. Sauk Rapids, MN Posts: 913 | From: Sauk Rapids, MN | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Few comments... I agree so much and I can now say that I'm in my 25th year of frustration, never thought I'd make it there....only 25 more to go!
"If we're patient they will eventually go away"...true, but they grow like mushrooms so they're replaced by more mushrooms. You can hope that this will go away, but you know it never will !!!
Why is this so typical of the sign industry? I have a little idea that you may or may not agree with but it's opened for discussion...
You compared the industry to lets say the restaurant business, here's a difference. Yes anybody can open a restaurant or a food service and they won't be in business long, why? The clients are not as stupid when it comes to food. We all eat every day, and we can tell when it tastes bad or when the quality is not there. So if your food stinks you're history.
A lot of sign buyers are one time buyers only. They don't have a clue about design, quality material or anything. Why do you think there are so many businesses with a permanent coroplast sign??? Most will go for cheap because they can't taste the difference. The few that are slightly interested in artistic values, quality and durability will listen and might make a choice for the better ( this is how I make a living ). Most potential clients however wouldn't know a bad sign if it hit them in the face.
That the cycle we're in... some kid getting money from dad, or an employee you let go for some reason or worst a person who failed at everything else in life that finds out about a used sticker machine and BOOM... another signguy in the yellow pages.
If you ask me, half of the people with sticker machines shouln't be allowed in the business, but that's not where the problem is, the client base and the general public is too dumb. As long as there will be a market for s*itty signs with bad layouts and poor colors, there will be people willing to make them (and not the other way around). If you are a manufacturer of crappy coros and nobody is buying, you either move up or move over......but don't hold your breath, this isn't likely to happen soon.
And three more to come along and take their place.
The simple fact of the matter is, while available sign work has increased two or three fold over the past twenty years the number of signmakers has increased a hundred fold. Depending on your location and circumstances, competeing with cheap or even free, can have an effect on your business. Digital printers are going to become cheap enough that they will have an impact on things too. Look back at some recent posts regarding low ball sandblasted work. Who would have thunk it. It's just part of the ripple effect. It started with the price of magnetics.
-------------------- George Perkins Millington,TN. goatwell@bigriver.net
"I started out with nothing and still have most of it left"
A better comparison would be the tshirt industry when I was in it years ago. After the book "How To Print Tshirts For Fun And Profit" was published, there were shops popping up all over the place. Mamy of them started out, not so much as a career decision or a business move by the owners, but as a way to make a few bucks on the side and it was "marketed" as fun and easy.
It's really no different in the sign trade today. Manufacturers and distributors market the equipment similarly, and the initial costs of starting a "sign shop" has dropped drasticly with the advances in technology and proliferation of equipment. Like the shirt shops, those who don't succeed or simply burn out the market, turn over the equipment to others who follow the same path...making a quick buck on the side...with very few of them ever really considering it a formal business.
I have to agree with George. When I started out, there were a few painters up here. Although I'm pretty much the only one left these days, the demand for "quick, cheap" signs and vehicle lettering has become the standard, for no othr reason that most people who are orderiing the stuff are aware that vinyl shops can be found that will work cheaper, and as much as we'd like not to see it, the average person will sacrifice quality for a lower price. Upselling can often be percieved wrong and drive a customer away from time to time.
Over the years, the customer base has also become more attuned to seeing vinyl work...it's everywhere. That explains why so many of us who paint often hear "lost art" or dying breed" frequently. The customer's idea of what a sign is has changed as much as the technology has over the last 10 years or so. What was once considered a service is now percieved more as a product by the general public, and what was once a skilled profession has been altered by the technology.
Anyone can make signs these days....not everyone can do it well...and fewer customers know the difference these days. Rapid
-------------------- Ray Rheaume Rapidfire Design 543 Brushwood Road North Haverhill, NH 03774 rapidfiredesign@hotmail.com 603-787-6803
I like my paint shaken, not stirred. Posts: 5648 | From: North Haverhill, New Hampshire | Registered: Apr 2003
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I hate to say it, but most basic vinyl work is "fun and easy"; but profitable? No. Restaurants are not easy or extremely profitable (net usually ranges between 5 and 10%). They require huge equipment costs (including up-keep (cleaning, calibrating), repair, replacement and upgrading; high labor (the typical 200 seat restaurant requires over a dozen employees per shift, and needs to operate 2 shifts to be profitable), high utilities, high labor hours, and highly perishable stock. Most require a fairly large advertising / promotion budget. I don't see too many restaurants "come and go" around here, and the ones that do don't really impact the established ones because bad food and or bad service is easily recognized by the consumer, and fixed costs are pretty much the same across the board (no work from home / part time restaurants). Having been in the restaurant business for 10 years (six as management), I came to realize it's a very complex business. Guess I don't really have an answer for the situation, though.
-------------------- Tim Whitcher Adrian, MI Posts: 1546 | From: Adrian, MI | Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Michael R. Bendel: I've noticed a few posts concerning new 'plotter owners' that think all you do is 'punch it in & the computer does the work!
There's also some that think turning on a computer and filling in the spaces at the letterhead.com registration page is all there is to being a letterhead...and sending in $50 makes them official members. Go figure.
posted
None of this is exclusive to the sign trade.
Every industry has those who are willing to do it cheaper and there will always be customers who don't recognize the lower quality and those that do who opt for the higher end.
Think about this for a second. Right now the Baby Boomer generation, which has always been known for it's huge populous, is hitting retirement age. That means that generation, which has enormous numbers, is now at the age where THEIR KIDS (my generation Gen-X, which outnumbers the Baby Boomers) are also having kids (generation Gen-Y), which will likely outnumber Gen-X *and* the Baby Boomers combined.
It doesn't take a genious to figure out this math. You have Baby Boomers retiring yet needing some sort of supplemental income, Gen-X is fed-up working like assholes making greedy corporate moguls rich for little return and no job security so they jump ship to start their own thing, and now the Gen-Y kids are reaching the age where they're getting into the workforce yet they're smarter than the previous generations and are likely to start their own businesses while still in Highschool.
There's a WHOLE LOTTA people fighting for a piece of pie that really hasn't gotten much bigger.
-------------------- "If I share all my wisdom I won't have any left for myself."
Mike Pipes stickerpimp.com Lake Havasu, AZ mike@stickerpimp.com Posts: 8746 | From: Lake Havasu, AZ USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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And three more to come along and take their place." george got it....and i hate to say it but the big money days of this business are gone. only one who will survive are the ones who have special skills and "niche" markets. george, me and other of our age....can remember when..yae you tired of hearin it....but we mad more money BEFORE COMPUTERS with LESS MATERIAL/EQIPMENT then we do now!!!!! most of ya cant believe this but its true. 1986: set of truck doors, plain free hand lettered, 2 hours max...paint used, maybe a teaspoon, pay was $100-150!!!! and it all went in our pockets...2005: 2 truck doors, i got em here sellin for $45....i wont do this for less the $75......now i got VINYL/TRANFER TAPE/ COMPUTER/ PLOTTER/ LAYOUT TIME/ CUT, WEED, TAPE TIME, still 2 hours.....and i got all the other stuff to pay for outa that $75 i now get maybe $50-60 of it....and gas in 1986 was $.75 a gallon, 2005 its $2.75!!!!!! noooo you cant make a lot of money......anymore... and i get so sick of the ones who tell us to raise our prices...sure we can do that, no problem.....BUT PEOPLE WONT PAY THE HIGHER PRICES, when you got more shops trying to get their money!!!!!! now you got the opposit of supply & demand....you got shops NEEDING SALES....and it now is a BUYERS MARKET.....if you seem to high, they WILL SHOP.....you can take that to the bank!!!!
[ October 19, 2005, 02:11 PM: Message edited by: old paint ]
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Mike you hit it on the head.As more people are looking for a way to make a living and few have much working capital it will only get worse. Her in the tampa bay are they have done a great job at selling printers.There are people selling digital printed banners for under $2.00 a square ft.I'm glad I can stripe it getting harder to sell blasted and carved work as well,as many of the franchise shops are now offering it as well.
A: Yes & no. Yes- only if your willing to learn the real-deal skills to be the best you can be. Without a vision, and drive-to-strive, no, it would not be simple. One would have a hard time, and quit, then go around asking that question they always ask: 'How does any anyone makes a living in this?'
Altho', as I've mentioned before, some people are business minded-enough that their lack of talent allows them to do perty good in the 'fast-food' industry of signs...that IS simple for them - only in the same sense as a little child who can't yet read or comprehend certain concepts - they are simply oblivious to what it takes to create 'steak dinner' signs, nor do they even have a desire to do so.
There will always be people who will provide whatever level of quality people want . . .
I appreciate the variety of choices . . . .
I fail to understand why people dog low-ballers and fast-food, plotter-pit-stops in one breath, and in the next breath, they dawg customers who bargain-hunt & tire-kick . . . It seems perfectly logical that we would be willing to breifly play match-maker with those who are so ideally made for one another, so we can move on to the kind of customers we prefer to cater to.
There will always be 3,4, & 5 star restaurants . . .
and for everyone else, there will always be McDonalds, Taco Bell, and KFC . . .
posted
Of course it's simple. That's why I've spent the past thirty one years doing what I do. Should be a piece of cake to learn what I have in a few short weeks. Jump on board the gravy train.
(Serious Sarcasm) Multiple smiley faces for those that don't get it.
-------------------- Bob Stephens Skywatch Signs Zephyrhills, FL
All they need is their Mom to tell them how nicely he/she painted the black horse silhouettes in all 4 corners on the deep red mailbox. Done with a cut down house trim brush & flat latex paints. Then top it off by screwing wood hardware store letters to the sides. 3D!
I think that puts him/her right at about that 30 year quality don't you agree?... because... anyone can make a sign with a little encouragement from their Mother!
-------------------- Michael R. Bendel Bendel Sign Co,. Inc. Sauk Rapids, MN Posts: 913 | From: Sauk Rapids, MN | Registered: Jul 2005
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