posted
I won a price guide as a door prize once.... It was a great paint pallet then I tossed it out, that was in 1985, I still don't miss it.
I will send you a copy of my guide book as soon as it is finished(couple more weeks)"A sign makers guide to pricing your signs"!
Obviously some people feel the need to have such an item to help figure out if they are competative... others use it like a bible to set thier prices. That whole concept of equal value from any shop producing signage is totally lost on me. I can't price till I know what the customer wants, and what his budget is. My overhead and abilities are far different from anyone else, likewise other shops from mine. Do I design like a 40 year veteran of the trade? Can Rapid-Sign-O-Slamma generate sketches like me, provide insightful knowledge about alternative substrate or offer "really nice signs"?
Obviously I am kinda passionate about pricing and not that passionate about spelling, If it were me I'd be asking.... "is there a guide to establishing better pricing for my shop"? I'll let you know when I finish my guide to pricing. In the mean time work on what your overhaed is you'll need to know that much.... then decide if you want to retire from this business or just playing at having a business till something better comes along.
Respectfully, Cranky Old Maine Price Monger ****poke, Maine
-------------------- "No excuses!.... No regrets!..."
posted
Hiya Brian, Check out the Book Shop. Like Stephen said, it's just a guide. Without knowing what your real costs and expenses are, you'll never get pricing down to a science. I would also suggest estimate software's profit watch available here
Havin' fun,
Checkers
-------------------- a.k.a. Brian Born www.CheckersCustom.com Harrisburg, Pa Work Smart, Play Hard Posts: 3775 | From: Harrisburg, Pa. U.S.A. | Registered: Nov 1998
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. — Charles Mingus Posts: 6716 | From: Mendocino, CA. USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
I received the same ad by email Rick. Must be lifting contacts from this site. I have a few pricing guides, a Signwriters guide,an old Blue Book, Mark Roberts Guide and Mark Smith's Estimate program. At least with Estimate I can input my costs and time to more accurately reflect a good pricing structure.
-------------------- Wright Signs Wyandotte, Michigan Posts: 2785 | From: Wyandotte, MI USA | Registered: Jan 1999
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posted
As a relative new-comer, I find the Sign Contractors Pricing Guide to be VERY useful. you can buy it directly from the publisher, or through "Sign Craft" or "Signs of The Times" magazines, or (possibly) through a local sign supply source. The publisher is at SignwritersUSA.com
Yes, its helpful to know your overhead, etc. Its also helpful to know what a job like you're trying to do "ought" to cost. If you've never done a 4x8 plywood sign, how are you supposed to know how long its going to take you? The pricing book gives you a guide -- you can adjust up or down, but at least you're starting in a reasonable ballpark and not just pulling numbers out of the air.
Finally, i find that when I open the book up and show the prices to my customers, they believe my prices are "fair". They know that i'm not just making them up. to me, that's worth a lot.
-------------------- :: Scooter Marriner :: :: Coyote Signs :: :: Oakland, CA :: :: still a beginner :: :: Posts: 1356 | From: Oakland (and San Francisco) | Registered: Mar 2001
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posted
I have never used a pricing guide. Sometimes when I have a customer that will show my all of the bids he got, I've noted that I am pretty close.
I use the time & material method, square footage & 25 years experiance and what the value is to the customer, as well. The only thing I always neglect to chare for is the billing/paperwork/ stuff. That should be about $25.00 added to each bill.
Cheers
-------------------- Rob Thomas 3410 Ketcham Ct Beautiful Springs FL 34134 Posts: 965 | From: Bonita Springs, Florida USA | Registered: Feb 2000
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If someone does not or can not work up thier own estimates based on thier overhead and type of work, then maybe they should really reconsider being a business owner.
There is NO way that one price can be set for a particular job across the table. What it costs to do business here has no bearing on what it costs to do business in ****poke, Maine or Wyandotte, Michigan.
Dave Wright is correct that that Estimate is far superior to the books because you can control the parameters of pricing.
I think that the only people benefitting from sign pricing guides are the ones selling them. I remember one of these guide authors was in a sign magazine pumping up the benefits of his guide on the editiorial. What a self-serving piece of drivel that was. His argument was that retailers like Wal-Mart do it and it orks for them.
You can not use the basis of "signs by the pound" like a major retailer like Wal-Mart or K-mart does with thier merchandise. You have to realize that not all their stores make the same kind of money. One store might be being carried by other stores that are more profitable.
We, for the most part, don't have that luxury. We have one location and it dang well better make some money or you know just how far in the toilet you'd be.
Remember, these people have an agenda. It is to sell as many of thier books as they can. Period. No matter how much they cry about loving the Craft and having your best interests at heart, they still want to sell their books. I sure don't see them doing it for free.
Learn to do it yourself. There are many people here that would be willing to help you out somehow. Just don't ask them to price your work for you.
Have a great one!
-------------------- Bruce Bowers
DrCAS Custom Lettering and Design Saint Cloud, Minnesota
"Things work out best for the people who make the best of the way things work out." - Art Linkletter Posts: 6451 | From: Saint Cloud, Minnesota | Registered: Jun 1999
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Brian, I found the pricing guides to be very helpful when I was starting out. I entered this business because I loved the production, not the business end. I didn't have a clue what costed what or what overhead was. I tried to use the same formulas the books used to figure it out and eventually tossed them and found my own methods.
I will say that having the "black" official looking guide with me on sales calls gave me confidence that my pricing was correct (naive?) and was something good to point out when a customer thought my pricing was high.
-------------------- Terry Baird Baird Signs 3484 West Lake Rd. Canandaigua, NY 14424 Posts: 790 | From: Canandaigua, New York | Registered: Dec 2002
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Probably the most helpful hint toward proper pricing comes from keeping a log of your time. If you know how much is actually spent on a job and can compare that to the estimated time when you bid the job there is much to be gained. We discover our blind spots and strengths and weakness'.
-------------------- The SignShop Mendocino, California
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. — Charles Mingus Posts: 6716 | From: Mendocino, CA. USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Agreed Rick. At the risk of going OT... Scooter, I think the word "useful" is a gross understatement when talking about your overheads. The costs involved in being in business per annum are the fundamental basis from which to begin costing your work. Anything else is guesswork. David
-------------------- David Fisher D.A. & P.M. Fisher Services Brisbane Australia da_pmf@yahoo.com Trying out a new tag: "Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth Peter Ustinov Posts: 1450 | From: Brisbane Queensland Australia | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
I have a few different pricing methods. I carry my price guides as a quick reference when I am on the road. I have one for my purse, one larger one with all my color charts, and one in my head. The one in my head usually comes up very close to the price guides. I take my materials and times by 3. This one doesn't work when you have a decal job where not much material is used. To me decals take just as long as any other sign...so I jack those prices up. If there is scanning and design work, I charge by the hour with a minimum price. Pricing is making what you think you deserve for the job, and is not always what the books or material cost say. You can charge what you want!
Posts: 3729 | From: Seattle | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
One of the biggest questions for people starting out in the sign industry or any other is: "What do I charge?"
A person may be able to do the work, perhaps by trial and error, but they have no idea of what would constitute fair pricing for their services. Charging by the hour may not work because they may be taking much longer to do the job than a person who has more experience. Later, they will be able to do that work more expeditiously. Estimating the time involved may be futile because the lack of experience prevents an accurate appraisal of what will be entailed. Judging perceived advertising value is difficult without some point of reference to go from.
One person I know was selling sandblasted Redwood signs for 50% the price of other companies when he started out twenty years ago. He asked me for advice. I told him to double his prices, they were artificially low. I told him there was a reason most companies average charge was twice his. He thought he was making money at that rate and went under six months later. Most people starting out in business have no idea they will spend several hours managing their business, making sales calls, tracking down materials, buying and setting up equipment, etc. for every hour they spend actually earning money on a job. Many of these people need a pricing guide, at least when starting out.
Most of the “newbies” in the business I have talked to are surprised at how much certain types of signs go for. They may think charging $25.00 per hour is going to get them to Easy Street in a hurry because that is twice what they were making at Lenny’s Letters by the Load. Only too late do they realize they are truly making half what they did on their old job. A pricing guide would have at least gotten them to the parking lot of the ballpark. Often, because of their love for what they are doing and their interest in doing it well, these folks do pretty nice signs when starting out, it just takes them twice as long as it would take a more experienced one to do so. If they are charging an average price, they at least won’t starve to death while learning. If they end up charging half out of ignorance, they hurt themselves and the more established companies as well.
Once a person has some experience under his belt, he begins to find his corner of the business and figure his proper pricing levels. As stated previously in this post, a necessity in doing so is logging time and expenses diligently to get a true picture of the overhead.
I have known Jack Rumph, who produces the Signwriter’s Pricing Guide, for over twenty years. His mother was a sign painter and he painted his first sign for money at the age of eight. He interviewed many signwriters over the country as he was preparing his guides. I also did some time and materials studies for him on work I do. He has also owned a wholesale letters to the trade business. He has been in the sign industry his whole life, knows the business well and pricing better than many.
As my business has settled into the niche I enjoy, I have moved away from other pricing guides and developed my own for no one else does things exactly the way I do. I wrote some spreadsheets that duplicated my way of pricing certain types of work, which have saved me countless hours the last few years. I made sure those prices would guarantee a fair profit.
Now, if I can just get more customers to agree to those prices...
-------------------- David Harding A Sign of Excellence Carrollton, TX Posts: 5084 | From: Carrollton, TX, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
I use the dart baord method. Throw a dart a some prices on the wall! hahahahha
just kidding.
I have a business coach. We talk about pricing, a lot.
He suggested I use a 3 tier system on every type sign we make. ( yeah right...this is easy to say and so hard to do!)
example: magnetic signs, for instance, design 3 levels of difficulty and actually make them keeping track of your time and material. Place a price on them and hang them on the shop wall. Or better yet, print the layouts on paper and place them in a binder.
Do the same for realty signs 2x4 4x4 and 4x8 Do the same for banners 2x6 2x8 3x5 and 3x8
Your note book will fill up over the next year, and every time you do a different job, make a new catagory, and price it and print it and place it in the book. If you lost money on the job, list the price of what it should have been then the next similar job will be priced right.
You will have to constantly update your book also.
When customers come in and see you have a system, you will get more respect than pulling figures out of your hat.
Not only that, your visual price notebook becomes an idea book...."I didn't know you made this kind of sign!" customer says as he scans the book.
Pricing is a dodgy subject You can see that over the years here at how sheepish people can be at disclosing what they got for a job, in lots of cases.
I bought Mark Smith's Estimate, and was really impressed at the begining, and shocked after putting in all my shop costs to see what my hourly rate should be, haven't used it much over the last year as you can't change the format to deal with another language. But in English speaking markets it must be a great help, and much moreso than the pricing books, I believe you can link it up with quickbooks making your invoicing easier, unfortunately I couldn't do that here either!
I think alot of us forget about profit, me too sometimes, materials, labour, and then some profit.
posted
The price guide is like premixed paint colors. It gives you a reasonable starting point, and doesn't take too much time to prepare.
i've only had my sign biz for about two years. MOST of the jobs i get are different than any of the projects i've done so far.
that diversity makes the work interesting, BUT its hard for me to "know" how many hours a given task will take. EstiMate cant tell me how long it will take -- only how much it will cost IF i know how long it will take.
my clients often don't know what they want to spend-- they're looking to me for some guidance about what's "reasonable."
i'll stand by the book until i find i can work without it. then i'll use the parts of the book i need and discard the other parts.
PS: i agree that every sign shop should know their overhead and work up their hourly from that. i also suspect that 90% of the shops are going to be pretty close to the $65/hour the price guide is using. we all have similar needs, equipment, supplies and products.
-------------------- :: Scooter Marriner :: :: Coyote Signs :: :: Oakland, CA :: :: still a beginner :: :: Posts: 1356 | From: Oakland (and San Francisco) | Registered: Mar 2001
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The pricing guide is just what it says.....a guide.
If your market won't bear the prices it lists, as mine won't, then you have to adjust them. I am currently taking about 60 to 65% of the figures derived from the 2000 Signwriter's guide for things like banners, aluminum signs, vehicles, etc. Even at that, a lot of people walk. But, on sandblasted signs I get about 85 to 90% of what the price book lists. My hourly rate is $40/hr. Am I hurting the industry with cheap prices? I don't know. I do know that I have the highest prices in my area.
-------------------- Wayne Webb Webb Signworks Chipley, FL 850.638.9329 wayne@webbsignworks.com Posts: 7404 | From: Chipley,Florida,United States | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
You can't use a pricing guide to do quotes. You have to look at your area. I live in the most expensive county in the USA, and If you're not billing $100/hr, you'll go broke.
I once saw Mark Roberts give a pricing seminar. He campares Trucks and pizzas to signs saying what costs $10 in texas, costs $10 in Florida. So if he gets $400 for a sign, So should you.
Thats fine for Trucks and pizzas where corporations set the price, But try to buy a piece of real estate here in Northern Virginia with Texas or Florida money, and STICKER SHOCK! you can't.
So, the only alternative is to raise the price. A pair of Magnetics here sells for $175. I don't do them because they are not profitable as compared to the $650 4x8's. My material costs are the same as yours, But my fixed costs are Sky High.
So if your gonna live in the average house here ($275,000) and rent a shop of average size ($3500/mo.) you're gonna have to sell the products to Live and work here.
So the question is: How do you want to live?
-------------------- Mike Duncan Lettercraft Signs Posts: 1328 | From: Centreville, VA | Registered: Oct 2000
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
You can see that over the years here at how sheepish people can be at disclosing what they got for a job, in lots of cases.
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