Cheap decals

[Hog Wild graphics]

Great news today. I have a customer that orders about 500 decals a month for his trailers. They are 2.25"by 20" brush font with a small symbol. It was a customer from the previous owner that was charging .50 per decal. I went up to .75 when I bought business and they complained. Then they call a few weeks back on a Thursday and said they needed 250 by Friday. I said can't do it. So I got them 100 on Friday and the other 150 Monday. When they picked them up I informed them that the price was increasing to $1 each. They went crazy. Well to make a long story short they called today to ask if they could have their artwork. They bought a cutter and will cut their own decals. By all means have fun.

Won't lose sleep on this since these stickers took hours to cut,pick, and tape for little profit. I actually lost money by my shop rate but since it was a preexisting customer I keep low and slowly lowered it.

Good luck to them.

 

[SameDay Signs]

Let them go out and buy a $400 cutter on ebay or a cricket and then it will break and they will be back in 2 months. I've bought 2 cheap cutters just to check them out and as I expected I got 1 week out of 1 cutter and about 3 weeks out of another.

 

[briankb]

2.25" x 20" for $.50 no wonder he sold the business. Even a $1 for one color doesn't seem like a good deal.

Instead of decals you could offer to do them as a bumper stick and outsource it to a printer.

 

[Rooster]

At the prices you were charging I would have bought them the cutter myself to get rid of them as a client. Shoot, I would have thrown in a free roll of vinyl too.

Just. Go. Away. I have real money to make.

 

[Jillbeans]

They would have really sh!t a ring around themselves if they heard I charge $25.
Love....Jill

 

[stickerman12]

We just did 125 printed on a rectangle about that size and charged 1.75 ea. Jill, do you really get over $6,000.00 dollars for doing a job like that?

 

[briankb]

We just did 125 printed on a rectangle about that size and charged 1.75 ea. Jill, do you really get over $6,000.00 dollars for doing a job like that?

Printed for $1.75ea is fine and maybe a little high but he said they were decals and he weeded them and all that goes with it. For the qty of 250-500 I doubt she would get $25ea but if they were one offs or just a few $25 isn't crazy. I doubt you would sell those same printed rectangles if they were cut vinyl with weeding, masking, and packaging for $1.75ea, would you?

 

[john1]

$2.11 each for that amount here. RTA

 

[Hog Wild graphics]

My current pricing is between 1.75 to 2.25 depending on detail/number picks.

 

[Master's Touch]

@ 250 units with a yield of 2.5 per sq foot....yeah there is no way I'd even WEED cut lettering (especially brush script) for 1.25 per lineal foot. Yeesh. You were right to shed them, and your previous owner did the industry a disservice selling them so cheaply in the first place.

 

[Salmoneye]

hope you gave them a .jpg

 

[Jillbeans]

Nope.
But I would charge $25 for a stack of them 20" long, stacked on 15" material.
I routinely do RTA decals wholesale for a sports fan club. They pay $5 each for a 1¾"x18" decal.

 

[tsgstl]

If cut correctly brush script is piece-o-cake
Much better than a serif or something with pointy tips
The price was obviously low and without seeing the copy and this being a open forum I will pass on my pricing.
I will say this is the kind of job I love. Material costs is extremely low and it is a constant monthly job.

 

[TyrantDesigner]

they aren't printed so for cut graphics ... depends on the difficulty of the weeding (more time, more money) ... I could probably hit about $4-5 each if they are 2.25" tall. cutting, weeding and masking 46 feet of graphics ... I could do it in 2.5 - 4 hours depending on difficulty of weeding. I did a job couple weeks ago with just inch tall numbers in pairs ... ran about 180 of them charged 4.87 each ... and that was mainly including the time to typeset them into the system so since the extra time will be weeding a foot more (roll wise) I would probably price the same.

printed ... probably much MUCH less.

 

[bob]

We just did 125 printed on a rectangle about that size and charged 1.75 ea. Jill, do you really get over $6,000.00 dollars for doing a job like that?

You might want to work on your math skills. 125 at $25 is $3,125.00 not $6K.

 

[booshworks]

We have some local customers who order regularly, weekly even, but when they ask for discounts, I offer to let them use my weeding table and they can handle the labor portion. I also let them know that any errors on their part is their own problem.

Some of them actually like doing it, and I can offer them a pretty fair price as long as the vinyl cutter isn't being used. Lots of "ifs", but it can be done profitably at a low price.

 

[tsgstl]

they aren't printed so for cut graphics ... depends on the difficulty of the weeding (more time, more money) ... I could probably hit about $4-5 each if they are 2.25" tall. cutting, weeding and masking 46 feet of graphics ... I could do it in 2.5 - 4 hours depending on difficulty of weeding. I did a job couple weeks ago with just inch tall numbers in pairs ... ran about 180 of them charged 4.87 each ... and that was mainly including the time to typeset them into the system so since the extra time will be weeding a foot more (roll wise) I would probably price the same.

printed ... probably much MUCH less.

So you are saying you could get $500 a hour labor?
Dude if I were you I would be looking for this kind of job exclusively.

This kind of work is why I love this market. Shops completely price thereself out of it and there is a lot of meat left on the bone. It can be tricky because sometimes you can drastically underestimate cutting and weeding time, but trust me it is very profitable and normally you c.o.g. Are in the single digits. 2 qualified weeders can eat through most jobs in little time. We have many races in my shop. It can get boring but if you enjoy who you work with making $150+ an hour is nice.

 

[TyrantDesigner]

So you are saying you could get $500 a hour labor?
Dude if I were you I would be looking for this kind of job exclusively.

This kind of work is why I love this market. Shops completely price thereself out of it and there is a lot of meat left on the bone. It can be tricky because sometimes you can drastically underestimate cutting and weeding time, but trust me it is very profitable and normally you c.o.g. Are in the single digits. 2 qualified weeders can eat through most jobs in little time. We have many races in my shop. It can get boring but if you enjoy who you work with making $150+ an hour is nice.

those type of jobs are not every day plus you are forgetting margin, overhead and wear and tear on your machine ... also with 46 feet of vinyl, you're bound to make one or 2 mistakes (due to machine error or your own) ... so it's not $500 an hour. ... I normally estimate to need around $75-90 an hour to pay for man hours, overhead, wear and tear on the equipment and still be able to make the shop a profit ... if we get more, awesome ... but not expected. ... just means we don't have to worry about having to have jobs back to back ... especially on a bad weather day like today.

plus we are talking about me weeding it ... most everyone else i've ever worked with will be about double that time wise.

 

[john1]

I don't mind doing bulk runs of simple cut vinyl jobs. Cut vinyl is still in demand as a lot like the die-cuts still.

I just did 50 12x1 inch decals single line, simple font for $1.63 each and they just ordered another batch yesterday.

Doing 75 2 color (no outline layers thank goodness just a colored symbol with text next to it) 8x1.5" for $1.88 ea also. Again a lot like die-cuts and most shops won't do a small run like this anymore.

Simple jobs with good profit margins if you ask me.

 

[OlsonSigns601]

What does the graphic look like? Ive done them for less but the graphic was simple.