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Competitor selling wraps too cheap

X

Xcesiv

New Member
Im in an interesting position.

I have a customer that has turned wrap installer. He has been wrapping wheels and small pieces of interior for about 12 months.

I told him from the start i have no problem with him wrapping and offered him discounted rates for printed vinyl for custom wraps. All i asked of him was that he does it properly and doesn't undercut the market which i have seen him do with other products.

He went to Sema a few weeks back and now thinks he is an expert in wrapping.

He has picked up some vinyl from some manufacturer (i think its Max Plus) and is now advertising all these pearl and other fancy colours really cheap. Almost $800 under i Sell standard colour wraps for.

He wont tell me the brand of the vinyl but i believe its a Max Plus Inc Co Ltd vinyl. Max Plus promote there vinyl as a car wrap film but it is a Calendared.
He was telling me how much cheaper he gets this vinyl than the standard car wrap films he gets from Australian Distributors.

He promotes to a similar circle of clients that i do.
I still get a bit of wrap work, but i have to work hard with the clients. Explaining the difference between cheap and nasty and quality materials.

I know the people that are just looking for price are not clients i want, but the ones that are happy to pay a reasonable price now question the prices when they hear prices that much cheaper.

What would you do ?

How do i easily show people the difference between cheap crap and quality wraps?

thanks for your thoughts.
 
GAC05

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
Get some horror story photos of failed wraps using economy materials and show that cheaper materials can & will damage the paint on their way out the door.
Be honest and explain that even the best materials will fail after a time but the chances of damage to the original finish at removal time is far less of an issue.

wayne k
guam usa
 
Bly

Bly

New Member
Stand by your product and stick to your pricing.
Not everybody buys on price alone.
 
SightLine

SightLine

║▌║█║▌│║▌║▌█
ProWraps said:
i would do what i could.


nothing.
Click to expand...


This... and get used to it. Don't worry, he will not be at it forever. He will quickly get to a point where he has to expand and overhead will put him under along with customers coming back in 6 months with a bunch of failing junk on their vehicles.

Also - dig the new logo ProWraps... :rock-n-roll:
 
M

mudmedia

New Member
Get use to it. People who even use good materials will under sale you. I just had a client come in today one of my competitors quoted him $6.50 a sq ft for 3m 180.
 
TheSnowman

TheSnowman

New Member
Holy Crap. I don't let 3M go out the door for a penny under $10/sq ft. That's installed on something totally flat that will lay on my work table.
 
X

Xcesiv

New Member
I need to work on my sales pitch about good and bad materials and installers.

I know he won't be around forever, it just shocks me he would go that much lower when there is money t be made doing it right. Bonnet wraps prices have been butchered but good money in full wraps still.

Why butcher the market on wraps when there sent that much competition

Anyone got some good demonstrations to show people between good and bad materials?
 
rjssigns

rjssigns

Active Member
He is on the road to ruin. Much sooner than he thinks. Downside is he will tarnish your reputation just by being in the same business.
Guilt by association.
 
Dennis422

Dennis422

New Member
OK, here is the view from a person who is just starting in this business. I have been doing embroidery and screen printing for a while, but as of recently started offering vinyl.

Is there a standard pricing that people should use. If there is, could someone share that with me. :)
I'm trying to learn as much as I can and I do not try to undercut on pricing. But.....
If I do not know how much something should cost, I will not know if I'm undercutting or not. I will do the math on the cost I need to pay to get printed vinyl (Or unprinted), I'm home based so I do not have many expenses you guys have, and I have a local shop that I can use for installs.
That naturally should make my price much cheaper than normal. As I do not like to leave money on the table, I would like to charge the same amount as other people so I could make more money and maybe get out of my basement one day :)

With this, I'm not trying to protect the guy, but I'm trying to say that some people do not know what to charge exactly.

Just my point of view.
 
WildWestDesigns

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
DKgrafix said:
I'm home based so I do not have many expenses you guys have,
Click to expand...

I would argue that you do have the same expense, just not as easily "seen" if you will.

Your expenses will be different in price figure, but you still have them, as long as you are doing everything like any other business would do just home based and not in a separate physical location.

Embroidery is really bad about this. Especially with the proliferation of cheap digitizing software and people not knowing what they are doing or not having the software to adequately do it, so you have severely undercut the market. Also that same thought of not having the same expenses, just because you are home based. That adds to the illusion and makes them think that they can charge less and still be ahead of the game.

In a lot of instances it's their failure to research things, bottom line.

DKgrafix said:
maybe get out of my basement one day :)
Click to expand...

With that in mind, you have to come up with a plan of how long you want it to take until you move out and what it will cost to move out into a physical location and find a price point that you can sell things at in order to do so and to hopefully, be able to make the transition for your customers as well, so you don't have to jack up your prices 100 fold to cover those "new" expenses. At least right off the bat.
 
signage

signage

New Member
DKgrafix said:
Is there a standard pricing that people should use. If there is, could someone share that with me. :) .
Click to expand...
Get a subscriptions to SignCraft they have a pricing guide. Note Guide!




DKgrafix said:
I'm home based so I do not have many expenses you guys have, and I have a local shop that I can use for installs.
Click to expand...
Like WildWest said you still have unseen expenses, also remember that you most likely want to get into a building/store front. Now the time comes you have to raise your price because of the increase in your overhead. You will most likely lose some of your customers. It is better to have your prices around that amount now than having to jack them up and possibly loose customers.
 
Dennis422

Dennis422

New Member
WildWestDesigns said:
I would argue that you do have the same expense, just not as easily "seen" if you will.

Your expenses will be different in price figure, but you still have them, as long as you are doing everything like any other business would do just home based and not in a separate physical location.

Embroidery is really bad about this. Especially with the proliferation of cheap digitizing software and people not knowing what they are doing or not having the software to adequately do it, so you have severely undercut the market. Also that same thought of not having the same expenses, just because you are home based. That adds to the illusion and makes them think that they can charge less and still be ahead of the game.

In a lot of instances it's their failure to research things, bottom line.



With that in mind, you have to come up with a plan of how long you want it to take until you move out and what it will cost to move out into a physical location and find a price point that you can sell things at in order to do so and to hopefully, be able to make the transition for your customers as well, so you don't have to jack up your prices 100 fold to cover those "new" expenses. At least right off the bat.
Click to expand...

Good points.

Plan is in the place. My machinery is all paid off, but I refuse to go too low on the pricing because of the same reason you mentioned. If I get out of the basement, how will I explain the price hike to my customers.

Pulse is my Digitizing software and I like it so far. Never tried Wilcom, it is probably better, but Pulse works for me.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Competition is healthy. It generally keeps everyone honest.

However, in today's economy, there are many underhanded ways of doing business. Some do it with deceit, while others are doing it totally oblivious of what they're doing at all. So, as good reputable sign people, we must take a little extra care in educating the customer. Don't be putting another shop down, that never looks classy.

The easiest thing to say to anyone is.... I know my business and I know what it takes to do this particular job/installation/whatever from all angles... and do it right. I know what the costs are and other than a few dollars here or there for some miscellaneous things, we should all be on the same page within dollars. If we're not, first remember, I'm using all top brand/level of supplies and materials. Next, our jobs are handled with the greatest of care and are backed by our company because we know what we're doing. Should you find something cheaper, you must realize, there has got to be a difference and usually if something is handled properly, the only thing that can make a large difference is someone cutting corners.

We've been in business XX amount of years and have been here because we do quality work. If we cut corners we wouldn't remain in business. If you are completely shopping by numbers with no fear of quality, then come back after you find your cheap quote and at least allow me to figure out what we're bidding against.

At least you'll be making an educated decision of how to handle your business.
 
WildWestDesigns

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
DKgrafix said:
Good points.

Plan is in the place. My machinery is all paid off, but I refuse to go too low on the pricing because of the same reason you mentioned. If I get out of the basement, how will I explain the price hike to my customers.
Click to expand...

No matter what, you'll have some attrition. I've always been straight with mine. Not all the "gory" details mind you. More often then not, my customers have stayed with me

DKgrafix said:
Pulse is my Digitizing software and I like it so far. Never tried Wilcom, it is probably better, but Pulse works for me.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to insinuate that you were one of those. Sorry about that. Pulse is good, it's one of the Big 3 as far as commercial digitizing software (although they do have home versions as well). And it's not just software itself, there are other aspects that no matter what software you use you should do in order to make true production ready patterns (given the application) and people with a production background are getting fewer and fewer and what they and their customers don't realize it's actually costing them per embroidered item then the design itself costs.

I know I've gotten off topic, but it does somewhat relate to your question of costs. If you paid $5 for a pattern that takes you 45 minutes to stitch out versus a pattern that costs $35, but only takes 15 minutes to stitch out (same pattern, not knowing what density to use and thread sequence is different and yes there have been many patterns that I've dealt with that have had that big of a time difference), you are going to make more money in the long run with that more expensive pattern and that happens all the time, but people don't realize that and aren't factoring that into their prices, so they are losing even more money in the long run.

There was one local woman that was selling her patterns online and had gotten a lot of complaints about it causing issues with her customers machines and she had issues with her own machine as well and no one could tell her it was her patterns. But she was using home versions and she mainly had no knowledge of maximum stitch widths that machines can do and her software didn't have any fail safe measures to help warn her of things either.

I need to stop now. Digitizing is what got me into the embroidery industry and where my passion is, so I tend to get a little "chatty" at times on this subject.
 
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