Dealing with hostile competition

[James Burke]

Price, Quality, Service....pick two.

Interpretation for the uninitiated:

You only get two at the expense of the third.


JB

 

[MichaelAlmand]

finally, someone gets it. i was a marketing major in college. its not only a subliminal reference to cheap, but a reference to the dynamic part of my name. I not only do signage, i do brand imaging and minor advertising jobs.

Oh boy!

 

[ironchef]

opcorn:

 

[HulkSmash]

finally, someone gets it. i was a marketing major in college. its not only a subliminal reference to cheap, but a reference to the dynamic part of my name. I not only do signage, i do brand imaging and minor advertising jobs.

Go to your college and get your money back, seriously. That is possibly the worse marketing strategy I've personally witnessed. Why would anyone want a cheap reference to their business name. Have fun doing cut vinyl, and business cards for the rest of your life.

Also the word vinyl, is that curlz font? You do branding?

 

[HulkSmash]

Also i see on your Facebook page you're an official resller for vista print.....how's that working out.............

 

[HulkSmash]

In all honesty I wish you well in your business endeavors.. but if you want to grow.. and i'm sure you do.. you're going about it wrong..

 

[TheSnowman]

We have a guy in town that worked for a apparel company (then got into signs) and delt with all their customers, then took off, started his own place, did it way cheaper, and started getting involved in everything everywhere and introduced himself as "Hi, I'm _______, I own _______. Come to find out, he was only a 20% "owner" and his dad owned the rest. They didn't charge enough to pay him enough to take care of his health insurance, so he had to quit and go work at CVS.

The whole town now knows the story, and how ugly it all went down when he "went on his own" and no one wants anything to do with him, at least not in a business manor (he apparently is still a salesman for them or something).

I had a customer a couple weeks ago choose me for $100 more on my quote for storefront graphics, because he was sick of dealing with the other two guys in town and how they handled his previous stuff. It's not about being the cheapest guy. Work the same amount of time as the other guys, make the same money, and have a life.

 

[Pat Whatley]

You're in a town with only three sign shops in a 50 mile radius and you made one shop $325,000 in profits?! Where is this magical land?

 

[jasonx]

stole their estimating programs (I designed and coded them myself from the ground up)

If they were paying you and you did the work then they own that. Well in Australia thats how it works. If you've taken that with you and started your own business you could be sued over here. Maybe it works differently in the states but I'm sure I read somwhere some Google or another company employee designed something in his own time while being employed and it was the property of the company he was working for because of the knowledge and resources he was afforded.

 

[briankb]

Nope it's the same here. Apparently he didn't take a basic business class in college. It's call "work for hire" and unless you have something contrary it's the law that stands for anything you produced as an employee.

Now if he did it at home and then brought it to work that's different but I expect it was not how this went down. And even so, without documentation, it would be easy for them to continue to claim copyright to the software he produced while working for his them.

 

[OlsonSigns601]

Possession is 9 tenths of the law.

If the company was paying you to write software, they own it.
If you wrote it and installed it while you worked for them, its gonna be hard to prove its not theirs.

Lessons you should have Learned:
1. Don't give your code away for free if you feel you should be compensated for your efforts.
2. Write code that requires service that only you can provide.

If its actually worth anything, it something you should be selling on a site like this.

 

[DynamicVinyl]

sorry this went so far off topic

i was quoting people and rebuttling to them. the reason of the thread was to ask if i should seek slander charges for them bad mouthing my business. i stopped working for them both over 3 yrs ago. the smaller one closed its doors and was absorbed by the other in the meantime.

I did write the job tracking software at home, and GAVE them USAGE Rights to it, i dont even use it myself. Use EstiMate. The other program they say i "stole" was their design software, a copy of SignLab, that went missing some 2 years after i left.....

Gino- you misunderstood me with the quote topic (my competitors give quotes at one price, and then charge 33% to 200% more than what they gave the customer for a quote)
and yes my prices are significantly lower, for example- I lettered a pickup with 1 color for $130 a simple 18"x24" black square, that the customer provided the vector image of. My competitor gave him a price on the same job for $350. And i will continue to do so because i can perform the jobs of 3 people at my competitors, and do so in my own shop. So my labor is lower, and i can do anything they can with the same quality or better, in half the time.

Coloradosigns- the 1 in my name has nothing to do with my marketing strategy, its merely a reference to my comparatively lower prices. The vista print reselling is goin great! i placed my 4th order of over $1000 dollars last week for various business'. i couldnt beat their prices or quality, so i joined them instead for a nice percentage of all sales, now i just add a design fee comparable to Vistaprint's.
and i'd like to ask you if you know what 'brand imaging' is???? the simplest way to put it is that its a consistent flow of the same logo throughout a business. not a reference to a logo at all. and it not Curlz font, for a designer you sure know your fonts

and lastly Pat- profit was the wrong word, i should have said grossed. that was based on what they brought in yearly all together, not profit only. sorry for that confusion. but yes, i did raise their gross income by over $100k annually. I got them sign contracts with Sugarloaf Ski Co. and Boyne Enterprises (they own like 8 ski resorts) and the entire university of maine college system.

 

[ProWraps]

this is gonna be a bumpy ride.

 

[jasonx]

You should speak to your lawyer if you want advice on if you can sue for slander.

Or go to Judge Judy.

 

[screener24242]

excuse me guys for stepping in here but if I may: OP, you are the epitome of why this industry sucks. Anyone with 500.00 can go to ebay and be in this industry.

I would kick your teeth in if I found out you were working for my competition on the side.

Take all this high brow "sign studio college marketing major" BS and make a business plan. Weeding vinyl and coding is not a business, that's the easy part. Are you a sign guy in business or a businessman that happens to make signs?

sorry man, don't want to be rude but I think most of us see our low ball competitors in you and are taking out a bit of frustration. I don't blame the old employers for trying to harm you. I would approach them and squash the beef asap or get ready to put the cricut up for sale.

 

[Mosh]

Here is the Mosh's business model!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PQ6335puOc

You can't hang, you close up. Not my problem you have payments and rent and I don't!!!

 

[Mosh]

lamendations of the women is
a bonus!!!

 

[HulkSmash]

First you said...

]finally, someone gets it. i was a marketing major in college. its not only a subliminal reference to cheap,[/B] but a reference to the dynamic part of my name. I not only do signage, i do brand imaging and minor advertising jobs.

Then...

Coloradosigns- the 1 in my name has nothing to do with my marketing strategy, its merely a reference to my comparatively lower prices. The vista print reselling is goin great! i placed my 4th order of over $1000 dollars last week for various business'. i couldnt beat their prices or quality, so i joined them instead for a nice percentage of all sales, now i just add a design fee comparable to Vistaprint's.
and i'd like to ask you if you know what 'brand imaging' is???? the simplest way to put it is that its a consistent flow of the same logo throughout a business. not a reference to a logo at all. and it not Curlz font, for a designer you sure know your fonts

it's OK we all contradict ourselves sometimes..as for wanting to be known as a low baller.. well i hope that works out for you... no really, i do.

As for you logo, sorry i didn't get a microscope to zoom into your avatar on the screen... but let's be honest it looks just as bad a curlz font.

And for vista print... i'm so glad things are working out for you with them. The most quality I ever got from them was a receipt a customer gave me to show me how much he paid.. man that thing was just a bit higher stock then their business cards....quality receipts over there...

Also 300k in yearly gross? How does a business survive making that little?


back to your issue. You were employed by a company and did work under them. Therefore no matter what you do in court you will lose. It's simple.. you'll pay more money out to lawyer and court fees. Just simply invest lawyer and court money money into your business and forget about them.

You said you coded the program at home? Let's be honest.. you didn't do that. Just move on and prove you're better... or... cheaper than them..

 

[Mosh]

If you don't owe money you can produce stuff for pennys on the dollar compaired to people who have equipment payments, rent, truck payments, house payments, stuff like that. Knock all that out of your business model and prices are pretty low. That is how I have done it for years. I love cry babies who can't compete. That is the name of the game THE PRICE!!!!

It all comes into living like no other, so then you can live like NO OTHER!!!

 

[GAC05]

That's not fair Mosh, none of us get paid by the government to not grow corn.



wayne k
guam usa