Frustrating

[HulkSmash]

3m preferred, no offence but that means nothing.

 

[ThinkRight]

3m preferred, no offence but that means nothing.

Stop being a hater !

 

[HulkSmash]

Stop being a hater !

not being a hater. Fellers, 3m, off brand random class..

doesn't matter. Colorado has a ton of 3m preferred, it has never stopped us.

I don't have a week to suck up to 3m, and pay like 5k to get certified, sorry.

 

[Gino]

Okay, if you get the job and print it out two weeks before it comes in, you have 1,2 or 5 days to let it outgas before you laminate. Printing and laminating is not part of installing. Anyway, not in my book. Our printers are going pretty much from morning til night almost everyday, so putting something in which will take three or four hours to print ahead of time is still time, but not spent on that particular vehicle. When the truck comes in… it’s supposed to be clean from top to bottom, but you still need to clean all the jams, crevices and little nooks and crannies for proper adhesion. That’s about two hours. If it’s only you and you don’t have an extra pair of hands or a little monkey, I’d still see it as being the first day pretty much all the easy stuff, with the next day being the trimming and hard to get at places. Your example of the 2012 caravan sounds like about 12 or so hours. That’s exactly what I said to you earlier. However, I wouldn’t split it over two days. I’d try my hardest to get that a straight 13 hours and get it done. You do this enough, you will build up business that by doing these kinda hours, you’ll be forced to bring in another monkey and you’ll get these late nights to go away and only have a nominal paycheck in its place.

The rest of your complaints are basically nothing to do with your shop’s capabilities of wrapping faster or better….. it’s just not. There’s always gonna be someone faster and cheaper than you and someone slower and more expensive than you. You need to get what you need to keep your doors open, but it now sounds like we’re on the same page. If you’re doing that other truck in 12/15 hours, that’s what I was saying. I don’t count filling up our shop with vehicles while we’re printing their stuff, unless it’s small badges or pictures here and there…. just not wraps.


No one said printing, waiting on the lam to outgas and then installing had to take place all at the same time. We rarely print while the truck is here because that’s a gross waste of time. When we die-cut vinyl, we do it once the truck is here for final measurements, but in a wrap, you have that down pat long before the truck ever gets to your place.

 

[Joe Diaz]

Our prices cover our material costs, our overhead, our salaries and what is needed to grow our business. If we were to get in a habit of lowering our prices as a favor when someone asks, then we wouldn't be making enough money to fully cover our costs, make a living and grow our business. If you are struggling for work, that's one thing, but lets' say you cave and get paid 90% of what you normally ask for because it's better than nothing. If you are like us and most other businesses, you want to create professional relationships. You want that customer coming back for more, so you aren't struggling for work. A repeat client base is key. If that customer who received a discount comes back for more work, they will continue to expect 90% of what you should make. They may even want it for 80% since they know you will budge. So then you are in the awkward position of providing 90 or 80% of the quality so that you are not losing money, or getting paid less than what you should be making.

Honestly we don't do many wraps at all. I've been hired to design more wraps for other shops than we have actually produced in house. In our market most people have no idea what wraps cost. They expect them to cost $1000 or less. There are actually "shops" nearby that do wraps for that which perpetuates the idea that they not only should cost so little, but that the quality of wraps are shoddy too, since these shops have to cut corners to even come close to those prices. So it's not in our company's best interest to go after those jobs. We do work that we can profit from. Our market doesn't allow us to profit from being a wrap shop.

 

[WB]

3m preferred, no offence but that means nothing.

Probably doesn't mean anything in the US since they were handing them out like cereal box toys at one point. I'm pretty sure 3M doesn't allow 3rd parties to certify their installers anymore. There's only about 70 people in Canada that are preferred and maybe it doesn't mean anything to you but I know it's making me $.

like I said before I'm by no means the fastest installer or the best but my wraps don't come back.

 

[Gino]

Joe, I'm not sure if you're referring to any of my comments, but I wasn't saying anything about giving discounts to 1st time buyers.

I was aiming more at becoming better or more efficient in one's business model.

I first thought the other guy was doing shoddy work, but WB told me he.... and his competitor both do quality work. Neither place is being asked to do any design work so that's not part of the equation either.

Let's say for instance, company 'A' is taking 20 hours to complete a job and charging accordingly to make money and grow their business, that's a good thing. However, should company 'B' be capable of doing the same work in 15 or 16 hours, they can either charge more an hour and still be cheaper.... or keep at their normal rate they need and take every job coming down the pike.

Our business revolves around our repeat customers. If it wasn't for them, we'd lose a great deal of our work. I'll bet 85% of our work is repeat customers and some of them for 25 to 30 years. They keep us honest by bidding us out from time to time, but we are fair to everyone. The market value is not cheapened around here by us, but by the hacks and other pitiful shops trying to steal work. Although we have some very talented people and top notch equipment, we could, if we wanted, undercut everyone, but that wouldn't solve anything. We're just capable of doing things better and faster than our average competitor. Therefore, we are working smarter and not working less, but probably more, so we're not only maintaining our shop needs, but we're making more in the long run.


Have I ever lowered our prices to get a job ?? Sure and everyone else has, too, if they know they still can meet all of their requirements and still satisfy the customer. Many of our repeat customers receive nice discounts and even favors. Business is business and we all need to meet our bottom line at the end of the day, but I hardly think anyone here on s101 or any other kind of business has not done some good PR to keep a good customer happy.

 

[WB]

Okay, if you get the job and print it out two weeks before it comes in, you have 1,2 or 5 days to let it outgas before you laminate. Printing and laminating is not part of installing. Anyway, not in my book. Our printers are going pretty much from morning til night almost everyday, so putting something in which will take three or four hours to print ahead of time is still time, but not spent on that particular vehicle. When the truck comes in… it’s supposed to be clean from top to bottom, but you still need to clean all the jams, crevices and little nooks and crannies for proper adhesion. That’s about two hours. If it’s only you and you don’t have an extra pair of hands or a little monkey, I’d still see it as being the first day pretty much all the easy stuff, with the next day being the trimming and hard to get at places. Your example of the 2012 caravan sounds like about 12 or so hours. That’s exactly what I said to you earlier. However, I wouldn’t split it over two days. I’d try my hardest to get that a straight 13 hours and get it done. You do this enough, you will build up business that by doing these kinda hours, you’ll be forced to bring in another monkey and you’ll get these late nights to go away and only have a nominal paycheck in its place.

The rest of your complaints are basically nothing to do with your shop’s capabilities of wrapping faster or better….. it’s just not. There’s always gonna be someone faster and cheaper than you and someone slower and more expensive than you. You need to get what you need to keep your doors open, but it now sounds like we’re on the same page. If you’re doing that other truck in 12/15 hours, that’s what I was saying. I don’t count filling up our shop with vehicles while we’re printing their stuff, unless it’s small badges or pictures here and there…. just not wraps.


No one said printing, waiting on the lam to outgas and then installing had to take place all at the same time. We rarely print while the truck is here because that’s a gross waste of time. When we die-cut vinyl, we do it once the truck is here for final measurements, but in a wrap, you have that down pat long before the truck ever gets to your place.

Sounds like you have more then 1 person doing the work.. I understand that each step is separate if you have staff but when you have 1 person doing the work it's 1 job and if it take me 4 days to complete produce that job from start to finish then to me that's a 4 day job because I'm doing it all. I had a monkey but had to lay him off at x-mas. Probably going to call him in the next couple weeks but until then it's all me.. If I had 2-3 full wraps lined up every couple weeks then I could justify speeding up the process.

I can do a Tradeshow booth in 1 day and get $3000 for it but unfortunately I can't pick and choose my jobs when they walk in the door. All most makes vehicles not worth doing when you weigh the costs.

 

[WB]

Joe, I'm not sure if you're referring to any of my comments, but I wasn't saying anything about giving discounts to 1st time buyers.

I was aiming more at becoming better or more efficient in one's business model.

I first thought the other guy was doing shoddy work, but WB told me he.... and his competitor both do quality work. Neither place is being asked to do any design work so that's not part of the equation either.

Let's say for instance, company 'A' is taking 20 hours to complete a job and charging accordingly to make money and grow their business, that's a good thing. However, should company 'B' be capable of doing the same work in 15 or 16 hours, they can either charge more an hour and still be cheaper.... or keep at their normal rate they need and take every job coming down the pike.

Our business revolves around our repeat customers. If it wasn't for them, we'd lose a great deal of our work. I'll bet 85% of our work is repeat customers and some of them for 25 to 30 years. They keep us honest by bidding us out from time to time, but we are fair to everyone. The market value is not cheapened around here by us, but by the hacks and other pitiful shops trying to steal work. Although we have some very talented people and top notch equipment, we could, if we wanted, undercut everyone, but that wouldn't solve anything. We're just capable of doing things better and faster than our average competitor. Therefore, we are working smarter and not working less, but probably more, so we're not only maintaining our shop needs, but we're making more in the long run.


Have I ever lowered our prices to get a job ?? Sure and everyone else has, too, if they know they still can meet all of their requirements and still satisfy the customer. Many of our repeat customers receive nice discounts and even favors. Business is business and we all need to meet our bottom line at the end of the day, but I hardly think anyone here on s101 or any other kind of business has not done some good PR to keep a good customer happy.

Our product was the same (supposedly not here to judge) but they had the Complete design in at the same price. We wanted extra for out design that the customer did not want to pay.

 

[Gino]

Yes, we do have a few people here. However, you can still print and laminate your vinyl a week or so ahead of time. Producing prints is constantly being cranked out, but you don't need to keep their truck in the shop while it's going on clogging up floor space to do more profitable work while printing is taking place, let alone curing time for vinyl.

If you can make $3,000 a day on a trade show, then why don't you do a marketing program trying to get that which is far more profitable.

We still advertise and do all the same work we used to do, but we've changed a few gears in the last 10 years or so and moved more towards areas which are more profitable for us, while still servicing the ones which aren't as profitable, but still good to us.

Ya gotta step back from time to time and look at yourself and make some adjustments or fine tune something and that might mean moving in a different direction.

Here's an easy one, before printers and crap, you couldn't do a wrap, unless you were a good painter and airbrush artist. What did you specialize in at that time ??

I was doing van murals and turning out trucks like crazy back in the late 70's and 80's. I'd get up to $7,500 easily for a van conversion job without touching the insides. Took a week from sanding the entire truck don until the final clears went on. The most I got for a van mural was around $10,500 back in the late 70's.

Now, all the vinyl and wrap jockeys fall from the sky and suddenly revolutionize a really good thing. Now anyone can do this, but you're lucky if the job lasts more than 5 years. Our stuff would last 10, 15 years without a problem. They get $3,500 and we got $5,500 to $7,500..... 30 years ago, so who is really making a killing ?? This whole industry has been ruined, but if you roll with the punches, set you goal in another direction, you can still win. Ya just can't watch business going by and keep coming up with lame excuses. It will work for a while, but ya need to re-invent yourself if necessary.