1300 unique hits on my website the last 3 days and I usually get 100 in a whole week. I knew the publicity was coming from somewhere.
To address the subject of this post, I'm baffled at the responses. Without going into details on a public forum about material costs, etc, jfiscus is dead on. It takes less than 7 sq ft of 651, and just under an hour start to finish to run this job. Letters are all arial caps, 1" tall and weed with one pull.
$8 per sq ft is a little (not much though) under our normal rate for simple to weed decals, but this is a special. It does what it is supposed to do and opens the door to new customers who order projects at our normal prices. BTW, I generally earn a $50/hr shoprate on top of materials, for cut vinyl, not $7.25/hr. I feel that's what my time, and investment in equipment is worth, and my prices reflect that.
Even when I was working out of the house,(we've been renting a space in an industrial park for a few months now) I've never lowballed, and let every one of our customers know, we're not the cheapest shop in town, and could care less what the others are charging. We do work to pay our bills, not theirs.
To those who said order 10,000, or sit back and sub your work out to us, please do. It'll help us pay for the second shop we're getting ready to sign on in a more visible location than the one we're renting now.
To the other local shops on this thread who I believe knew exactly who this was to begin with, concentrate on getting business in your door in these tough economic times, and less on our prices. It'd be a better use of your time. Put more ads on craigslist or something. If we're as bad as you say, then obviously this last year was a fluke, and we can't possibly make it another one losing money the way you say we are, so no worries for you, you're the pros.
(BTW, didn't I see the original poster of this thread offering printed banners in the $2/ft range on your site a while back? I heard a couple of the other shops in town call this lowballing, lol. Maybe if we're revoking forum memberships...)
In all reality, we'll continue to do our thing, profit, and add to our list of satisfied customers. I've never felt the need to try to manage, or critisize anyone else's business. The customers will sort that out, and buy where they want. Our prices are fine
Oh, and to the clip-art sign shop comment, if our customer would rather tap into our clipart collection, which we have invested <$100 in total, and save money, than take advantage of our $50/hr design rate, why wouldn't we give them what they want? We're here for them first and foremost. Satisfying our ego's is way down the list.
