Is my pricing too high for printed vinyl?

[caribmike]

I've had a request to print a prepared race car wrap file of 164 square feet. No laminate, just IJ35 on my latex. It was professionally designed so probably 30 minutes of set-up. I didn't get the job the second year in a row (which is fine) because I would not match or get within a little bit of $2.72 square foot. I told the customer that if I sent it to my lowest wholesaler (Signs365) I would paying more than per square foot.

Am I crazy expensive or is she crazy cheap? I would think pricing for this should be a minimum or $4 a square foot - of which I was higher than that.

I agree with Gino...let your competitors do the low/no margin work while you take the profitable business.

 

[Stacey K]

I was just thinking, is having your logo on their car a plus or a negative?

I never do. It gives the impression you are a “sponsor” and you will have 27 phone calls for “sponsorship opportunities” = free


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[victor bogdanov]

In this case, you're dead balls wrong. Those 20 shops near you...... ever wonder why one or two get top buck, some get close to it and most of them are scurrying around for peanuts ?? Because some demand their prices and the others take whatever they can get. Sounds like you and your 4 printers are on the bottom side of things. In your case, you're either satisfied, lazy or just not up to that level. Simply having lotsa toys doesn't make you a sign shop. It's what runs those toys which dictates the final results.

There are 16 fastsigns within a 15 min drive from me. I'd say they are on the higher end of pricing due to their name and very good locations (although very expensive rent).

I'm very happy with my work to profit ratio, just finished a 50k sq ft print for $1.5sqft on 22 cent per sq ft media. I'll take that anytime

 

[petepaz]

I would gladly print a ready file for $2.72 per sq ft with no laminate. that's 50 cents materials/ink per sq ft. 164 sq ft = $300 profit for 20min of print time on my Colorado. On my Roland that's probably an hr of print time and a little more ink cost but still profitable.

you get ink and cast vinyl (air release wrap vinyl)for $.50 a square foot???

there are always acceptations that can be made on jobs if need be but overall you need to get a certain amount to pay your bills. we are not in business to lose money

 

[victor bogdanov]

you get ink and cast vinyl (air release wrap vinyl)for $.50 a square foot???

there are always acceptations that can be made on jobs if need be but overall you need to get a certain amount to pay your bills. we are not in business to lose money

the vinyl in question is IJ35

 

[Notarealsignguy]

If you can't make money then at least make friends.

 

[Gino]

If ya wanna do something for free, do something ya like...... go fishing.

 

[signheremd]

Wrap cast vinyl $0.97 per square foot - $1.02 per square foot. Add 15% for waste (leading edge, no one prints all the way to the edge...) and you are at about $1.15. Now add ink cost - let's say $0.30. So $1.45 per square foot pure material cost without laminate or labor, overhead, depreciation, or profit. The old rule is 25% material cost, 25% labor, 25% overhead etc., 25% profit. In this case we would be talking $5.80 as a fair price.

Intermediate wrap vinyl $0.43 per square foot. Add 15% and you are at $0.50. Add ink - let's say $0.30. So $0.80 pure material cost without laminate. 25% rule and we are at $3.20 per square foot as a fair price.

But notice profit goes from $1.45 per square foot to $0.80 = a $0.65 per square foot difference.

The job also brings in the same percentage less for labor, overhead and depreciation so $1.30 less on those as well total. Total difference in profit and expenses is $1.95 per square foot. ($4.35 per square foot for profit, labor, overhead - compared to $2.40 for same... material cost removed.) So just comparing Premium versus Intremediate material, the contribution to expenses and profits drops by almost 50%...

Now if you do the job at $2.72 per square foot, you are dropping $0.48 per square foot. Your material, labor and overhead are the same, so it must come out of profit. So we drop from $0.80 to $0.48 per square foot which = a profit now of $0.32 per square foot.

At 100 square feet you go from making $80 to $32 using Intermediate. If the job is down in wrap cast, even without lamination, profit would have been $145. So spending your time courting bottom dollar jobs nets you $113 less - you need 4.5 on these jobs to equal one better job.

Gino is right.

 

[netsol]

and what is the profit margin on rejected proposals? i always have trouble calculating that

seriously, though i see your point

my only point has been, that stacey might have wanted to try this out on the new printer,

you have all made clear that this is probably an area of the business NO ONE wants to be in,

i learned something today, in that regard

 

[Notarealsignguy]

There are 16 fastsigns within a 15 min drive from me. I'd say they are on the higher end of pricing due to their name and very good locations (although very expensive rent).

I'm very happy with my work to profit ratio, just finished a 50k sq ft print for $1.5sqft on 22 cent per sq ft media. I'll take that anytime

No laminate or ink? 50k sqft is a decent amount of wear on a printer in my eyes plus 75 rolls of material to be loaded, unloaded, assumingly trimmed, electric, ink etc etc. The GP looks nice until you look at everything else.

 

[vondegroot]

IJ35 w/o lam will be fun to install!

 

[victor bogdanov]

No laminate or ink? 50k sqft is a decent amount of wear on a printer in my eyes plus 75 rolls of material to be loaded, unloaded, assumingly trimmed, electric, ink etc etc. The GP looks nice until you look at everything else.

no laminate, ink came out to 9 cents per sq/ft on the colorado 1650. No one had to work overtime, so did not cost me anything extra in labor. We would've been here with or without the order.

This customer usually pays half the price I charged them (one of the largest retailers in the country) but their preferred supplier had material stuck at sea.

I was also considering outsourcing and had whole sellers willing to go under $1.5/sq ft so I know my pricing was profitable

 

[Stacey K]

The thing about racing is there's always next year LOL

I've only been doing printing in-house for 1.5 months so I don't have a good grasp quite yet on labor and expenses outside of material expenses. These are things I need to figure out to be able to make a more informed decision - that's why I appreciate all the responses.

I should really do some price checking in my area for these larger quantities. I have the smaller ones figured out, but not thee larger jobs.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

Radio stations are the same way. We had a contract with one to provide polos for staff and decal up a van and a motorhome. In return we got the back of the van for our ad, advertising on their radio station ( that nobody listened to) and they did the 'game of the week' for local high school games for both the season, playoffs and finals and we would set up a booth at the games. CIF (the governing body for high school sports around here) wouldn't let them do the playoff games which are the ones we really wanted. At that point we found out that the station didn't have permission to do the games at all. I was able to get them to give me half of the value of what we supplied to them even though those last 4 games were worth then entire value of the contract. The difference is a couple hundred people coming to regular season games and several thousand for playoff games.

Never again.

They were trying to charge you rate card.... no one pays that ..not even 50%

 

[truckgraphics]

This is not really a wrap. It's just sticking contact paper on a car that will look fine from 100 feet away.

If someone came to me with real artwork that could be put in the machine and printed at $2.72/ft. and our costs were 60 cents a foot, then maybe? It's a little light, because of the depreciation on the machine, and our overhead, but it's not completely crazy. I'd probably try to get a bit more, but would also consider how busy we were at the time.

But no one ever comes to me with camera ready wrap art. Never! I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong!

Also, if someone buys 164 sq. ft. of IJ35 at $2.72, I never want to see them again, at least until they order more. They are probably going to complain its near impossible to put on because it's flimsy without an overlaminate. Then they'll complain it doesn't look like paint. Especially as IJ35 seems to be on the satin side. (Only bought one roll, supposedly glossy and was kind of disappointed with this. Does it come in a true gloss? I digress.)

But, if the buyer understands that all we're going to do is print the material and hand it to them, then $2.72 a foot could be fair. But it never happens that way. At least for us. I would want to pad that price a bit to account for the unexpected, which we expect.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Cheap customers are the gift that keeps on giving. I let a few slide through every now and yet it never fails that they always are the same PITA as the last one you swore off. They get their moneys worth, if you have any profit in it they will find a way to suck it out of you.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

no laminate, ink came out to 9 cents per sq/ft on the colorado 1650. No one had to work overtime, so did not cost me anything extra in labor. We would've been here with or without the order.

This customer usually pays half the price I charged them (one of the largest retailers in the country) but their preferred supplier had material stuck at sea.

I was also considering outsourcing and had whole sellers willing to go under $1.5/sq ft so I know my pricing was profitable

I'd take that too, nothing wrong with that.

 

[Stacey K]

This is not really a wrap. It's just sticking contact paper on a car that will look fine from 100 feet away.

If someone came to me with real artwork that could be put in the machine and printed at $2.72/ft. and our costs were 60 cents a foot, then maybe? It's a little light, because of the depreciation on the machine, and our overhead, but it's not completely crazy. I'd probably try to get a bit more, but would also consider how busy we were at the time.

But no one ever comes to me with camera ready wrap art. Never! I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong!

Also, if someone buys 164 sq. ft. of IJ35 at $2.72, I never want to see them again, at least until they order more. They are probably going to complain its near impossible to put on because it's flimsy without an overlaminate. Then they'll complain it doesn't look like paint. Especially as IJ35 seems to be on the satin side. (Only bought one roll, supposedly glossy and was kind of disappointed with this. Does it come in a true gloss? I digress.)

But, if the buyer understands that all we're going to do is print the material and hand it to them, then $2.72 a foot could be fair. But it never happens that way. At least for us. I would want to pad that price a bit to account for the unexpected, which we expect.

Now you have me thinking...if there's no laminate you would almost have to mask it, right?

 

[Boudica]

Now you have me thinking...if there's no laminate you would almost have to mask it, right?

Depends on how big they are...

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Now you have me thinking...if there's no laminate you would almost have to mask it, right?

IJ35 won't conform real well and with a full bleed/no laminate, the edges will be curling. Plus when it sticks it sticks, not like controltac or most other wrap media. It would be miserable. Laminate would help but calendared laminate is usually less conformable too. IJ40/8518 would be a "cheap" wrap IMO. $7-8/sq ft no install is about where I'd be