Office Depot has a large format printer? Good riddance.

[Jo Hill]

If you need to rent out a lift to do one banner installation. That job is not for you.
You will end up being to expensive compared to a shop that has one and can just swing over and screw it on the building "lickity split".
It's ok to just say no.

Honestly I’ll try to people please my customers so much sometimes I do you have a hard time saying no when there is some thing I don’t feel comfortable doing. I should learn to say no more often.

 

[ikarasu]

We have another company we work with that has a bucket truck. 90% of the time we just outsource the install to them and we get a bit of free money just setting it up.

Anytime it's something we want to install rather than contract... We itemize the quote. There's nothing wrong with a $900 quote to hang a banner... Is it high? Sure... Are you screwing the customer over because you didn't mention you could get it down b a guy with a truck for half the price? Not in my eyes.


I don't tell the guy who wants 5000 decals a week he could get them done offset printing for 1/10 the price that I charge to do it digital.

Quote -
1 hour travel time... XX dollars
30 minutes install time.... XX dollars
Bucket truck rental... $800


If they see the above, they're not going to think you're expensive.... They're going to see you need specialized equipment and that's why the price is so high. Then they can shop around if they want.

If we turned down every job because someome can do it cheaper than us, Billy with a printer in his garage with zero overhead and labor costs would be a millionaire.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

$800 to rent a bucket??? Geez that is high. Around here it's $250/day

 

[Val47]

$800 to rent a bucket??? Geez that is high. Around here it's $250/day

does that price include the operator? are you renting the truck and the person to run it?

 

[ikarasu]

$800 to rent a bucket??? Geez that is high. Around here it's $250/day

I think it's $3-600 depending on height you need here. The $800 was just an insane example. 90% of the time we subcontract it out to a sign company we work with who charges us $150 an hour.. Usually it's much cheaper for us to do it that way, unless it's a huge 5-8 hour install.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I think it's $3-600 depending on height you need here. The $800 was just an insane example. 90% of the time we subcontract it out to a sign company we work with who charges us $150 an hour.. Usually it's much cheaper for us to do it that way, unless it's a huge 5-8 hour install.

I charge $175 and do installs for local shops here in addition to my own work. I dont have any branding on my truck so they don't have to worry about how it looks having a different sign company show up to their customer

 

[DeadDoc]

I came from a hub location with OfficeMax back in the day, about 10x the size or more of a regular sized printing department. We were a third of the building but we did not have a latex but we did have a 44" wide Canon inkjet though. I left that store in 2007 if I remember correctly. We went through 100x more paper a year than my current print shop but didn't even make close to the same in sales. I refuse to do work with 99% of the office supply/kinkos out there due to the quality of workers. We actually had people who were truly trained and went to school for this.

From the P&L, the printing dept. was about the only reason these companies were afloat so I laughed whenever a store manager said we were sitting at the computer with a thumb up our bottoms, yet netting nothing but profit keeping the store floating.

 

[StarSign]

We can all come up with a price and why or why not it is right or fair. Give them a price and move on, they are closing soon anyway you can't really loose their business.

 

[OhioSigns]

Funny that this conversation comes up. A building right around the corner from us has been renovated and is about to open up as a new department store. We were never contacted to install any of their signage but received a call last Friday to put up a grand opening banner for them tonight around 9pm. Not sure if the company they were using had issues or what but they were happy that we could do it on such short notice. We are now setup as one of their vendors if they have any other signage in the area to be installed. Anyway, the banner is 5' x 20' and is a super simple install. I was going to price it to them at $500 and before I could give them a price they issued a PO for $525. The banner and hardware is provided so it's labor only for us. It's easy money but we have to do it around 9pm tonight before their grand opening tomorrow. We have a scissor lift and a bucket truck so with either one it's easy money.