Washers expensive? It's sad that you calculate 3 cents as a big factor. Nobody has the time to research something two cents lower and have it shipped in and everything. Are your signs priced down to the exact penny like $16.22 or are you rounding up? If your normal sign is $40, charge $43 and move on.
The "Washers Expensive" was a humorous title for someone using plastic bottle caps as washers..not that I was complaining about 9 cents...until I found some on online for 3. See AMS, when you start making more then one sign a year things start to add up. If your buying 20 boxes of washers a year at $10 a box and your able to get them for $3 I think it's worth the 5 mins it took to find them online, or about the same amount of time it took you to write your last post. That and it lead me down to road of reducing my costs of all the other fasteners I used regularly. I think I saved about $500 for a years worth of hardware...not bad for less then an hour spent finding the hardware and ordering it all. Not to mention the time I save not driving to the hardware store or running the risk of running out on a job site because now I bought packs of 1000 instead of 75 or 100 fasteners.
The cost of my fasteners and other hardware isn't a factor in how I price signs or installs. My time is a big factor but not the $5-$10 worth of fasteners when your talking about hundreds or thousands on a sign order. The hardware costs DOES come to mind when I have to keep buying them.
BTW, I'd rather have my stuff "shipped in and everything" instead of me taking time to drive out to a store and buy something.. but then again my time is worth something to me so... maybe someone will find this info helpful... looks like it didn't apply to you though.
