Need Help Print cut decal pricing

[Isaac willams]

Need help with a simple formula for pricing my digital printed decals either I'm to high or too low

 

[Gino]

That's not a pricing formula problem, but a competition ordeal. You gotta get what YOU need to keep YOUR doors open. What Harry down the street gets shouldn't concern you..... or what Sarah gets, the next street over. Their overhead and general cost of operations is their problem. What anyone gets on this site will just be a guess or exaggerated quote. Plus, people buying this stuff over the Internet is not anyone you want want to bid against. They're just ridiculous.

 

[Isaac willams]

That's not a pricing formula problem, but a competition ordeal. You gotta get what YOU need to keep YOUR doors open. What Harry down the street gets shouldn't concern you..... or what Sarah gets, the next street over. Their overhead and general cost of operations is their problem. What anyone gets on this site will just be a guess or exaggerated quote. Plus, people buying this stuff over the Internet is not anyone you want want to bid against. They're just ridiculous.

I understand did a qoute for a customer for 200 decals size 3x5 my qoute was $164 he turned it down and said that's to high maybe if it was 500 decals

 

[equippaint]

You know what you need to charge better than your customer. Price sounds reasonable to me. I wouldnt haggle on something this cheap, my time is valuable and Im not wasting it going back and forth over $10 and theirs should be too.

 

[Isaac willams]

You know what you need to charge better than your customer. Price sounds reasonable to me. I wouldnt haggle on something this cheap, my time is valuable and Im not wasting it going back and forth over $10 and theirs should be too.

Thank you for the advice

 

[Tattoosleeve]

To reiterate what's already been said. We wrestled quoting against other shops for a while but you'll see some things and just scratch your head. We now have no problem telling people to take the cheaper price if it's way out of line and we'd be losing money on it. Even regular customers.

We had a circumstance where a regular repeat business customer had us quote a main entrance sign for their townhouse complex. Our quote was custom fabricated aluminium 6" square posts and 1/4" solid aluminium plate backer with routed composite face and raised routered numbers. Powdercoated. Came in around $1600-$1800 all said and done. Customer had a quote from a competitor for $600 and told us it was apples to apples and that everything was the same on both sign quotes. We told them, that all things being equal, there was no way we could even come close to matching the price so they should get the job done at the other shop. Drove by a couple months later and they had two $60 telspar posts with a routed composite oval with no backer and cut vinyl letters. Obviously not apples to apples. The sign looked super out of place and wasn't the fancy look the customer was going for. Because of the lack of backer plate the composite oval was bent within a couple weeks.

The key points to take from this are.

1. Customers have no idea where pricing should be or what materials are appropriate. We have people come in all the time thinking they are going to be able to wrap their entire vehicle for $800.
2. You have no idea what your competitor is using unless specifically stated on the quote. 3"x5" print cut decals are going to vary in price considerably if you are quoting on Avery 1105 and your competitor is quoting on economy vinyl. Pricing could even vary drastically between high quality Avery product and high quality 3M product just based on raw material cost differences.
3. Customers don't see the labour. It's actually annoying when customers know the cost of vinyl is so cheap relative to their finished product. They think you press a button and 200 decals just pop out of a machine without any effort. They don't see the design time, printer time, laminating time, cutter time, trimming time, etc.
4. You need to eat. We had a eureka moment when we were talking to one of our customers who had been running businesses for a long time about how busy we were and his response was "Yeah, but are you making money?"

 

[Gino]

Alright, so you have roughly just a little over 4 sq ft of vinyl and about $1. worth of ink. Laminate ??

Add you overhead and do all kindsa calculations and come up with what ya need to get..........

OR............ just have a shop minimum. Make it a firm thought out process and be willing to walk away. No one haggles over something so small. $125 is a good number.​

 

[Malkin]

This is really just a starting point, you should add to it as you go.

1st, you need to know your shop labor rate. I wont detail how to do that here, because I'm on mobile and I think there are many threads on it already.

2nd, figure out a basic minimum charge. How much you need to get to cover sales time, basic setup, production time, material waste, etc, for a small decal run equal to 1 sq ft.

Then figure how much you need to get for additional square feet, assuming that much of the overhead for the job is covered already by the 1st square foot. This would be material & markup, machine run time and ammortization, additional bench time to finish the order, etc.

Now you have your minimum charge (enforce it) and charge per additional foot.

For example: min charge is $50, additional is $7.50

1ft x 2ft decal is $57.50
2ft x 3ft decal is $87.50
4ft x 8ft decal is $282.50

Obviously have modifiers for different materials, or add-ons, like decal die cutting, or weeding.

Again, just a simple way to start consistently pricing.
TIP - don't give customers pricing "by the square foot". Many people will find ways to use it against you. Just quote per job, or per decal.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

. What Harry down the street gets shouldn't concern you..... or what Sarah gets, the next street over. Their overhead and general cost of operations is their problem.

I couldn't disagree more. You should know what your competition is pricing these at... This advise goes against the most basic business practice. Know what your competition is priceing these at and see where you want to be (cheapest, middle or most expensive). See if even offering the product at either of these teirs makes sense.

You can't make the same profit margin on every product. Some products make less, some make more and you can choose what you want to invest your time in.

Not knowing your competition is walking the street blind.

 

[TimToad]

I couldn't disagree more. You should know what your competition is pricing these at... This advise goes against the most basic business practice. Know what your competition is priceing these at and see where you want to be (cheapest, middle or most expensive). See if even offering the product at either of these teirs makes sense.

You can't make the same profit margin on every product. Some products make less, some make more and you can choose what you want to invest your time in.

Not knowing your competition is walking the street blind.

Without spending lots of time online checking and frequently double checking the pricing structure of folks like StickerGiant, etc. and then also querying your competition with fake quote requests, which is the only true way of learning what they charge, one does need to fully and accurately calculate your overhead and price things based on that along with any differences in quality, service, equipment, etc.

 

[unclebun]

Alright, so you have roughly just a little over 4 sq ft of vinyl and about $1. worth of ink. Laminate ??

Add you overhead and do all kindsa calculations and come up with what ya need to get..........

OR............ just have a shop minimum. Make it a firm thought out process and be willing to walk away. No one haggles over something so small. $125 is a good number.​

A 3"x5" decal is just over a tenth of a square foot. Multiply that by 200 and you get a lot more than 4 sq ft. Maybe you were the one quoting against him?

 

[Isaac willams]

To reiterate what's already been said. We wrestled quoting against other shops for a while but you'll see some things and just scratch your head. We now have no problem telling people to take the cheaper price if it's way out of line and we'd be losing money on it. Even regular customers.

We had a circumstance where a regular repeat business customer had us quote a main entrance sign for their townhouse complex. Our quote was custom fabricated aluminium 6" square posts and 1/4" solid aluminium plate backer with routed composite face and raised routered numbers. Powdercoated. Came in around $1600-$1800 all said and done. Customer had a quote from a competitor for $600 and told us it was apples to apples and that everything was the same on both sign quotes. We told them, that all things being equal, there was no way we could even come close to matching the price so they should get the job done at the other shop. Drove by a couple months later and they had two $60 telspar posts with a routed composite oval with no backer and cut vinyl letters. Obviously not apples to apples. The sign looked super out of place and wasn't the fancy look the customer was going for. Because of the lack of backer plate the composite oval was bent within a couple weeks.

The key points to take from this are.

1. Customers have no idea where pricing should be or what materials are appropriate. We have people come in all the time thinking they are going to be able to wrap their entire vehicle for $800.
2. You have no idea what your competitor is using unless specifically stated on the quote. 3"x5" print cut decals are going to vary in price considerably if you are quoting on Avery 1105 and your competitor is quoting on economy vinyl. Pricing could even vary drastically between high quality Avery product and high quality 3M product just based on raw material cost differences.
3. Customers don't see the labour. It's actually annoying when customers know the cost of vinyl is so cheap relative to their finished product. They think you press a button and 200 decals just pop out of a machine without any effort. They don't see the design time, printer time, laminating time, cutter time, trimming time, etc.
4. You need to eat. We had a eureka moment when we were talking to one of our customers who had been running businesses for a long time about how busy we were and his response was "Yeah, but are you making money?"

 

[Isaac willams]

Thank you for that now i know if I'm in the right ball park and they wanna go somewhere else than so be it

 

[TimToad]

I understand did a qoute for a customer for 200 decals size 3x5 my qoute was $164 he turned it down and said that's to high maybe if it was 500 decals

We have a fairly straight forward calculation system for simple shape decals with full color printing, the choice of laminated or not and transfer taped or not. This only works for our pricing system based on doing annual checks on our overhead and is subject to adjustment, large quantity discounts, etc. The numbers I'll use as an example aren't our prices, just an example. you'll have to figure out your own prices.

First, figure out your overhead influenced price per square foot for the particular material and finishing being requested. It also depends on your equipment. If you have a print/cut setup where you can do the decals as one step including perf cut, you'll save labor time cutting them up by hand. It all depends on your client, how long they expect the decals to be in service and how they will be distributed.

There a 144 square inches in a square foot. Your decal sample is 15 square inches and will yield 9.6 decals per square foot.

It all depends on your client, how long they expect the decals to be used and how they will be distributed.

Example:

A. - $8.00 per square foot for calendared media (ij35c), not laminated and not transfer taped, hand cut in 54" wide strips.

B. - $9.00 per square foot for calendared media (ij35c), not laminated or transfer taped then cut individually on the printer.

C. - $10.00 per square foot for calendared media (ij35c), laminated and hand cut in 54" wide strips.

D. - $11.00 per square foot for calendared media (ij35c), laminated and cut individually on the printer.

E. - $12.00 per square foot for calendared media (ij35c), laminated and hand cut individually.

Decal shoppers are notorious for price shopping. We don't like to waste a lot of time on their quotes, so we use these formulas and adjust a little for large quantities and the artwork being used.

 

[Sign Works]

Alright, so you have roughly just a little over 4 sq ft of vinyl and about $1. worth of ink. Laminate ??

Add you overhead and do all kindsa calculations and come up with what ya need to get..........

OR............ just have a shop minimum. Make it a firm thought out process and be willing to walk away. No one haggles over something so small. $125 is a good number.​

Gino, you hittin the sauce a bit early huh?

3" x 5" = 15" x 200 = 3,000" ÷ 144 = 20.83

 

[ams]

For regular calendared vinyl printed and laminated, I charge $7.50 / sq. ft. When I price customers say $1.50 for a bumper stick and they tell me do it for $0.75, I tell them to go somewhere else. You really really don't want the cheap jobs. You will break even or go in the red. They will keep coming to you for cheap crap and chew you down on your prices. I was stuck in that loop for about two years with two sign companies, kept telling me they can't make any money on it. I fell for it for awhile, was doing banners at like $2.50 / sq. ft. But the past few years, it's take it or leave it. I set my own prices and won't haggle. If it's a really good repeat customer or a friend, I may knock a few bucks off, but cheap jobs aren't worth doing, because it takes up all your time and leaves your biggest jobs sitting in limbo.

By the way the cheap jobs always take more time than the regular jobs, the customer is always more picky.

 

[Gino]

A 3"x5" decal is just over a tenth of a square foot. Multiply that by 200 and you get a lot more than 4 sq ft. Maybe you were the one quoting against him?

Yep, I goofed that one. I was thinking 10 up and 4 over. Quickly figuring I transposed and thought 50 up. Oops.

 

[equippaint]

What ams said is spot on, cheap people keep coming back for more cheap stuff.
Another thing to consider is even at good margins, it takes a big pile of $100 jobs to make it so be careful putting a ton of time in chasing them. Theyre great fill ins if they dont waste a bunch of time