Texas_Signmaker I agree it could certainly be a bit more inclusive. They list travel charges but simply the same as your hourly rate. I would like to know rates for bucket truck rates as well.
Its always been meant to be used as a guide and not some rigid must do thing for the average, commercial, non-electric sign shop in conjunction with the overhead calculator and adjusted to your local geographical conditions and other factors. By creating four shop rates, it should cover everybody from a one person shop in a smaller town to a larger shop in a big urban area.
All common sense stuff and tested over many, many years.
I wish every hack out there underbidding their local market had one of these in their pocket at all times and used the overhead calculator every so often. I don't think our industry problems are related to most folks overcharging for their work, but the exact opposite. The large, formerly wholesale only trade shops and online storefronts turning everything we do into a lowest common denominator square footage price and race to the bottom and aren't taking the intrinsic value of the advertising we offer into anything. They are doing more to harm our industry than any of us using this or any other pricing guide. As more and more traditional offset and web printers look for additional revenue streams to offset their losses by the very same pressures they are getting killed by, we'll see even more low cost suppliers polluting the marketplace with subpar pricing based on business model that used to do things in much larger quantities than the typical sign shop operates on.
Its prices are based on a combination of the submissions to the monthly design/price studies and annual surveys of selected subscribers and other industry participants. Just like it has been for the last 30+ years.
Considering SignCraft magazine represents the best of our industry and receives regular input from some of the best, long lasting craftspeople in our field with many decades of experience, I put more trust in anything coming out of them than many other less qualified sources.
There could be a couple threads or more on the need for folks to see the larger picture and the forest for the trees beyond next month's bills.
We lose jobs to folks pretending they do flatbed printing to the clients and its obvious that all they are doing is going to Signs365 or others, playing middle man, marking up the products a little bit and killing the market for those who actually want to be signmakers who employ people, pay family level wages and respect the craft and not just deal makers out for the quick buck to the detriment of the local market. Every so often a client comes back and tells us the pricing that they were offered and it is usually some easily calculated amount that puts a few dollars in the competitor's pocket but does not reflect what the signs are really worth, which should always be a goal to strive for.
If a double sided 18"x24" coroplast yard sign and H Stake is actually worth $24 in its production, equipment, labor, overhead costs and its advertising value and some shortsighted sign company buys it from a wholesaler for $5 because the wholesale supplier buys boxcar loads of coroplast, ink, H Stakes, locates where wages and benefits are low and has a $150,000 machine to get an ROI as quickly as possible on, then the shortsided shop sells it for $6 for doing nothing but being a middle man, it pollutes the entire market for everyone else trying to produce things themselves. It also creates the perception in the eyes of customers that those of us making the investments in shops, equipment, employees and a long term outlook as gougers who are trying to rip everyone off which is the even greater harm.
