Volume discount?

[TheSnowman]

Golly gee, yippee! ... I spent $25K for this rig so I could make banners cheap or even free.

Yea, he works for free. It's unreal. Every customer that's come in lately wanting me to price something he's priced, I just tell them he's the lowest and works for free, and I'm not sure how he stays in business. He'll do that for ONE not just for a mass order! The kicker is, they come to me because they feel like HIS price is too high. It's unreal. I'm just sticking to my guns hoping he's gone. I need him like I need a hemorrhoid.

 

[Flame]

To some clients, the dependability of the vendor (you), the quality of your product and a reasonable delivery time is more important than the absolute lowest price.

Lovely speech, but ain't how the real world works in this scenario. Selling 200 banners at the same price as 1 is ridiculous. I could print 200 banners off at 70% off my regular 1 banner price and STILL be just grinning, as it'd be like printing money.

 

[SurfaceSigns]

Lovely speech, but ain't how the real world works in this scenario. Selling 200 banners at the same price as 1 is ridiculous. I could print 200 banners off at 70% off my regular 1 banner price and STILL be just grinning, as it'd be like printing money.

Finally, someone that is dealing in reality! As single banner, we'd be about $200. for an order of 200, I could sell them for 50% off and still have a profit into the 5 figures, even if I used a trade printer, saving me all the production work.

 

[bob]

If you use a proper pricing model you don't have to figure in arbitrary volume discounts. The pricing model should automatically accommodate them.

In my shop if I were to do one 4x6 banner it would be ~$183.00, for 200 they would be ~$165.00 per copy. Best I can do. There is a certain minimum rate for less than that I will not work.

Regardless of there being only one setup, there's 200 banners to finish by hand, that's 4000 feet of edges to finish, 1600 to 2000 grommets to set, depending, 1200 linear feet of media to wrangle, that would eight or nine 150' rolls, and ~4800 square feet of ink to spray, here that would be about 5 or 6 sets of ink cartridges, depending. If someone is willing to work their butts off for less, have at it. If it takes X time to make one, it takes 200*X time to make 200. These are custom goods involving hand work, not something extruded by a machine somewhere.

Moreover, I do this stuff because I enjoy doing it. Making 200 of anything other than perhaps printing and cutting a bunch of small decals ceases to be fun early on.

 

[MikePro]

bob, i get that there's still the multiplier of effort involved... but to work with a client, produce the work order, order the material, setup a print file, load the material, make sure you're printing the right colors, and whatnot does take time as well and only has to be done once no matter how many copies your running.
Agreed that there's no reason to shave charges of production beyond that point, but my "one setup" comment just points out that there is always room for "pencil sharpening" with large orders tucked away somewhere and worth offering the incentive to your client.

 

[binki]

while it depends on your costs if you are doing the same thing 200 times you should get really good at early on in the project. you can also figure out what it would cost to source it out and do other work while these are being done and whatever profit you make is extra spiff with no effort on your part.

 

[Pat Whatley]

If you use a proper pricing model you don't have to figure in arbitrary volume discounts. The pricing model should automatically accommodate them.

In my shop if I were to do one 4x6 banner it would be ~$183.00, for 200 they would be ~$165.00 per copy. Best I can do. There is a certain minimum rate for less than that I will not work.

Regardless of there being only one setup, there's 200 banners to finish by hand, that's 4000 feet of edges to finish, 1600 to 2000 grommets to set, depending, 1200 linear feet of media to wrangle, that would eight or nine 150' rolls, and ~4800 square feet of ink to spray, here that would be about 5 or 6 sets of ink cartridges, depending. If someone is willing to work their butts off for less, have at it. If it takes X time to make one, it takes 200*X time to make 200. These are custom goods involving hand work, not something extruded by a machine somewhere.

Moreover, I do this stuff because I enjoy doing it. Making 200 of anything other than perhaps printing and cutting a bunch of small decals ceases to be fun early on.

Orrrr.....you take the order, get the deposit, sub them out to a wholesaler for $50 each, sell them for $80 each, make $6,000 for a couple of hours work, end up with a repeat customer who comes back six months later to order more.

 

[cdiesel]

You sound like you've done this before Pat!

 

[ProWraps]

$100 for a 4x6? can i move in?

 

[Trimline20]

So you would price 1 custom banner for the same price as 200 production banners and really expect to get the job? Never gonna happen in the real world.

__________________

Lovely speech, but ain't how the real world works in this scenario. Selling 200 banners at the same price as 1 is ridiculous. I could print 200 banners off at 70% off my regular 1 banner price and STILL be just grinning, as it'd be like printing money.

If anyone read what I said in my first post (#5), you'd see that I supported offering a reasonable quantity discount, but not a discount amount based upon some arbitrary number pulled from the sky.

In my second post (#9), I was responding to the OP's comment #4 where he said:

I think 20% off sounds good. Maybe I can offer even more discount since this client has a huge potential.

He has not even produced the initial order but appears to be intending to further discount this and future work, beyond a reasonable 20% quantity discount, only because "this client has a huge potential".

The OP has not indicated that this client has demanded a further discount or even an initial discount as his 1-of example price, if that is his actual price, seems too low without a quantity discount.

 

[andy]

If you use a proper pricing model you don't have to figure in arbitrary volume discounts. The pricing model should automatically accommodate them.

In my shop if I were to do one 4x6 banner it would be ~$183.00, for 200 they would be ~$165.00 per copy. Best I can do. There is a certain minimum rate for less than that I will not work.

Regardless of there being only one setup, there's 200 banners to finish by hand, that's 4000 feet of edges to finish, 1600 to 2000 grommets to set, depending, 1200 linear feet of media to wrangle, that would eight or nine 150' rolls, and ~4800 square feet of ink to spray, here that would be about 5 or 6 sets of ink cartridges, depending. If someone is willing to work their butts off for less, have at it. If it takes X time to make one, it takes 200*X time to make 200. These are custom goods involving hand work, not something extruded by a machine somewhere.

Moreover, I do this stuff because I enjoy doing it. Making 200 of anything other than perhaps printing and cutting a bunch of small decals ceases to be fun early on.

I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly...

I often get asked to cut metal for engineering companies.... widget A takes 30 minutes to cut and costs £4 in machine operating costs....

If you order 20, 200 or 2000 it's still going to take me 30 minutes per part and cost me £4 in machining time.

If I charge £9 for a one off why would I volunteer to make the same thing 2000 times for £6? I'm not saving a single penny in operating costs and there is no way to speed up production.

Volume discounts work in those industries where unit costs drop rapidly over volume.... if you were buying custom injected molded parts a volume discount works because the expensive cost of mold tooling can be diluted across thousands of units.

On a job like the OP's I'd send it out to a volume wholesaler.... let them work for buttons... save your machinery & your time for something else.