Does My Pricing Seem High?

[kdw75]

We have been charging this for years, but I wanted to run this by some others in the business and see what they thought. We have a client that orders signs every couple of weeks. The specs are as follows:

2 copies of 13 different designs
Double Sided and Heavy Coverage
4mm Corrugated Plastic
High Quality/High Resolution
Light Blocking because they are exposed to overhead sunlight

We print them on vinyl and mount them on the corrugated plastic. We had sent these out in the past and had a sign shop print them directly on the plastic, but they didn't like the quality.

We charge $540 to print them and deliver them, usually within a day or two.

 

[GVG]

We have been charging this for years, but I wanted to run this by some others in the business and see what they thought. We have a client that orders signs every couple of weeks. The specs are as follows:

2 copies of 13 different designs
Double Sided and Heavy Coverage
4mm Corrugated Plastic
High Quality/High Resolution
Light Blocking because they are exposed to overhead sunlight

We print them on vinyl and mount them on the corrugated plastic. We had sent these out in the past and had a sign shop print them directly on the plastic, but they didn't like the quality.

We charge $540 to print them and deliver them, usually within a day or two.

what size?

 

[kdw75]

what size?

That is a typical customer mistake. Leave out critical info. lol

22x28 inches

 

[TJPrinter]

If I did the math right you're charging $2.43/sq foot for the vinyl, that's a great deal just for the printing of the vinyl. Then there's the Coroplast, mounting and delivery. I'd say the customer is getting a very good price for the work you're doing. Cheaper for flatbed printing, but the customer doesn't like that.

 

[kdw75]

Ok. I feel like they are as well. I keep seeing the cheap prices for flatbed printing and it made me second guess myself.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

We have been charging this for years, but I wanted to run this by some others in the business and see what they thought.

Before you add any markup, ask what the cost of materials, labour, and outwork/outsourcing is. You should know your costs! This is my perspective, based on training and supporting customers on the Accura360 MIS, which is a cost+plus-based system (although this can be overridden).

This naturally leads to knowing the market rate, what you believe the market will bear and where you wish to position yourself in the market.

EDIT: Not knowing your material pricing or production, it's so hard to comment, however, I knocked up a quick quote in Accura using the Australian pricing that I have for various "similar" materials and came up with a rough figure of ~$15AU per sign in material costs, without taking into account labour (print time, mounting etc) or markup or margin. So how does $9US per sign (based on 26 signs) sound to you for production costs of raw materials only? Taken with a huge grain of salt, YMMV.

 

[tnims68]

You are hosing yourself!!!
Do you have any sort of burden rate put together to establish your prices?

 

[kdw75]

Before you add any markup, ask what the cost of materials, labour, and outwork/outsourcing is. You should know your costs! This is my perspective, based on training and supporting customers on the Accura360 MIS, which is a cost+plus-based system (although this can be overridden).

This naturally leads to knowing the market rate, what you believe the market will bear and where you wish to position yourself in the market.

EDIT: Not knowing your material pricing or production, it's so hard to comment, however, I knocked up a quick quote in Accura using the Australian pricing that I have for various "similar" materials and came up with a rough figure of ~$15AU per sign in material costs, without taking into account labour (print time, mounting etc) or markup or margin. So how does $9US per sign (based on 26 signs) sound to you for production costs of raw materials only? Taken with a huge grain of salt, YMMV.

Our material costs are figured at $215 and $115 for labor. The only figure that I wonder about is the hourly rate for our inkjet.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Our material costs are figured at $215 and $115 for labor. The only figure that I wonder about is the hourly rate for our inkjet.

So around $8.27 per sign for material only. So, for 26 signs, the material costs alone are $215 out of your sell price of $540. Leaving labour (printing time, mounting and other finishing time, packing time etc.) and outwork delivery fees.

I can only comment on our Accura360 MIS, where we calculate the hourly cost rate for each internal labour item using our "Cost-Rate-Calculator" to calculate each hourly rate by department or machine/operation, taking account of overall business costs, including factory size & overheads.

There are various tools in the market which can be used to calculate budgeted hourly cost rates.