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To be or not to be…
Hi all!
The other day I was talking to a friend of mine that owns his own sign shop, and he recently decided that they are from now on only going to do car wraps and vehicle signs. According to my friends, he has a relative good flow of customers now a days but he believes that the fastest growing section of our market is and will keep on being car wraps and vehicle signs for the next 10 years to come. So he believes in specializing in that section of the market, rather than be offering loads of different products.
I would like to hear you inputs on that thought?
Has anyone of you out there taken that same decision?Cheers!
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10 Replies
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Well, wraps are hard work for the money and a large majority of the enquiries we get for wraps you never hear from again when they find out how much it is. I think it’s important to have many strings to your bow.
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I know various sign firms that do similar and it works well for them.
we on the other hand do not, we offer everything we can… although we do try only to push what we can manufacture ourselves…
we are seldom quiet with work, even when the credit crunch hit and allot of our big customers more than quartered their monthly spends, we still had loads of work coming in. i think this is a result of what we do offer. rather than having all our eggs in the one basket, so to speak.
last week was a mixture of vans, shop front signs, safety signage, LED built-ups, banners and so on… but i have seen weeks when we have only done half a dozen vans and everything else has been general signage. so i wouldn’t like to think how we would cope if we refused everything but vehicles. -
I wouldn’t put all of my eggs into one basket. If vehicle sales go down the pan, so does your business.
But that’s me.
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I don’t think there is anything wrong in deciding to specialise in a particualr area.
At the opposite extreme, I do believe you can spread yourself to thinly, it is better to concentrate on what you do best rather than try and offer all types of services related to "signs".
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we used to do t shirts and similar products, but found we could make far more profit concentrating on vehicles. Shop fascias also return a far less profit for us, so dont really push that sector of the market.
Do what makes you the most profit, for the least effort.
Peter
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Specialisation has worked for me.
By concentrating on one thing, getting all the procedures right, so that all parts of the process are working at an optimum level, then you can produce your product better and cheaper than anyone else. Optimisation even extends to workshop layout. Get it all right and you give yourself the all-important competitive advantage.
Of course, the reverse is also true. Because of our focus on vehicles we cannot make signs effectively, and many of you out there will eat us when it comes to quoting for them.
Andy has a valid point though and it can be very dangerous having all your eggs in one basket. It is absolutely imperative to have a plan to cope with difficult times, such as we have been experiencing over the last couple of years. I’ve got my plan, but I’m not telling you what it is. 😀
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I hear all your thought and appreciate you shearing them.
John I would love to hear more about your plan 🙂
would it be okay with you if we took this conversation byt mail? -
quote Peter Normington:Do what makes you the most profit, for the least effort.Peter
Nah! I’d hate to be a Government Minister.
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quote Simon Polakof:would it be okay with you if we took this conversation byt mail?
Or give me a call.
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I promote the vehicle mostly.
They are approx 70% of our work here & make us the most profit.
But the main factor is that they usually have the check book out while they pick up the keys.
Cashflow is everything these days!
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