Advice needed on Roller banner costs?

[Robert Walker]

Hi Shaun

£16 is about right for the stand, if your willing to buy 30+ at a time you can get them for £7.50 each.

as for using laminated poster paper i wouldn’t recommend it, i had a new customer who bought 3 like this from eblag, one of them ripped ( your basically relying on the laminate for the strength.)and wasn’t happy at all, also as soon as any light gets behind the stand it makes it near imposable to read.

these places will offer an add on price for light block as an extra,

i always offer a quality job and tell the customer to feel free to get a like for like price,

hope this helps

cheers

Robert

[Robert Lambie]

your competitor is either a trade supplier, a cowboy or someone willing to work for nothing. yes i have seen the cheaper roll-ups here and there, but why try and compete?
my opinion is you should looking for around £150 for one or £125 if ordering 3 or more. that’s artwork provided or basic artwork setup.

£16 per stand + bag is about right. as has been said, cheaper in quantities…
Hydrosol fron RHG is decent stuff too…

[Peter Normington]

quote Robert Lambie:

your competitor is either a trade supplier, a cowboy or someone willing to work for nothing. yes i have seen the cheaper roll-ups here and there, but why try and compete?
my opinion is you should looking for around £150 for one or £125 if ordering 3 or more. that’s artwork provided or basic artwork setup.

£16 per stand + bag is about right. as has been said, cheaper in quantities…
Hydrosol fron RHG is decent stuff too…

Rob, good quality can be bought from reputable retail sources at far less than you are recommending, and they are defo not cowboys, cheap doesn’t always mean its a cowboy, if you can get those prices then good luck mate. Like you said why try and compete with specialists that just sell two or three products?

Peter

[Robert Lambie]

cowboy was just one description peter.
trade supplier or someone willing to work for nothing. was the other two.

none of the other necessarily mean poor quality?

discount on volume is perfectly acceptable. but heavily discounted on the whim of trying to win a bit of business is desperate. yes we do what we have to do to make a living… etc etc but im talking business in general. not sympathetic views. and i do not mean that in anyway disrespectful to anyone.

[Peter Normington]

Rob I am not talking discount for quantity,
If you sell your cheapest pop up for £150, then eventually your client will look on the net and see that they are available for around £65, so he will either not come back to you, or ask why you are so dear? how do you then justify your prices? as you say its for basic or provided artwork.
It’s similar to banners, some people specialise and even if doing one offs will beat general sign makers all the time,

Peter

[Robert Lambie]

we arent "so dear"… Peter.

Peter why did you buy a Mimaki vinyl cutter for £thousaands, when you can buy a nice wide cutter on ebay for £400?

Our trade and others like it are heavily devalued these days as a result of inexperienced or desperate businesses pricing structures. or should i say, no structure at all! most of this has come about as a result of the internet.

yes we have had the internet surfer come in and quote the daft prices. "we do not compete" let them go… and for the record, we have only had a handful in the past few years.
yes we have lost business to folk under cutting us greatly… but they always come back.

anyway… you either chase your tail, stress yourself out trying to compete. or aim for a better level of customer & get on with it.

there is only so much the customer can buy "off the shelf" or off the net!
our customers require a friendly face, advice & guidance from an educated person, experience, artistic flair and more… None of this is available from a budget purchase.

[Peter Normington]

unfortunately Rob, its not the internet, its called competition, if you can produce a product of equal quality to your rivals but charge less, then you get the job, its simple business practice.
we are talking basic pop up’s are we not?
before the internet it was the phone that gave people the ability to compare prices.
Customers are not idiots, they compare prices, quality and service.
If you can sell on any, or all of of these qualities, and make a profit, then that is what makes a business.
I could say the internet via these very boards is promoting backroom business’s. so people with cheap plotters and cracked software will obviously be able to do things cheaper, and even get all the advice they need free of charge.

I agree with you though, look after your own business, dont undercharge, and dont quote if you cant compete.

Peter

[Robert Lambie]

quote Robert Lambie:

Peter why did you buy a Mimaki vinyl cutter for £thousaands, when you can buy a nice wide cutter on ebay for £400?.

[Andrew Blackett]

Just on pricing;

rollerbannerwarehouse.co.uk you’ll get a box of 10 budget ones for £8.50 +VAT each

Andy

[David Rogers]

As a side note:

I’ve always been in favour of taking the hassle out of the whole process as I didn’t do many – maybe 6 or 7 a year.

Send your artwork to to a supplier – pay your £75 for two mid-grade or whatever and they arrive. Printed, mounted, bagged & ready to just hand over. No hassle, no nothing.

Sell out at £120 to £150 each all done…

[Peter Normington]

quote DavidRogers:

As a side note:

I’ve always been in favour of taking the hassle out of the whole process as I didn’t do many – maybe 6 or 7 a year.

Send your artwork to to a supplier – pay your £75 for two mid-grade or whatever and they arrive. Printed, mounted, bagged & ready to just hand over. No hassle, no nothing.

Sell out at £120 to £150 each all done…

that is the whole point of my argument,
you only sell a few per year, Why? because most people know the cost of these things, and would be just ignorant of market prices to pay more than £60 for a basic roll up.
Rob, I bought my mimaki to do a job, if I sold roll ups as my main business I could knock them out all day long for £40 or less and still make a very good profit, based on your own material costs,
I still disagree with your statement that people who do this are 1/ cowboys 2/ people who work for nothing, or 3/ trade suppliers.
the last, two are in fact a contradiction in terms. you are saying that because they are trade suppliers, they are not making a profit,
Yes I would quote a similar price as you and others for a roll up. knowing that it not worth my while to do it cheaper, (change media, waste several metres in doing so, trim and fit to cassette, etc.)
All I am saying is that, going back to the original post from Shaun, it is far better not to even try to compete, ( which is essentialy your take on this) if you do a one off for a regular customer, and can charge it as such then fine, but the value of a pop up. especially a basic one, has declined over the last few years, and its cloud cucckoo land to think you can sell them at more than double the market value, on a regular basis.
Thats just my opinion,

Peter

[Robert Lambie]

quote Peter Normington:

I could say the internet via these very boards is promoting backroom business’s. so people with cheap plotters and cracked software will obviously be able to do things cheaper, and even get all the advice they need free of charge.

You could do peter, and you have, "several times"… It has also been discussed via the “UKSG members” with all replies unanimously in UKSB’s favour on all accounts. So please let’s not go back there.

Peter…
What we have here is someone newly getting into digital printing. He is confused on pricing and has given a ridiculously low competitor price as his target. He seeks help and advice from basically… us lot.

Here is where “this internet forum” should be doing its job. Proper advice to a new comer. If they don’t get it here, they will seek it elsewhere or take a stab in the dark at it. Which is, in my opinion, the reason so many get it wrong!

Let’s take the £43 roll-up stand, which includes “delivery”. So let’s wind that back to £40 for a roll-up.

Going rate for "the sign maker" to buy in a single budget roll-up mechanism – £15 so we still have £25 to play with in profit?

Now add:-
1, roll-up media
2, ink
3, production time
4, laminate
5, laminate labour
6, Finishing & trimming
7, waste
8, installing the graphic
Job done? NO!
9, Designing, emailing proofs and so on… all have to be taken into account as well.

There is no point dancing round the facts, this all has to be accounted for to realistically price a job.

Forget buying cheaper products to make the stands, because realistically, you have to buy in bulk or buy in crap to save a few quid. And for what? To snaffle a customer wanting to pay £40 for your time and product.
How much profit do you hope to make from the sale? My take is you will run at a loss!

This post is NOT about… “Is it possible to make money from a £40 roll-up stand” it’s about “ADVICE”.
And as professionals to say “£40” is doable in any way, is planting the WRONG seed.

As I have said from the start… if you’re local competition is selling at this price. They are either desperate, a cowboy, or trade supplier setup and kitted out to produce fast, high volume products like this.

.

[David Rowland]

when we were running the JV3 we would take ages as you were printing down the roll, but now running the 2mtr wide machine it is easy to lay it across the bed and trimming only takes few minutes with two cuts, so in theory we can can knock them out and our price for doing them has dropped, but not that far.

[Stephen Morriss]

I tend to sell these at £100 – £120 each depending on the artwork etc.
I may be able to sell them for £40.00 but when the time comes to service the printer with new heads etc I’ll be kicking myself.

If I was doing lots of them then I’d maybe consider £75 but that’s without doing the sums to make sure I’m coming out at the end of the year with a profit.

Steve