Advice on pricing vehicle livery…

[Carrie Brown]

Darren you should be charging for your time even if you dont charge a design set up fee, you must allow for cutting, weeding, tacking up time etc ….. charge for everything. For every meter of vinyl thats to be cut, weeded & tacked we charge 10mins of our time, plus vinyl costs, fitting costs etc. The more intricate the text/graphics the more we charge. At the end of the day the cutter has to pay for itself & make a profit for you & you need to be earning a wage for your labour. 😀

Carrie 😀

p.s sorry If this doesnt make much sense ….. Im having a monday day today although its Thursday if you get my meaning? Ill read this back later & probably think what am I on about. Anyway Ill stop babbling now ….. 😮

[Rod Gray]

Darren try this,

Work out a production cost using the following;

£40.00 – design cost which covers the first meter of vinyl. Use this as a starting point. Straight forward text design with a bit of flair.The longer you`re in this game, the faster your designs come together. I can usually throw together a first draft in 10-15 minutes. Thats something you hould try and aim for. 8 times out of 10, the customer will have printed stationary, letter heads or business cards with some logo already made up. If your feeling artistic, offer them an improved version of their logo. If you can`t be arsed to do any re-design work, praise their logo as “great, super, professional” etc and copy it 🙂

If there is an intricate logo needing vectorised. Put an hourly rate on your time (£25.00) after the first hour is gone. Remember tho, you can`t expect your customer to pay for your time while your learning to design and learning how to use Signlab software or whatever 🙂

Charge £15.50 per linear metre of vinyl used in production. (That includes plotting, weeding and backing up)

So say for example the van requires 4 metres of vinyl;-

1 x £40.00 (for the first metre)
3 x £15.50 (for 2nd, 3rd and 4th) up to 10 metres.

*Over 10 meters, drop price down to £13.50

Design, Manufacture & Supply Kit Cost = £85.00

Fitting Charge.

£25.00 per hour. Remember start the timer from the minute you start cleaning the panels on the Van. If you take 90 minutes to fit. You charge the FULL 2 hours.

£ 85.00 supply only
£135.00 Supply and fit.

Try this and see how you get on. Time yourself etc. You may need to adjust prices if you feel the need. Increase or drop your rate by 50p etc if you feel local competition requires it. Similiarly if you feel your quality of work leaves your competitors standing, leave the price as it is etc.

Use this as a basic guide, and feel free to adapt it to suit your location etc.

Rod

[Rod Gray]

1 last thing.

Don`t *ever* feel uncomfortable or embarassed charging someone the minimum rate of 1 hour. (£25.00) even if the job takes a 3rd of that time to do. The customer isn`t only paying for your physical time, he is playing for your professionalism, service and skill gained over <insert your years here>.

My dentist got £115.00 off me last week for 2 fillings that took less than 15 minutes of physical work to do. Compare that to the hourly rate of the Cadbury`s factory worker who was partly responsable for me needing filling in the first place 😉

Point is, you charge for YOUR skill level and professionalism aswell as any physical “hands-on” time spent doing the job.

[Paul Goodwin]

I use the method Rod has suggested and it does work.

[Carrie Brown]

McRod explains it so well ……. better than me! 😀 We do it the same sort of way except I talk gobbledygook 😛

[Coupe_20v]

Many thanks for the replies folks… that’s just the kind of thing i was looking for 😀

I’ll put that in to practice on the VW T4 and see what happens… I suppose it’s only the same cost as putting an ad in a trade mag for a month or two… except this one will last him a lot longer 😀

Cheers all

Darren

PS… when I come to a small recess in a panel… would I…

A: bridge the gap and continue past it, and then go back at the end and warm the vinyl and stretch it in to the recess…

or…

B: allow the vinyl to enter the recess whilst i’m applying it??

Cheers again

D

[jon vital]

That’s not a bad formula actually.

[John Harding]

Darren

Recesses depend on the vinyl youre using ie a cast product you can warm into a gap having gone straight across but with a calendared vinyl you are probably better following the contour if you can.

practice makes perfect, cut a spare if youre unsure of yourself it makes you more confident I found when out on site if you have a spare bit 🙂 !