Customers Arghhhh! Rear doors wrap on a vivaro

[Tim Hobbs]

Hi Dan

Is it a colour change or a printed wrap?
What media were you planning on using?

[Dan]

It will be a printed wrap.

• Arlon SLX
• Avery 1105
  
  I have got both in stock, so either of them.

[Tim Hobbs]

A printed wrap, then.

That means

• loads more pre-prep
• gassing-out
• overlaminating, etc.

All has to be charged for.
Without putting it through our quoting software.
I couldn’t be bang on, but I’d reckon at around £350.00

[Dan]

Thank Tim

I’m not far from that, I was at £399.
£50 is neither here nor there.

Thanks,
Just making sure no one came in at £100. 🙂

[Simon Worrall]

There is always somebody cheaper. I have lost “loyal” customers to people prepared to charge below cost just to get the business. I dont know where they expect to go from there when they get a whole fleet of vans to wrap at a loss!

Im in NZ so my prices probably wont match up perfectly, but your quote sounds about right, even a bit low.

[Dan]

Thanks Simon

To be honest with you I think it’s is a little low too. Costs have gone up, material goes up every 5 seconds so I think I need to sit down and have another look at my prices.

I’d rather lose a customer that pays less and spend time on the ones that may what i’m worth.

[Tim Hobbs]

I think that prices do depend very much on the area that you are in too.

Here in the West Country we can’t charge as much as say, a company in central London. We long since gave up trying to get jobs by charging less. We know what we want to make as a mark-up on our materials and we know what we want for our time earned skills. We aim to beat our local competition with the quality of the work. If a customer doesn’t want to pay our price then fair enough but we always stick to it. At the end of the day it’s not worth being a busy fool. We must be doing something right as we are always at least a month ahead with bookings.

[Robert Lambie]

There is more to a rear wrap than just wrapping, so they must be charged for it.

1 Designing time.
2 Removal of the badges, the handles, number plate lighting mould, break lights.
3 Cleaning and prepping.
4 Re-fitting the handles, plate, lights etc. after the wrap is complete.
5 Printing.
6 Laminating.
7 Applying the wrap material.
8 Material and ink costs.

Take what you “charge” for your mans hourly rate and multiply it by the “actual hours” spent on doing tasks 1-7. You will find you are quickly up to where you have priced this at.

Unless you carry a 60 inch wide roll of wrap in stock, the doors will also have to be done in two door prints, eating double into the metres of vinyl required and lots of waste.

removing handles and so on. not rocket science, but we are sign makers and this can be a slow tedious task from one vehicle to the next. praying you don’t lose a bolt or do something wrong reassembling.

Material costs are going up and up also. Not that that should be an issue if priced correctly but work out what material, inks etc all cost and double it before, then add that to your hourly rate calculated.

squeegees, cleaning chemicals, paper towels, microfibre cloths blah blah all this adds to “your costs” and must be calculated into the job before you then work out what you have left as a way of profit.

Only once you tick every box of a wrap from material choice to post-heating and it rolls back out the door. even then you have fingers crossed you didn’t miss anything or you know it’s coming back to bite you! All of a sudden that £400 ballpark figure isn’t so much after all?!

Don’t feel bad about walking away. give me the same van with cut vinyl graphics and a print on all four sides any day… You knock it out in no time, fit it quick, no removal of parts and when it leaves you know it’s not coming back, easy £400!

My point is, if you’re going to provide a wrapping service, use the best materials and wrap it bang-on, but charge properly for it or there just isn’t any point.

[Dan]

Thanks, Rob

Fantastic advise. I worked my prices out a while ago so I know I need to re-look at these but my prices certainly won’t go down. Overheads change, the material goes up, bulls**t tax and you’re right, by the time you’ve calculated all of this I feel I am reasonable.

My rent is certainly higher than a lot of what you pay up north. I only dream of the units some of you have but I can’t afford them not down here anyway. If there were any good units around, they’re all getting sold off to make flats.

Funny thing is, I got quoted on a property couple of years back, I could get the same property 30 – 45 minutes away for half what I was quoted.

[David Hammond]

From memory, you will use 2 metres of material for one door, perhaps just over.

• 4m = £200
• Artwork, Strip, clean, install, 3-4hrs = £200
• £400 sounds reasonable.

[Peter Cassidy]

there’s nothing wrong with your price dan. I think we should always look at everything that is involved. but the problem we have is that when we are stood with a customer we seldom take all this into consideration and just think its only a couple of doors to wrap, so we can beat the quote the customer is spouting on about that he has saw online someplace. once we are committed and do the work we start to see just how much work is involved. but too late by then!

[Kevin Mahoney]

I would say £400 is ok but only if the whole van is getting done & you’re making a decent margin on the complete job. If the client only wants the back doors done, with a setup, stock images & bit of messing about it’s £500 all day long. Still worth a bit more than that if I’m honest. Just try phoning a sparky & get a cost on installing one plug socket & then see if you think £500 is expensive