how many times a month would you normally buy vinyl?

[George Kern]

Chris,

For printing we usually have no less then (10) 48" x 50 yard rolls of Avery MPI1005 EZ. We usually keep about (15) rolls of banner (5) of each of the common size rolls 36", 48", 54", and about (2) rolls of 60". The larger rolls we usually have (1) because anything larger then 60" we usually require a day notice if its a very large 1 piece banner. Ink we order once a week because of the overhead is extremely costly @ $240 per 1000ml cartridge. For extremely large orders such as 20 trailers we will order by the skid on top of our normal inventory because the material would technically be spoken for already.

[Peter Normington]

quote George Kern:

Chris,

For printing we usually have no less then (10) 48″ x 50 yard rolls of Avery MPI1005 EZ. We usually keep about (15) rolls of banner (5) of each of the common size rolls 36″, 48″, 54″, and about (2) rolls of 60″. The larger rolls we usually have (1) because anything larger then 60″ we usually require a day notice if its a very large 1 piece banner. Ink we order once a week because of the overhead is extremely costly @ $240 per 1000ml cartridge. For extremely large orders such as 20 trailers we will order by the skid on top of our normal inventory because the material would technically be spoken for already.

George, your stock levels may be ok for a one man band, but what about a firm with a few employees? 😉

(I hate show offs)

No offense George, bit of fun 😀

10% of t/o seems high to me
Once a week on average for ordering

Peter

[Chris Wool]

peter

i think you have a new jv3 dont you.
dont you have a roll of cheep a roll of banner a roll good stuff plus a good laminate thats 500 quids worth plus all your other vinyls and app paper

Chris

[Chris Wool]

george thank you for the reply but how does that level of stock compare to you turn over

chris

[Dave Bruce]

chris a company I used to work for keept about 10% of turnover in stock (without digital printer), when I became production manager it dropped to about 7%, we ordered around 3 times a month too.

With my own business it is 7% (with digital printer) with orders 3/4 times month.

Cheers

Dave

[George Kern]

quote Peter Normington:

quote George Kern:

Chris,

For printing we usually have no less then (10) 48″ x 50 yard rolls of Avery MPI1005 EZ. We usually keep about (15) rolls of banner (5) of each of the common size rolls 36″, 48″, 54″, and about (2) rolls of 60″. The larger rolls we usually have (1) because anything larger then 60″ we usually require a day notice if its a very large 1 piece banner. Ink we order once a week because of the overhead is extremely costly @ $240 per 1000ml cartridge. For extremely large orders such as 20 trailers we will order by the skid on top of our normal inventory because the material would technically be spoken for already.

George, your stock levels may be ok for a one man band, but what about a firm with a few employees? 😉

(I hate show offs)

No offense George, bit of fun 😀

10% of t/o seems high to me
Once a week on average for ordering

Peter

:lol1: Its all in good nature. We since we actually sat down a few months back and actually looked at how much nonsense we were ordering, an then having an accounts receivable with people that dont like paying their bills after u just turned your place inside out for them…We order a little more frequently now, but its not too bad. It’s just that when you are the last person in the food chain and you have bills to pay out, but are waiting on people to pay its frusterating to have all that material an supplies just sitting around after you paid for them.

[John Childs]

Hmmmm.

I have no idea what stock we carry as a percentage of annual purchases. I’ll see if I can work it out quickly later today, but wouldn’t a lot depend on the type of work you do?

As an example, for our JV3, we don’t have paper, banner, or anything like that. As 90% of our work is on vehicles and the rest is mainly signs with a few stickers thrown in, we only keep one good vinyl and the matching laminate, so our stocking requirement might be a lot less than someone who does a wider variety of jobs.

Our printer useage is very varied but, even when we have a lot of print work on, we are going to struggle to use more than a hundred metres in a day so what is the point of keeping higher stocks when we can easily replace it next day?

Stock is dead money.

[Shane Drew]

I keep a full roll of cheap print material for short term real estate work, a full roll of medium material for longer term work, with matching laminate, and I buy vehicle wrap and laminate as I need it.

I keep a blockout banner material, and a cheap 440gsm banner material for short term banners and any donations I am involved with.

As I finish a roll, I order another one. I don’t carry backup stock at all.

Computer cut material I order as I need it. I only carry full rolls of black, white, red, blue. Other than that, everything else is as I need it.

As John says, stock is dead money.

[Chris Dowd]

With next day delivery (and sometimes even same day), why do you need to keep so much in stock?

I’d rather my staff were ordering daily than sit on £1,000’s of stock.

[Dave Bruce]

That’s alright for you Chris D having staff to keep track on things, me as a one man band there are too many things to keep track of and being on the west coast next day deliveries are few and far between, so it is far less stressful to have the main items in stock to hand than to forget you need a certain colour, phone up to be told sorry that is on back order don’t know when it is coming in etc.

Cheers

Dave

[Dave Bayes]

At a rough estimate I would guess 5 to 7% of turnover.

Carrying virtually no stock and ordering for each job surely cannot be efficient. If you are carrying let’s say £1Ok of stock – if you’ve got the capital to be able to do that, how much is that going to cost you in lost interest if you take the cash out of the bank? At a rate of say 5% it’s less than £10 per week. If you order from just one supplier each day – how much are the delivery charges per week; a lot more than £10.

The correct mix of stock is money well spent.

[Shane Drew]

Dave, we have free delivery on orders over $150.00 Does not take much to get to that amount, so I try and order that value as a minimum each order. 😎

[Chris Dowd]

quote DaveBruce:

That’s alright for you Chris D having staff to keep track on things, me as a one man band there are too many things to keep track of

Dave,

I thought with more staff, I would have less things to keep track of – boy was I wrong! I have no time these days to even get involved with production (or sales). As for "back ordering" I don’t believe we’ve ever experienced that problem with a supplier – just lucky I suppose.

Dave Bayes – we seldom pay delivery charges, hence the reason I’m happy for staff to be ordering daily if need be. It would be a different situation if we were charged for delivery!

It’s also useful to have a good network with your other local sign companies, most of us work together and "lend" each other materials when we are stuck.

[David Arch]

As a percentage of turnover I would say I hold less than 1% as stock, I too am a one man band, most of the time, and usually have 25-50m of the popular colours and 10m of the not so popular ones.

I order in as needed, if you are quiet enough that you can do a job as someone walks through the door I think you need to get more work in.

[Dave Bruce]

quote archie_grafix:

As a percentage of turnover I would say I hold less than 1% as stock, I too am a one man band, most of the time, and usually have 25-50m of the popular colours and 10m of the not so popular ones.

Sounds like the same as me in vinyl quantity terms, obviously I need a higher turnover, but working 7 days a week 12-14 hour days, can’t see that happening, I see a move south coming on 😀

Chris with the last company I worked for, the owner just concentrated on design work, I concentrated on production/quotes and the admin guy concentrated on just that. The whole point of taking me on was to remove all the business things the owner had to think about and let her get on with design, worked a treat for all of us.

Dave

[Robert Lambie]

i haven’t a clue what the percentage of our stock is, its never consistent anyway.
however, around 10 years ago i remember sitting with a colour chart picking out the best variation of colours, but also the ones most likely to be used. these type of colours consisted of bubble gum pink, kelly green, cosmos blue, sky blue, tomato red, medium red and so on…
once i had my list i selected the "most common" used ones from the list.
these consisted of medium red, cosmos blue, black, white etc etc
from here i ordered ten metres of every colour that was listed as a "i should stock colour" the ones most commonly used, i ordered 50 metre logs in.

i made "my own" colour charts with colour codes. (all one with same life span)
the chart matched the colours i had on the racks.
all staff that started were told in their fist week of being in graphics room, remember every colour on the chart by name, then the codes.
anytime they produced a job and were down to their last couple of metres on they ordered in for the next day to keep the stock up. if they were running on last ten metres of the popular rolls, they ordered in a new log. as has been said, they arrive next morning. so stock is kept right and evenly varied.

if a job comes in that we dont have the colour in stock, we try sway the customer from using it. (if its not a big job that is) if they are persistent, we get it in but add on the price of 20 metres of their vinyl. that way they know they are paying extra for their colour, but minus amount we use on them which is normally around 5 metres… we are left with a nice 10metre colour of stock we dont normally have or would get in… but its now there free of charge… if you know what i mean. consistently doing this with customers actually makes your colours in stock grow should the time come you need a little of that odd shade of yellow or purple. 😀

since moving into digital over two years ago its a little different.
you have to buy in full logs regardless due to roll contamination.
we have:
canvas, quality banner, cheaper banner, roll-up stand material, mesh banner, matt paper, silk paper, digital vinyl, digital reflective, vehicle wrap, laminate, wrap laminate and so on…
some of those rolls we hardly every use but due to the "you have to buy a full log" we have a fair bit of unnecessary stock. 😕

with application tape its similar, we have various sized rolls and as and when the stock runs low they order in for next day.

i feel like im losing touch on what this thread was asking, so im gonna stop for now 😳 :lol1: :lol1:

[Dave Bayes]

There’s no such thing as a free lunch! Free delivery usually means paying a premium somehere else. Chris / shane – Do your supliers of sheet materials, posts etc – particularly the heavier stuff really deliver for free?

[Peter Normington]

quote Dave Bayes:

There’s no such thing as a free lunch! Free delivery usually means paying a premium somehere else. Chris / shane – Do your supliers of sheet materials, posts etc – particularly the heavier stuff really deliver for free?

yes you can get a free lunch, sally army do thousands everyday 😀

But in business its a different thing, ordering small quantities creates more waste, so in the annual turnover versus stock held argument, you need to compare how much you made on each metre purchased.
if you are using large quantities then a daily order is fine, on time deliver to manufacturers has been the norm for 20+ years or more for large corporates, cuts down on warehouse space. but you need a constant flow to justify.

If you can buy it cheaper by quantity, and can store it, it is money in the bank for a lot of small business.

like rob

better shut up
I may be losing it…..

sorry what was the subject?

Peter

[Kevin Flowers]

Hi
like some of the posts already i order full logs of my most used colors, in oracle 751c, with the cheaper vinyls 651 & 551 i keep smaller amounts min 10 mtrs max 25mtrs. just in colors i have needed for jobs. Free next day delivery means no real stock is needed and if need be i just upgrade the vinyl on the job & use 751c the price difference normally works out to pennies anyway. In fact it is only over this last 8mths that i have started using the cheaper grades of vinyl instead of doing everything in 751c. I suppose i have approx 40-45 rolls of vinyl in stock @ 610 & 7 rolls of 1220 with varying amounts of vinyl from 10mtrs to full rolls. For the digital i have Roll of 5-7 year, roll of banner @ 1370 & 900, roll of poster paper @ 1370 (which comes in 100mtr roll). I’m looking to drop the stock after all money in stock is money i ain’t got in my pocket. The days of buying full rolls to get good prices seems to have dwindled so with next day delivery there is no need to tie money up in stock .

But answer to he question is approx 10-12% at the moment

Dave
i get everything from 5mtrs of vinyl to sheets of board delivered next day with no charge, i use Europoint and they have trucks in my area everyday and i presume around most of the country. No premium is loaded on to anything & with the discount for being a UKSB member it works out a very good deal

Kev

[Shane Drew]

quote Dave Bayes:

There’s no such thing as a free lunch! Free delivery usually means paying a premium somewhere else. Chris / shane – Do your suppliers of sheet materials, posts etc – particularly the heavier stuff really deliver for free?

I think that is a bit different. No, these suppliers don’t deliver free, but I will pick the items up anyway. These big items need heavy trucks, that need to make a special trip, costing much more to service.

Our small parcel courier network here services the cities here 3 or 4 times a day, everyday, for a standard fee of about $8.00 per call. Essentially they are going to be in my area everyday anyway, its not a special trip for them.

No doubt the wholesalers have budgeted this in to their prices, so that everyone who buys stock probably pays a percentage of every purchase to cover the ‘free’ freight bill.

That said, an $8.00 freight bill is about 5% of the required order size value to get the free freight. Most companies here will give you 10% off to get the business off another wholesaler, so I think the margins are well ‘padded’ to offer the free freight deals in response to a reasonable order size/value.

[Chris Dowd]

quote Dave Bayes:

There’s no such thing as a free lunch! Free delivery usually means paying a premium somehere else. Chris / shane – Do your supliers of sheet materials, posts etc – particularly the heavier stuff really deliver for free?

The bulk of our supplies are delivered free of charge, the only items we pay delivery on are bespoke/special order items. Like Kevin, we use Europoint quite a bit, lets look at last night for example, at 18:15 we tried our luck calling Europoint to place an order, at 10.30 this morning it was delivered – can’t beat that for service, and delivered FOC.

Where we are charged delivery from any supplier, it’s always passed onto the customer anyway.

[Peter Normington]

quote Chris Wool:

a interesting comment made in a other post about buying min amounts of vinyl.

what would you consider in money value to be a min stock level for a normal sign shop with a large format printer

10% of annual turnover
and how many times a month would you normally expect to order stuff

3

i put my own numbers in to start with for comparison

chris

I just had a tot up
if my turnover was based on stock, ie 10% i would be skint, I carry about 3k in stock inc foils ink and vinyl

Peter

[Kevin Flowers]

Peter
i know i did & sure most others have & that is not counting ink etc as stock i probably have approx £2000 in ink.

Kev

[Nicola McIntosh]

dont have a clue what % 😮 as long as i have my stock colours in full rolls of 751 im happy 😀 other not used so much colours (buy in 20 meter rolls…but full rolls of digital media: paper vinyl and banner…then i can sleep at night 😀 cause no doubt…i will need it for rush jobs to work into the evenings as we self employed folk love doing so 😉

nik

[Chris Wool]

thank you for your comments and we have different views dont we
in a previous life before signs stock control was every thing if you did not have it on the shelf it was a lost sale but in our business availability is very good next day so levels can be a lot lower than most other business.
you run your own business as you see fitt to suit your self’s and your type of customers, nothing is hard and fast but the differing views has been informative. rolls of dusty vinyl is no good to anybody but neither is waiting for a delivery.

chris