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Look at this for current van sign price
Happy Royal wedding holiday all. What do you mean you are self employed and have to work?
How’s this for the going rate for signing a van…
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28 Replies
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Let’s all call and order a job, complete with multiple designs, reject them, and see how long the guy will go without a deposit.
Also tell him you can get it cheaper and ask is that the best price he can do?
People who are this cheap deserve to be broke.
Love…..Jill -
Can you lot stop ringing my phone please !
Stupid prices !
he must be crazy 😮 -
here is a break down of it
http://www.dragongraphix.co.uk/-39-99-s … ffer-.html
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there are members on here that offer similar prices.
no point in highlighting their low prices, they aren’t going to put them up are they?
Each to their own, if they are making a profit then fine, if not they wont be around for long.Peter
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No matter if you are a registered users of the site, general browser of the boards or long term sign maker paying to be part of the site. It does not mean your pricing is going to be correct.
I often cringe reading allot of views and opinions over pricing and sign work in general… but hey, who’s to say i have it right!
My opinion is that those that sell on undercutting their local competition are not the professional creative sign maker they should be. Under cutting is a no brainer…
Selling a good product & service shouldn’t be difficult. There are also a great many ways to "up-sell" your products and services. being a good designer, knowing your materials & products, your game all the way throw to installation is what can make you stand high above the rest. This takes time, skill & experience….
The company in question is obviously selling on price. his own advert will tell you that. poor sign, badly designed, offering cheap as chips work.
My view here is, the type of customer he attracts, he can keep!.
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I dunno how people make enough as a sole income with prices like that. I guess we all started somewhere but I don’t recall doing anything that cheap 6yrs ago.
Hugh
Ps, that dragon is no relation in any way to this dragon!
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Hi all
That price is stupid by I can see how it would work for someone working off the drive, cash jobs, only 2-3 metres of vinyl per job, price is supply only, vinyl is probably cheapo grade, text only no logos, 10 mins to ‘design’ cut and weed, etc etc. It’s like your local fleabay! Depends what you want to do with your business, don’t think many on here would be satisfied bumping along at that level, however if it works for him then there you go – got to start somewhere!Cheers
Macky -
I only posted the link so we could see the offer in detail… lol i did smile when i saw similar name Hugh.
I think the question is, would you ring that mobile number for the offer ? or would you expect some indication of knowing who you were dealing with before you made the call
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Well found Dave, the website. Love this quote… "We have hundreds of different fonts if you let us know which you want chances are we have it." And I bet you can have all the fonts on the same sign :lol1:
I was surprised he had a website, and he has 2 completed vehicles! I bet the body building one is his own business as well. -
Judging from the pictures he also works out of his bedroom. 🙄
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Being home a based I resent that comment – I’ve seen many sh*te install jobs from larger co’s for large national co’s.
Pricing to me seems a minefield. There are those that you give a price who say "Oh I thought it would be more" and others that don’t come back on a quote I consider very competitive.
Vista print website says it all to me, mmmm bet he has vista print business cards as well 🙄
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I’ve got a legitimate sign company in dundee (actually two of them) doing the same via that auction site and for car dealerships. And you know what, i don’t care. It doesn’t affect my business. I have no interest in competing at that end of the market so if he can make a few quid per van and get "wow best value ever" comments good on him.
As for the bedroom, chinese plotter types, meh… I gave up caring about them.MY customers value quality of design, materials and service above being just cheap…otherwise i wouldn’t have any. I’ve even stood firm on not dropping prices to make only a small profit at the risk of losing friends yet surprise surprise they relent and pay what’s asked.
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Yeah, I’m with Dave on this one.
This guy will definitely have a market, but it is not the market you really want to look for. He’s probably doing it as a second job or for beer money anyway..
Concentrate on supplying a good product, good service and good prices, and people will keep coming back to you. His market will be someone looking for a ‘bargain’ and they are not the clients that will pay good money for anything.
I have a sign shop just like this close to me, within walking distance, and if anyone uses him, they will not use me. Its a client I don’t want frankly. The other guys work is woeful, and if the client can’t discern quality from crap, he’s not going to appreciate my prices either.
Let them do their thing, you do yours… better. Don’t waste energy on worrying about the caliber of this opposition. Someone will always undercut you. Concentrate of what you do best, and ignore the rest.
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quote Shane Drew:Let them do their thing, you do yours… better. Don’t waste energy on worrying about the caliber of this opposition. Someone will always undercut you. Concentrate of what you do best, and ignore the rest.Wise words indeed!
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Well I see a couple of things here, we are all ready to slate the chap (or chap-ess) selling this stuff at this price but sometimes I think we need to look a little bit farther than the end of our noses.
Whilst it most certainly would put our backs up thinking someone is doing this and it could affect our legitimate businesses, try and see the wider picture. I’m blessed with something called ADHD, which whilst it’s not the most useful of tools for running a business it does help me see things on a global scale rather than what’s right in front of our faces.
I advertise similar products at similar prices… however, do I sell many???? the simple answer is no, occasionally I get a direct order but it’s less than one a month. What I do get is lots and lots of phone calls and enquiries from people who want a little more than just plain text. Because I’m good on the phone and in emails, I nearly always manage to up sell them to a better product and at the right price. If they just want cheap cheap, I let them go and don’t worry about it (however also by this time I generally have an email and can add them to my database for advertising)….
I call these loss leaders, yea sure now and then you get someone who wants exactly what you are selling (and there is still a little profit in it but not enough to run your business) so you just run with those, as long as you don’t get into the trap of doing only cheap jobs and running around like a headless chicken working your arse off for hardly any money (almost got caught by that myself once, I was nearly the victim of my own super marketing)….
I’m glad to say it works for me. I may be wrong about the person who’s advertising that and maybe he (or she) is just looking for pocket money… But sometimes you have to think outside the box, especially in today’s current climate and especially if your a new , start up or struggling business. How many times have you seen "buy one get one free"? do you think if everything Tecos sold was BOGOF they would be able to make a profit? of course not, but they also know that your not just going to buy that when your in there, your likely to spend more money on something else that they do make a profit on!
Just my take on it peoples, I think there is plenty there we could learn from. Yep I know that many of you guys are well established and doing ok, but some of us are still forging our way through the pitfalls of new business (this is not my first business and probably wont be my last) initiatives like this bring in new customers and open new doors for new starts….. I say good luck and I hope it helps!
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I think you’re confusing retailing with sign making Mo.
In retailing you can get away with "stacking them high and selling them cheap" because all you’re doing is on selling a product someone else has produced. And if you deal in sufficient volumes you could end up with a profitable business.
However, in the service sector (e.g sign making) you are basically selling your time. Hence the reason why low prices don’t work in this industry (not if you want to stay in business anyway).
Low headline prices do attract the wrong type of customer and only harm this industry. But more importantly, it ends up deterring many who will think at those prices you can’t be any good.
Up selling is fine – but how often can you upsell a £40 job to a more realistic £150 pounds?
My advice to any new comer to the business is do not try and compete with low prices.
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Hi Phill, I accept some of your points, but I do disagree with others. I understand that low pricing may not encourage the "right" kind of customer initially and may put off the occasional customer, it does generate sales leads. And I have been able to up sell from low prices to realistic prices many times (however I haven’t priced that low).
I used to sell advertising in phone books to trade customers just like ourselves and have on far to numerous occasions to mention managed to take a customer from a £50 advertising space to a four figured sum.
I agree with your comments about retail, however I see no reason why the principles can’t be applied to selling our own products. Just because you advertise cheap doesn’t mean you are cheap. It’s a case of education, once we have sparked the interest of customers who are looking for a cheap job (ie the customers that you don’t want, or the wrong type of customer) then it’s our job to educate them as to what a cheap job really is!
How does someone new in the business establish themselves? Surely they can’t just bang straight out at the prices you would expect to pay for someone of your calibre or experience? I certainly couldn’t have done that I would have gotten myself into trouble straight away, I to tempt my clients in with a slightly cheaper product/service and rely on my negotiating and customer service skills to get them into a price bracket later on that was more realistic.
It cost me a lot of money initially and I even lost money on some jobs, but I’m happy to say I now price my services along the guidelines that you all do, charging more for my strengths and less for me failings. However, when I started I knew that I couldn’t compete with the established companies because I lacked the reputation and experience, also I stated my business 200 miles from my home town so I didn’t even have any contacts to get me started. So I pitched low, got the work and now those clients are coming back not just for my prices (which have increased) but for my service and quality of work. Now I won’t entertain anything that doesn’t fit my business plan, I have a full unit to run with all the fixed costs and I do it on my own mostly. But without that initial "loss leader" I doubt I would have got where I am today. I’m now in a position to buy new equipment, take on staff and i’m well out of my overdraft.
It worked for me and I don’t see why with the right attitude and application it couldn’t work for someone else. No doubt the wrong person who thinks he’s going to get more work from being cheaper and bases his business on low prices rather than planning and nurturing his company into a financially viable and stable position, will eventually fall apart at the seams, its can’t be done. Well not if you wan’t a proper business with a solid foundation that is.
But with the right planning, it’s a great way to get your business networked around. I almost pitch it like I "saved" the customer from wasting their money on a cheap option, so you can imagine the kind of referrals I also get from it. If you educate the customer well enough, they in turn will educate their friends. I’m not the best sign maker in the country but I know how to sell my business, and that’s why it works for me. I expect many of you have stories of how you did it without doing that, which is fantastic, all I’m saying is don’t rule it out.
And hey……… I have your book Phil, that was the best grounding I had in this business along with this forum , all I then had to do was apply my extensive experience in selling and… Voila! job done, so thanks for that!
ooo thought I better add, I never get caught up in price battles, if a customer comes back and says they can get it cheaper, I just re-educate on what is cheaper and if they don’t come to me then that’s fine. There is more than enough work to go around in this industry, we really don’t need to worry about competition, otherwise, why would we be here offering advice to each other?
There is a sign company just down the road from me (actually there are 3 I think) he totally over prices small jobs (ie £150-300 job) because he doesn’t really want them, he prefers to do wraps as he makes more money and only has to do a few a week. I know this because he told me when I popped in to see him. So I pick up those jobs, in fact when he doesn’t want to do a job he sends them to me! we have become quite good friends
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I agree with Phil and Mo,
you are both right and wrong.
signs can be sold as stack em high sell em cheap. Safety signs are a typical example,
(they are not works of art and are purely sold on price)
cheap as chips, and if sold in numbers, make a good living for a lot of people.
as a "sign maker" it’s possible to sell cheap and cheerful, and at the same time sell up market and quality.
It all goes into the pot for profit,
there is a distinction between producing quality at a price, and everyday products that still can make a profit, when your printer or cutter has an hour to spare.
I admire good signage, and try to aspire to make good signs, but if the truth was known, I would rather do a quick van for £200 than spend hours being creative to make an extra £100, for a one off job, I am in business to make money, so tend to give the customer what they want, for a reasonable price. Yes I do try to persuade them to go for quality and uniqueness, but the discerning customers are few and far between.
so untill the blue chip contract comes along, we carry on doing what pays the rent.
as long as it makes a profit, that is all that matters.Sorry waffling a bit
Peter
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Getting back to the original point – a van livery for £40?…well that’s just plain daft, and devalues our business making it harder for anyone to make a decent living.
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quote Phill Fenton:Getting back to the original point – a van livery for £40?…well that’s just plain daft, and devalues our business making it harder for anyone to make a decent living.
Hey Phil didn’t you just say this attracts the wrong type of customer and people will avoid you because your too cheap? If that really is the case I fail to see how it makes it harder for anyone to make a decent living?
Surely while we are all tied up with the wrong customers your courting the right customers and your quids in?
But i do agree offering £5’s worth of cut vinyl for £40 for the customer to fit themselves is way too cheap…
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You’re right Mo but in just two of the three examples
quote Mo Gillis-Coates:Hey Phil didn’t you just say this attracts the wrong type of customer and people will avoid you because your too cheap? If that really is the case I fail to see how it makes it harder for anyone to make a decent living?The problem is if lower prices are bandied about it creates an expectation from the customer to expect lower prices
quote Mo Gillis-Coates:Surely while we are all tied up with the wrong customers your courting the right customers and your quids in?Yup – that’s Correct
quote Mo Gillis-Coates:But i do agree offering £5’s worth of cut vinyl for £40 for the customer to fit themselves is way too cheap…I suspect you don’t actually believe this yourself – but of course when it’s taken out of context, £40 for £5 of vinyl sounds like a good idea. In reality though you’re not selling £5 worth of vinyl you are selling your time. If you really can deal with an enquiry like this from start to finish in less than an hour then it starts to look viable. In reality it will take much longer (believe me it will).
I really don’t care what you do or how you decide to run your business. I am simply trying to pass on my own experience – you can listen or go your own way – I really don’t mind.
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quote Phill Fenton:I suspect you don’t actually believe this yourself – but of course when it’s taken out of context, £40 for £5 of vinyl sounds like a good idea. In reality though you’re not selling £5 worth of vinyl you are selling your time. If you really can deal with an enquiry like this from start to finish in less than an hour then it starts to look viable. In reality it will take much longer (believe me it will).
I really don’t care what you do or how you decide to run your business. I am simply trying to pass on my own experience – you can listen or go your own way – I really don’t mind.
Phill, I do actually believe it, in fact just last week I had not a dissimilar job come in for £100, basic plain black text, 2 sides and web address with phone number of the back, I did some basic artwork which took me no longer than 15 mins and sent it back to the client, anyway to cut a long story short, after sever phone calls and 2 more designs I dropped the job as it was getting past what I considered economically viable. So I cut my losses and pulled out. Now your right, if the customer had accepted the first design and popped over with his van, I could have sent the job to cut and taped ready all within the hour making it worth while, but it didn’t shape up that way…. so yes I absolutely agree it is way too cheap. However at the same time I ran a job for £75 which was supply only, the customer sent the designs across, I entered the cut lines, cut, weeded taped and posted within the hour so an ok earner…..
As for your last comment, well, I am grateful for any experience you pass on Phill, please don’t see this as a personal attack, I’m just passing on my experience as a professional sales person and I do care about other peoples businesses and the people in them otherwise I wouldn’t bother passing on the benefits of my experience at all, as I’m sure you wouldn’t.
I just think that this can be seen as a positive step in the business and doesn’t really have the ramifications or impact on it that we are claiming. I have solid evidence to to support that this type of marketing can help your business to grow, but I can’t find (maybe you can correct me if i’m wrong) any evidence that this devalues the business.
Just to support that, I sell t-shirts and canvases on a well known internet auction site, there are thousands of t-shirts and canvas prints that sell for prices so ridiculously cheap that I can’t even fathom how the people selling them are making a living when you take into account production time etc. Yet I still manage to sell my shirts at 3 times the price of some of the others and my canvases at 3-4 times the price of others. There is and always will be customers that want the quality and service of the kind that you sell at right signs, regardless of the infinite number of "cheapie" companies.
My wife has had numerous offers from mobile hairdressers to come and cut her hair in the comfort of her own home for a 3rd of the price of her regular salon, does she use them? (she would if I had my way lol) Nope, she still goes to the salon, she likes the people, the service and the way they cut her mop. Are the people that own the salon worried about the mobile hairdresser devaluing their business?…. Nope! They know their customers will come back time after time, because, like you, they look after their customers and price doesn’t even count!
At the end of the day, it’s either a great marketing campaign by someone who’s switched on enough to work the enquiries to his or her advantage, or a crap marketing campaign by someone who thinks that they can survive on those margins. I can see no reason why it should be seen as a threat to any business or the industry as a whole in any way shape or form. It is what it is!
"Sorry Phill if you feel offended, I have only the best intentions at heart and I’m passionate about business in general"
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I’m not offended Mo – And like you, I am passionate about what I do. I do believe that sharing our knowledge and experiences benefits us all and will result in a better industry that we can all be proud of being a part of.
I have listened to what you have said and agree with the philosophy of "upselling" as a way to increase profits in any business.
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Thanks Phill, I can sleep easy now 😉 cheers!
BigMo
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I see both sides of the argument, but Phill does make good sense.
I have a printer locally that has the same attitude to selling.
He advertises a loss leader for printing, mainly business cards, then offers a better quality card etc when they call him from his ad. He gets an insane amount of calls.
We were only talking about this last week, as I was signing his work ute.
I asked him how business was going. He bemoaned the fact that his clients are cheap skates and its hard to make a buck. The up-selling works, but the %’s are not there. As Phill alluded to, it takes time to convince the prospective client that paying more for a better job is worthwhile. Time is money in this game. But when he does up-sell them, they often shop around anyway, so he wastes a lot of time in the process. Then he has to compete with Vista cards who sell on-line and give you no options other than their templates.
In the sign game, you’ll make a better living if you concentrate on getting referrals. Loss leaders DO attract the client that is only interested in price, rarely will they care about your expertise or the quality of your materials.
Certainly do whatever you think works, but as Phill says, there are lots of experienced operators on these boards, giving free advice based on many years of experience. I know of no other forum where newbies can get this caliber of help for free.
Whilst your obviously free to do as you wish, I’d urge anyone who wants a long term prospect in the sign game to aim a bit higher than targeting the clients that don’t really appreciate what we do, how we do it, or that we need to make a living.
The best way I find to quote a job is the 33/33/33 rule. Each job can be divided up into thirds. It takes 1/3 of the time to quote and design, a 1/3 of the time to produce the job, and a 1/3 of the time to fit and travel. So, a job that has taken an hour to fit, has more than likely taken upto 2 hours in time to get to that point (based on man hours).
Hope that helps anyway.
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I’m not saying that it doesn’t work but being cheap didn’t work for me at all, I was working 24/7 and not making enough money to pay the bills. All I did was made myself extremely ill, something that I may well spend the rest of my life trying to recover from.
I don’t have a single customer from back then now as they all went elsewhere when I put the prices up. Mo don’t forget you have a background in sales which obviously helps from what you have said but most of us don’t have that and a lot of people struggle when it comes to sales anyway. I have tried to educate customers but have found in general the people who are looking for a cheap job don’t listen and are always the first to complain if they can find anything at all to complain about.
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Yeah you have a point there Martin, I guess that my sales techniques are quite advanced and I sometimes forget that I find it easier than most.
I definitely understand about overworking yourself I have been there trying to get up and running, nothing is worth your general health and well being.
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I’ve taken my mother in laws view on business :lol1:
She had the opinion that she charged a high rate for her holiday cottages which meant that she had less weeks booked but her cottages were less used and the clients were usually more careful (not always).
This meant less work cleaning and less wear and tear on the equipment and bedding etc.Down the road our friend has cheap holiday cottages and he’s always fuller but he’s for-ever having to repair and replace stuff and he’s having to repaint regularly.
So I’d rather do slightly less work and have my equipment less used and also have an easier time.
Saying that it’s nearly 9pm and I’ve been working for 12 hours today 🙄Steve
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