Opinions on Vehicle wrap price please?

[Robert Lambie]

are you printing and laminating?
are you fitting?
will it be done indoors and at your premises?
what type/width of printer are you using?
Is this a new shaped transit or old?

to begin with you need to work out how many metres of vinyl you are going to use.

[David McDonald]

Hi Rob

We will probably print and laminate ourselves although we only have a 30" Versacamm so might sub out for a wider roll width.

We will fit inside here at our own workshop and it is the penultimate Transit model before the latest nose job.

Is there such a thing as an average price for this type of job.

Cheers
Macky

[Robert Lambie]

In my opinion, these days, you charge as much for a wrap as possible.
wraps are relatively new and already the cowboys have knocked the backside out of the pricing before it has even really taken off!

the reason i asked the questions…
regardless to tiling, you can still produce in-house. but in comparison to me producing the job over you would be…

I have a wider machine.
it will printer a fair bit faster.

on those two points alone im able to make more profit than you due to print time. however, i see that as an advantage in profit, NOT, drop the price to compete against you.

You will easily be all day if not longer printing. add a few hours with the artwork… then the next day laminating and god forbid wasting a print!
why… well, you print again, leave 24hrs to cure properly… then laminate again.

then comes fitting…

How many man hours do you think it will take you, you will need two men at times?

back to the, "you are competing against me on this job"
Can i fit faster than you, or vice versa?
I prefer to ask for a vehicle for two days left at our place. take your time. don’t try beating the clock to make more money. but charge accordingly before you start. if you finish sooner than you though, great… you made more profit. don’t price it the other way around though.

two days may seem long… lets say you waste a panel when fitting.
you have to print, leave 24hrs and laminate! then apply…
yeh you could wizz a print off, leave an hour or so and laminate…
1 month later the panel is coming away, bubbles appear due to out gassing etc
off with the panel, same procedure, print, laminate, fit… "zero profit"

work out how much for you to provide the prints laminated in multiples.
don’t look at it like you will be making more on the fitting also… just work out what you expect for one square metre, laminated. then a slight discount, "if any" for the full amount printed, laminated.

now you have your print price….

now give yourself two days "labour" only. what do you want to charge for this time?

remember, if you are a one man band, your phone will be going, customers will be coming in etc etc each time you will stop the wrap to attend to this. It is a time consuming process when starting out. at least on a full wrap it is…

Forget what the guys doing fleet work are charging… they are doing it everyday… its contract work most of the time and based on 10+ vehicles..
you cant compete so dont try to…
If you price for this and get it… make it worth your while doing right or it may turn into a fruitless excerise that may deter you ever taking one on again…

[David McDonald]

Hi Rob

Some very good pointers for me there.

Yes it will take me at least 8 hours to print the material, probably longer as I’ll do it 16-pass. But 75-80% of that time it will just be buzzing away behind me whilst I get on with other quotes and designs.

I’ve already told them we need the van for 2 full days so have contingency built in for c*ck ups.

Anyway shoot me down in flames but I’ll be doing this for £1500+VAT which I think is very keen but I want to secure this customer for their other non vehicle requirements.

Still would be interested to know what anyone else would charge for this job?

Cheers
Macky

[John Childs]

I agree with everything Rob said, except the bit about phone ringing, customers calling etc. That is your problem and your customer should not be expected to pay for any other time than that you actually spend on his van.

I’m not really qualified to give an opinion, not being heavily involved in wraps, so I haven’t done any calculations, but £1,500 sounds about right for a new shape Transit SWB, provided you’re not doing the roof.

Just a final point, printing time does not include any labour because you just press "print" and get on with something else, or even go home and leave the machine to it. What you do need to factor in though, is machine time. That’s cost of printer divided by the number of hours in your own write off period. In my case that’s one year, but your figures may vary, two years may be reasonable for you, or maybe even three, but certainly no longer. Add consumables (ink etc) to arrive at a total cost.

[Simon Polakof]

quote John Childs:

Just a final point, printing time does not include any labour because you just press “print” and get on with something else, or even go home and leave the machine to it. What you do need to factor in though, is machine time. That’s cost of printer divided by the number of hours in your own write off period. In my case that’s one year, but your figures may vary, two years may be reasonable for you, or maybe even three, but certainly no longer. Add consumables (ink etc) to arrive at a total cost.

I know it has been quite a while since you wrote these John, but was I read it I can’t really grasp what you mean when you write about the years and finding out the total cost for your printer when it’s printing. Would you mind explaining it a little bit more?
Thanks

[Joe McNamara]

Just quoted for a very similar setup an a vivaro….£1500.
Customer went for partial wrap instead for £800.
cheers
joe

[John Childs]

quote Simon Polakof:

I know it has been quite a while since you wrote these John, but was I read it I can’t really grasp what you mean when you write about the years and finding out the total cost for your printer when it’s printing. Would you mind explaining it a little bit more?
Thanks

Hello Simon. I hope this helps. 😀

You can look at it as being a labour charge for your printer, and in the same way as you work out your own hourly rate by adding up all your overheads and costs and then dividing by the number of hours you work, you do the same calculation for your printer.

So, you buy a printer for £12,000, which you expect to have a useful life of three years before you need to replace it to keep up with the newer printers your competitors will have by then. You also reckon you can move it on for £3,000 at that time. Therefore it will cost you £12,000 minus £3,000, or £9,000 for the three years.

Add to that something like £1,500 for a maintenance contract in year three when it is out of warranty plus an allowance for non-warranty repairs. That depends on your circumstances, but I would go for something in the region of £3,000. Therefore, before you’ve even switched your printer on it is going to cost you £13,500 for the three years.

Let’s say you envisage your printer being used an average of ten hours per week on a 48 week year, so 1,440 hours divided into the £13,500 means that it costs you £9.38 per hour. That figure needs incorporating into the price you charge for prints.

You need to do the sums for your own circumstances because they can be a lot higher than my example. For instance, what about the cost of the space that the machine takes up? You pay rent for space, so it is another cost. That’s important in a case like my own where I had to take on extra floor space for our print room, plus council tax on it, plus the cost of keeping it warm etc etc.

All these are valid costs with running a printer and need to be taken into account when you are setting your retail price. Or ideally, even before that, before you even consider buying a printer at all, to see whether it is a viable, worthwhile purchase.

[Simon Polakof]

John thanks for the insight! I’ll be making sure to punch those numbers in my new calculation.
Once again thank you!