This is topic Price & performance check with those who do wide-format digital printing. in forum Letterhead/Pinstriper Talk at The Letterville BullBoard.
I just completed a project this morning which sold for $2668.00
The customer had an existing brick wall with a 22'x5.5' metal panel that he wanted to cover with a digital print. The print had to be installed on-site but was low enough that we only needed a 6' step ladder.
The design/layout time took about 4 hours (revisions, approvals and so on).
I farmed the job out to a wholesaler who charged me $750.00. The print was done with solvent inks on 3M 180c and laminated with 3M's satin-finish overlaminate (I can't remember the model number).
The client had his staff to remove the old decals.
We had to wash the surface, clean off any adhesive residue and then go back over with with Rapid Prep and then Rapid Tac.
It took my helper and me 3.5 hours to do the wash and install. We had never done anything like this before.
How did we do?
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Posted by Bruce Evans (Member # 44) on :
I'll guess your shop rate at about $85/hr. 7 hours = $595 So you got $2073 for the vinyl which sounds like you marked it up almost 3 times.
Some would say they would have charged more, but they probably wouldn't have gotten the job. Some would have charged less but won't admit it.
In my neck of the woods, you would have done just fine with those kind of numbers.
Posted by John Arnott (Member # 215) on :
That's great for the first time. Can you tell us more about the set-up? Did the customer supply all the photos at high resolution. What dpi did you work at? Etc. Etc. This seems to be the hardest part (and most fun). I know how quick the installation goes on flat surfaces. I charge $2.50 to $3 s.f. for most flat surfaces and make good money at that. I saw the most beautiful banner used for a wall sign in Las Vegas. It was about 12'x60. I'd like to do some of those type of jobs.
Posted by Tony Lucero (Member # 1470) on :
Glenn, I think you did great. We get $14 sq/ft retail for solvent prints on premium air release vinyl with a clear lamination. $1700 Add $200 for the clean up/set up and $400 for a local (within 10 mile) install. I would have quoted $2300.
You got a good deal from the guy who did the print/lam job...I would have charged you $1275
Posted by Tom Giampia (Member # 2007) on :
Glen,
Seems like you sold a profitable job! Your charges vs. expenses are very good.
The "wild card" is the design and layout.
If you charge the same "Shop Rate" for installs as you do for design, then based on the quality of work that I've seen from you, you are cheating yourself.
4 hours of design work could have the value of what you charged for the entire job!
Overall, I'd say you made good money. The question is:
Did you charge the full value of your work?
Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :
The art and design wasn't all that much. It was mostly text. The client provided a perfect vector file of their logo. I took maybe 10-15 minutes to Photoshop it into a bronze casting. The headline was made to look like gold beveled lettering. A drop shadow was put behind everything and that was pretty much it. All of the rasterized portion was set at 125 dpi at full size. The rest was vectors. The entire Corel Draw file was about 90 megs.
What really took time were the revisions such as making the "bronze" lettering and gold beveled lettering look brighter. A couple times the client wanted to see the difference between a solid color background vs. a faux smalts background. That kind of thing. I think there were about 12 to 15 revisions before they settled on what they wanted. My shop rate is only $65 per hour.
I have to add that the clients were some of the nicest and easiest people to work with. I wish more people were like them.
They had placed the order back in early January but were willing to allow us to wait for decent weather since the install had to be done outside in a large field.
I'm looking forward to doing more work for them. They are looking to do a carved/smalts/gold leaf sign for the main entrance in a couple months. And, we did two new ambulances for them a few months ago.
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I should add that I realize that the lettering, particularly the bottom text, is too close to the border. The client wanted everything as big as possible because the sign is about 300ft from the highway.
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[ February 26, 2008, 05:41 PM: Message edited by: Glenn Taylor ]
Posted by Neil D. Butler (Member # 661) on :
I'd say you did just fine.... also in my opinion working with a good client like that is worth something as well.. it is such a pleasure to work for such clients.
