posted
The higher prices usually correlate with the businessmen/women that are retailing for profit. They are accounting for overhead (everything you need to do to keep the lights on and service the customer, variable production costs (everything you actally do to make the product,eg. consumable material costs),they have margin benchmarks and profit benchmarks to realize a return on their investment.
The second group that makes you wonder "how they could sell it that low?" are not including the all the above costs required to service the customer. They don't account for overhead they just focus on the variable costs. For example if I have vinyl at price 1X and I cut it and retail it at a price of 5X. (I wish gas companies thought this way) Would the person be making a profit? Doubt it if you have overhead/labor costs/taxes a small business has.
Some inexpensive calcualtion spreadsheets are on signs101.com Check out Estimate.com website for a database calculator. Profit is a good word Best of luck.
posted
if you can draw up good looking designs that people will want to buy... then that is your most marketable talent in this equasion. Anyone can weed vinyl. The next most valuable skill to consider would be finding someone who can sell a line of stickers to a retail chain. That would probably be your most profitable scenario.
Weeding small detailed designs is not going to be very profitable IMO. I have a line of stickers & I started printing the detailed designs on clear vinyl with my Gerber Edge. Then I have a simple cut path that outlines the entire design (offset 1/8" from edge of artwork) This way I can weed an 8' page of 100 stickers in about 5 to 10 seconds. The extra cost of the ink on top of the vinyl cost is about $6.00 for that 8' sheet, so at $60/hour shop rate, I just need to save 10 minutes in weeding time to consider my costs the same. Since many of my designs take well over 6 seconds to weed, I was very happy to switch production methods when I got the edge.
I haven't got out & really tried to sell these stickers, but I have one surf shop that orders about $500 worth every 2 or 3 months. I print one color designs on clear at about 3" x 4" I sell for $1.50 ea. & the surf shop sells them for $3.00
posted
Find someone that needs some extra cash and get them to weed the decals so you can spend your time acquiring "dealers".
In that kinda market, the design is not a major selling point - it's just a $3, $4, $5 decal afterall. The market most likely won't bear much more than that, depending on the size.
Create your collection, run off 20 or so of each design and time yourself. Figure out material costs, labor cost, etc.
Once you have *your* cost on each decal, double it (at the very least) and that is your wholesale/dealer cost - note: selling to dealers still nets you 100% profit BUT they need to sell volume to qualify. Double your dealer cost and that's your retail price.
When working with dealers the important thing to remember is to price your products so your dealers can't make more money on them than you do.
Present your collection to possible dealers/retailers and when you have orders roll in hire someone at minimum wage to weed them all.
There's profit to be made on small decals, don't let anyone fool you. You just need to be smart about it and not spend your own time (at $60/hr) doing the gruntwork.
-------------------- "If I share all my wisdom I won't have any left for myself."
Mike Pipes stickerpimp.com Lake Havasu, AZ mike@stickerpimp.com Posts: 8746 | From: Lake Havasu, AZ USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Mike makes some good points, but I've got another good one of my own, if you're smart... everything your $10/hour help does is billed out at $60/hour
posted
Doug, that's part of what I already posted. Figure out the costs based on $60/hr labor doing the work, but hire a monkey to do the work ($10/hr just to weed? sounds generous, sign me up!)
I like Estimate too but you still have to tweak the sliders around a bit to finesse the right price out of it - especially when it comes to smaller decals.
-------------------- "If I share all my wisdom I won't have any left for myself."
Mike Pipes stickerpimp.com Lake Havasu, AZ mike@stickerpimp.com Posts: 8746 | From: Lake Havasu, AZ USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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If I advertised $10/hr just to sit and weed stickers all day, I'd have to beat job applicants away with a baseball bat, and that wouldn't even deter them!
-------------------- "If I share all my wisdom I won't have any left for myself."
Mike Pipes stickerpimp.com Lake Havasu, AZ mike@stickerpimp.com Posts: 8746 | From: Lake Havasu, AZ USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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