Dealing with the public

[Trey Tull]

Is enough to make you want to scream!

Do you put prices online or are you like me where each job is quoted individually? Do you charge artwork fees? Do you charge machine setup fees? Do you have a minimum quantity for a job? (I'm not looking for your secrete sauce, just yes and no will work)

I had a lady looking for a price to do two...TWO....water bottles. She sent me a team logo, not in a usable format and then gets aggravated when I want a artwork fee and a machine setup fee. Says my competition can do it 5x cheaper. Part of me wants to take the time to explain to her the costs associated with doing two of something but I know it would just be wasted air.

[Ross Moshinsky]

Having been in retail for 50 years I can say with some certainty that people can be less than truthful. They would like to suck you down a rabbit hole of doubt. You know your business and they do not. We try to state what our experience is with a smile and they can pretty much take it or leave it. The art work is bad...you need to charge an art charge. They want two polar mugs, water bottles, pens etc, there is a less than minimum charge/ setup charge. Call it what you want.
I truly believe that Amazon.com has ruined retail-service industries. Now people think that they can get anything in 2 days, same day, same hour or on the spot. It is our job to tell them ..not in this business.
We are on the East Coast, however when I talk to salespeople I hear that it is endemic every where.

[Mike Null]

I have stopped accepting "retail" business altogether. I now work with commercial and institutional customers only. I don't need the aggravation or the business.

[Kev Williams]

statement: "[your] competition can do it 5x cheaper"
' and yet, here you are...'

My favorite question: "can I see some samples of fonts?"
'whatever's on your computer'...

I'm not retail either, never have been, but there's always the occasionals that show up...

[John Lifer]

First thing I ask when I get a call is how many are you looking for?

One, I start at $20 an item.

I will occasionally do something that is text only and takes me 2 minutes on my fiber for $10 or $15, but metal bottles, cups, etc, are $20 for individual item.

If I have to take a lot of time with artwork, I will up it somewhat.
And for even multiples, I don't discount to $5 an cup either. If someone local wants to lose money, I'll let them. I'd rather cut my grass than work for peanuts.

Most of the time they want to pull out CC for a $20 item, so you lose that 2% also.

Yes a lot are a pain.

[jon stevenson]

I take a somewhat different approach, which may only work for me, people hate set up fees, fees for this, fees for that, as do I. I believe in “building in” my costs and just giving a price based on quantity & uniqueness, then they can take it or leave it or ask me about it . For example, if each tumbler is different it’s simply one off pricing regardless of how many tumblers they order. If they are all identical it’s simply a volume discount. When a customer comes to me with an image, we let them know right away if it needs “substantial” work and explain bk of this there will be shop time, usually they find something better or give me the freedom to do my own thing.
As for logos we get tons of crap images, however I invest the time out of my pocket to rebuild to a “near perfect vector” as an investment so next time the team manager shows up for product I already have the art done, a simple set-up in the future and I didn’t piss them off with my setup fee. Makes for good word of mouth.
I am also learning quickly for custom design projects to ask for a budget, then I can keep the conversation going if it will be profitable or send them to someone else. Of course I’m new and as I get busier things may change,,but overall to me it’s like shopping at a grocery store and them asking you at checkout how many .03 cent bags I want. What I want is for them to stop... me off, add .01 cent to every product they sell and just “give me the appropriate amount of bags that fit my groceries” lol

[Kev Williams]

I take a somewhat different approach, which may only work for me, people hate set up fees, fees for this, fees for that, as do I.
This applies to 'street' customers okay, working setup fees into the price, but after many years of cheating myself by, as per your words, 'investing the time out of my pocket to' logos from practially nothing, I DO implement separate charges for digitizing, sometimes. Usually 10 or 15 bucks.

Business customers however, expect setup fees...
I got this email 2 days ago from a customer supplying me with parts counts for me to invoice:


See attached for work you already have done, and the 53 caps that [our driver] dropped off. [B]I priced the 1st set of 2 ea caps higher due to your setup costs. Hope it is OK with you. Send invoice whenever you can.
Thanks

--my customer upped my price because I didn't charge a setup for only 2 parts. Who am I to argue?

After 45 years in this biz, 'what to charge' is still the hardest part of this job...

[Julian Ashcroft]

My website gives discounts for quantity, so the set up fee is built into the first few items ordered.

I took a lot of work out of setting things up and dealing with poor images being sent, by having a design tool on my website where the customer can come up with a high enough quality design on screen, save it and send to me, I then just have to vector it in lightburn and send it straight to the laser.

[Edward Dyas]

I wouldn't list prices online. You would have to list the most expensive option and that might scare off a customer.

Just do the jobs like you were going to do it for yourself and set a price for it. If you start offering lesser quality work cheaper they will nit pick the job when you are done until you end up doing more work than you would have and for less money.

I do charge for art fees and set up fees but I include it in the price. You just can't do a little job for the same rate per piece than you would a large job.

If you have someone say they can get a competitor do the job for five times less, keep in mind people will tell you any story in the world to get you to come down on the price. Sometimes that really happens for real and then they call you and see if you can fix what the competitor screwed up.

[Trey Tull]

I agree that a person will tell you something to get the price down and in the right situation, I'll go with it. I had a guy reach out to me a couple of months back and request a quote for 80 cups with his logo. I supplied the quote and did some renderings of the finished product. I knew he wanted to use me b/c he already had some of my other work and knew the quality I sent out the door but his company made him get 3 quotes. He came back to me and someone local was like $1.50 cheaper per cup. Since I had time invested in the quote and renderings I beat the lowest bid by $.25 and he was happy.

He loved the cups and I know will be using me in the future.

In this situation, I didn't list the setup fees separate b/c the volume didn't warrant it and he supplied artwork in vector format. But I'm not going to fall for it when some lady says another company will do it 5 times cheaper.

[Kev Williams]

I wouldn't list prices online. You would have to list the most expensive option and that might scare off a customer.

I may not think like most people, but--

if I'm searching for something online I and I like what I see but don't necessarily care for the prices, I may move on and continue my search, but I'll assuredly bookmark the page first..

But whether I like what I see or not, if I find no prices or the dreaded 'call for price' notice -- I'm gone. If you want to sell me something, list the price.

--And there's no rule about listing your most expensive option, especially in the awards/recognition business where 95% of sales are custom made-to-order items. It's perfectly fine to list your cheapest option, such as:
8 x 10 award plaques, $12.50 and up...

[Mike Null]

Trey

He'll be using you after he gets other bids and forces you to a lower price. You gave up $140 on this order. Do you really want more business from him?

[Kev Williams]

Trey

He'll be using you after he gets other bids and forces you to a lower price. You gave up $140 on this order. Do you really want more business from him?

Depends, would this job be waiting in line behind other jobs, or is the machine free? Assuming I quoted $9.50 each, I'd make $760-- after being lowballed by $140 I'd still make $620.

I've never been stubborn enough to kiss off a $600 job simply because it could've been more. This situation is a major reason why I have 19 machines stuffed in this place, I nearly ALWAYS have a machine free so I can lowball the lowballers ;) ...

A little arithmetic... With my made up prices, the $620 is nearly a 20% discount over the original quote. That seems a bit high... So using 20% as an average, consider this- in 45 years in this business I've probably generated over $1,000,000 income from pure 'lowball' work... would I be better off today minus that $1,000,000 just because it wasn't $1,200,000?

[Gary Hair]

You hit the nail on the head Kev! I have turned away lots of work but it would be pretty rare that I would turn away work when I don't have anything better to do, that's just not smart throwing away "free" money!


Depends, would this job be waiting in line behind other jobs, or is the machine free? Assuming I quoted $9.50 each, I'd make $760-- after being lowballed by $140 I'd still make $620.

I've never been stubborn enough to kiss off a $600 job simply because it could've been more. This situation is a major reason why I have 19 machines stuffed in this place, I nearly ALWAYS have a machine free so I can lowball the lowballers ;) ...

A little arithmetic... With my made up prices, the $620 is nearly a 20% discount over the original quote. That seems a bit high... So using 20% as an average, consider this- in 45 years in this business I've probably generated over $1,000,000 income from pure 'lowball' work... would I be better off today minus that $1,000,000 just because it wasn't $1,200,000?

[Trey Tull]

Trey

He'll be using you after he gets other bids and forces you to a lower price. You gave up $140 on this order. Do you really want more business from him?

He didn't force me to take the job and at the rate he's paying.....yes. I want all of his business. Even with the lower fee, it was WELL worth my time and the fiber was just raring to go.


Kev - Never though about listing the lowest price and go up based on what goes on it. Good idea.

[Erik Loza]

A company I once worked for had both a B2B side (mine) as well as a retail counter-type operation. Management was always complaining about the cost to serve those little old ladies who wanted you to spend an hour with them, figuring out what type of acrylic they wanted for some 12" x 12" cut piece that would sell for $18. Company leadership was always talking about "taking it to the next level" in sales and would openly admit that this type of retails sales was dragging them down, yet refused to make any operational changes or sacrifices to make that happen. We all have a fixed amount of resources (time, money, equipment, employees) and in order to grow, you need to be willing to give something up. Walk away from one sector of the market to focus on another. Just my experience.

Erik

[Kev Williams]

Reminds me of 'Things Remembered', they had a novel way of dealing with one-zy two-zy take-20-minutes-to-decide jobs: Charge a bloody fortune! It used to irritate me the prices they'd charge. Yet, in the end, when all the actual customer interaction hours were tallied up, the actual profit was probably no better than 'fair'...