Monday Morning Blues

[Mike Null]

Last week I quoted two wood engraving jobs.

One for a local supermarket chain to engrave a 15" by 1.5" logo on 100 bread boards. I should have quoted $13 or thereabouts but I quoted 11.50.

The other job was quite substantial involving 3500 pieces of wood to be engraved on 4 sides. Two of the sides would be about 3"x3" and the other two about 1"x3" vertical text. Since I do wood in the 3x3 size fairly often I knew what I should be charging. It should have been in the area of $12. Since there were so many I discounted my quote to $9.50.

I called the supermarket chain this morning and was told they had two bids under $2.00 each.

The other guy won't return my calls so I must assume that he found somebody close to his $4.00 target. I guarantee that this job will take 14 minutes to run. Even with building two jigs it will take 12 minutes.

My guess is that here are examples of people who will soon have their machines up for sale because they don't know or care how much it takes to be in business. They will not have my sympathy.

[Dave Russell Smith]

Its a dog eat dog world at the moment,

[Martin Boekers]

Mike when I was photographing commercially I used to run into that
problem quite a bit. More often than not not I would get a call back
shortly before the project was due, and I do mean shortly! Asking
if I could save them as the photographer greatly under-performed
and/or over estimated their capabilities. This may be happening here.

Someone newer to the laser and figured time wrong.

Did they let you know who quoted it? (probably not)

I'm just curious if it was an ad speciality company as sometimes
they have custom built lasers that can bequite a bit faster than ours.

Maybe a Galvo setup? I have seen the videos of the one that does tiles
incredibly fast.

Then again they are quite a bit more expensive and a job should still
be reasonably priced.

Iv'e never researched this but could the be "branded" I'm not sure of the
process for that but I thought I'd through it out there.

There is entirely to much risk and wear and tear to get $8-$10 hr for
your time. If the shops are local maybe you can see one when they
get finished. (highly unlikely they will get finished at that price using
similar equipment that we use.)


Marty

[Joe De Medeiros]

Mike I feel your pain, I have been running into this with my custom glass work, and I find it's the retired/hobbyist that are doing this, they figure any amount is better than nothing.

[Joe Pelonio]

I'd be curious as to the lead time on these jobs. I have discovered that there are sources for "off-shore" laser work now, just like ADA signs and screen printing that are done with so little cost in labor and materials that even with shipping they come in at 15-20% of what we have to charge to make anything. I have done locally installation on some of these and found the work to be low quality but in many cases the price difference makes up for that to the customer.

[Mike Null]

Both of these jobs were local. The 3500 pieces was a year's worth of work at 800 to 900 per quarter.

To pour a little salt in the wound, when I called the lady on the bread board job she acted as if I was a thief. That may be understandable from her point of view since I was nearly 10 times higher.

MARTIN

The galvo set ups I've seen wouldn't handle the bread board due to the size. They generally do small areas very fast.

[Larry Bratton]

Mike,
Your beginning to feel what I get a lot of. I also have a friend close by that does high end CNC 3D work and he has recently been pricing at $60 an hour mind you and getting beat out at $50-55. You should see some of the things he does, like at the moment he is doing a full sized automobile and almost got beat out by a guy carving it in sign foam BY HAND. Unbelievable. Some hungry people out there.

[Viktor Voroncov]

Very often here when laser owner must pay his monthly leasing bill They try to catch job at any price which will allowed them to pay.

[David Fairfield]

Not getting the contract sucks. Maybe the competitor is selling laser engraved but delivering silk screen or branding iron. Or outsourcing to India or China. Or maybe he sucks and gets work by doing it cheaply, who knows?

Those kinds of jobs where a laser is really too sophisticated a tool for application, are often at risk of getting taken away by somebody with a better cheaper faster method. Happens to me a lot, but usually on some mind-numbing work, so I don't mind too much.

Maybe it would pay to look into some old school alternative marking systems where you can stamp the thing in a couple of seconds per piece. Might be a really low start up cost, too.

Well anyway, sorry it didn't work out, I know the feeling.

Dave

[Steve Clarkson]

In my 2+ year search for a niche, this is exactly what I have found.......almost anything you can think of can be done better, faster or cheaper than with a laser.....and most people (especially for high volume jobs) are looking for the lowest cost regardless of quality. Therefore, even if there is a job that only a laser can do, there are either so many people starving for work that they will do it for pennies or it can be made offshore for a fraction of what we would charge.

[Mitchell Andrus]

I get quotes for work and shake my head at the ineptitude.

A fellow quoted $1,200.00 to do what took me 5 days and $502.00 to do the restoration on my deck. (See recent thread in OT). When I asked him if he knew there would be between 10 and 15 gallons of paint and stain at $25.00 per involved, he got pretty quiet and adjusted his price up $100.00.

Yikes. I like a good deal but I'll be damned if I'm going to listen to a sob story half way through the job.

When the other engraver needs to replace his tube, he'll stop working for peanuts.
.

[Mitchell Andrus]

.... or it can be made offshore for a fraction of what we would charge.

Maybe it's not too late to re-examine NAFTA and import taxes.
.

[George Beck]

Mike

I learned the hard way on this sort of thing but a valuable lesson. I had a local organization (Cheepskates Inc.) that wanted 100 1.5" x 10" wood strips, beveled, finished and engraved with 2 lines a name and a title like past chairman. I figured wood, cutting, milling and engraving time and carefully quoted $10. They had more like $2.50 in mind. I was new at this and hungry so we settled at $3.00 ea. I spent about 40 hours of time and materials cost me $2.00 each. So I worked all week for about $2.5 an hour. But that is not what it cost me and here is my point. I stay pretty busy with my little box and gift business where I make about $25 hour, not what a painter gets but ok for year 1. Every hour spent on these low ball jobs is an hour I am not making something else. These low price guys will figure this out eventually. Pretty soon you are trapped in a web of increasing volume at a dropping rate. Now I keep this in mind. It reminded me of the the two guys who decided to sell watermelon for $1.00 each. They bought a truckload of watermelon which they paid $1.00 each. At the end of the day they sold all of the watermelon but realized they made no money. The one guy turned to the other and said " We need to get a bigger truck!"

Just my 2 cents

George

[Mike Null]

Just for what it's worth, both these jobs were laser only jobs. It wasn't an issue of a better or cheaper process---just somebody who doesn't know how to price their work.

[David Fairfield]

I've seen stuff for sale that says "laser engraved" that was definitely not laser engraved. One product looked so bad, I'm certain it was made by firing a blow torch through a metal stencil. For some people, its good 'nuff!