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ARTeffect's Lawrin Rosen offers insights for sign pricing.
By Lawrin Rosen
Essentially, quoting a sign's price is determining a price your customer can accept, with a profit that enables you to earn a living. Like everything else in the sign business, it's part science and part art.
I've seen many pricing theories over the years. The most common shortcuts I've seen include doubling material costs plus tripling labor expenditures and multiplying labor alone times four or five. These shortcuts are fine for a ballpark price. However, a customer probably isn't going to be happy if you say a job is going to cost approximately $4,000, and the actual price comes out to $4,850.
Likewise, there are the ballpark "square footage" or "per inch" methods that can give a customer a quick budget number. To the contrary, I encourage the scrupulous estimator to figure out actual costs. Being lazy will only get you in trouble.
I prefer breaking down every job into its essential components, isolating all material, subcontracting and labor costs. A project may turn out to be a winner, a big disappointment or somewhere between. As such, I like to readily identify what went right or wrong.
When first looking at a potential job, I approach it intuitively. This is crucial because it sets the stage for the rest of the pricing process. Any number of factors can come into play, such as:
Most importantly, what is the perceived value of the job and how much do we want it?
If my company needs work, I might be inclined to make my price as competitive as possible. If we don't need work, the contrary applies. I might even inflate the price if we're working at full capacity and the customer has a pressure-cooker deadline. $image1
Formulating material costs
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