The Framers Forum

I had a customer in yesterday who had recently been to a photographer for a family photoshoot.

The photographer offered to frame 3 10"x8" prints in one frame. Seems to have been a simple triple aperture mount and basic 2" plain black frame.
The photographer was charging £700 for the framing job.

One of the questions which often perplexes newcomers to framing is how much to charge.
So for anyone new to framing who happens to be reading this, the answer to the question of how much to charge
seems to be "As much as possible".

It was for the photoshoot, the photos and the framing - which would not have been bespoke framing either!

It was just for the framing. The customer wouldn't say how much he paid for the shoot so it must have been a lot.

I'll do it for 600. (cash)

£700!!!

Pricing is something that took a while for me to grasp properly, but even when I had an idea I still wasn't sure if I was right Anyway, I bought some pricing software and everything got easier but the main thing is now that I can be consistent.

I'm gonna take a lie down now after reading that quote

Hmmmm.... Sometimes you have to take a step back and consider just what £700 amounts to. I think a lot depends on your age. My first pay packet was £5 plus change (after tax). But that was 40-odd years ago. It's easy to get stuck in a price perception from a bygone era, imprinted subconsciously from the time when you first started getting your own money. £700 in 1970 was a fair chunk of cash. Today you could go out to just to get a few odds'n'sods and make a big hole in it.

What does £700 worth of moulding look like? 3-4 bundles? What else can you buy for £700? Not as much as you might think.

Having said that, 700 for framing three 10x8 photos is a bit strong.

Reminds me of where I used to work, we framed the photos for a local photo shoot studio, quite up-market, even had their own telesales department, where they cold called people for photo shoots.
One day I had a phone call from them about some 8x6 R/M frames in a very simple black frame, they complained about that some of the miters were showing, I said that's what you get for a £4.00 frame to which they replied " Well our customers think they should be perfect, as they are paying £118.00 for them" To tell you the truth, I had to agree with their customers, I would want a perfect 8x6 black frame if I had paid £118.00 for it

I agree SteveN . It is normal for upmarket photography studios to be charging those kinds of prices for framing.

Good luck to them if they can get it. Maybe we should all follow their example

For the frame described I for one would swiftly go out of business if I followed that example.

I agree with John; you may get one or two that would take you up on that quote, but most would run a mile, tell all their friends, and you would find yourself twiddling your thumbs.

Yes, £700 is pushing it a bit, but I do often think that in many cases we price ourselves too low for bespoke framing service
which is not a particularly price sensitive business.

Photographers know they get the best prices when it comes to picture framing, but how long do they last?, we only deal with them once. The photographers we deal with mostly use 18" x 12" picture frames and we have them ready made for £10.00. They get the prints done for approx £1.10 for 18 x 12 size from a photo printing company across the road called proam imaging. So overall they get cheap good quality photo printing and framing. They make huge mark ups on the time they spend on photography and getting all the package together.

The price achieved by the photographer demonstrates clearly, perceived value. We should all be aiming to charge as much as we can and if the photographer in questions manages to achieve that price then he is doing a great job. Whats the best way to make money 1000 frames at £1 or 10 frames at £100.... I'd rather be doing the latter.

I agree completely MarkW.
In fact my ambition is to make a living by doing one frame per week.

I completely disagree that we should be aiming to charge as much as we can for 1 frame. Fair enough that we look to make as much as we can as business people over the course of our working week / year, but that is done by providing good value for money on a consistent basis.
If you completely overcharge for one frame you will have the profit from that frame, but you will not know what happens after that, where people decide never to come back to you, or tell their friends about the money grabbing picture framer.

Some photographers are clearly a bit more savy than the rest and know how to market themselves and their services for the maximum return. You can try putting your prices up, but there is always someone willing to compete with you for their business. As always it all comes down to the price they can get it for.

Many photographers buy frames from Ikea and only come to me for the mountcutting. I don't mind at all and I'm perfectly wiiling to do the mountcutting, because it's what I do to make a living.

Also alot of the photographers buy from Wilkos and The Range, Even cheaper prices. Good for us on the mount cutting side

GeorgeHunter wrote: for anyone new to framing who happens to be reading this, the answer to the question of how much to charge seems to be "As much as possible".

There's nothing wrong with that but "what your market can stand" sounds much better .... and you should endeavour to find out what it can, I know mine couldn't stand £700 for such a frame - in fact not even £100 ..... with fancy glass! In fact, give an overall size and an idea on the moulding and I'll tell you exactly what I'd charge.

Yes Roboframer, I think we are all saying the same thing in slightly different ways and as you say "what your market can stand" sums it up nicely.

Finding out what your market can stand is where the fun begins.
If you are supplying a photographer with frames and he says he isn't prepared to pay more then £10 per frame then your ceiling is clearly defined.
However, if you are in a bespoke framing business which caters to a complete cross section of the general public then it becomes a little more complex.
I could give the same quote for same job to 2 different customers. One will recoil in horror at the price and the other will say "I thought it would have been more".

The reason I made my original post about the £700 frame was because I am fascinated by both the art , science and psychology of frame pricing and of course I also have
a fundamental interest as it affects my income
The science bit is easy. I developed my first frame pricing program about 15 yrs ago but it is nothing more than a very useful tool to give consisent pricing and maintain my chosen minimum gross profit margin. The art and psychology of frame pricing is much more fascinating as it takes involves things, like customer perception of the business, self perception and self worth, marketing, experience, knowledge, age, income needs and expectations, competition and many more factors and all of this I think gives rise to as many different approaches to frame pricing as there are framers. For me, it's what makes the business side of framing fascinating and it's probably this complexity which makes it impractical for Tesco to enter the business and makes framing one of the few areas in business today where a small operator can actually make a decent living.