The Framers Forum

Apart from the following are there any moulding suppliers I should look at for moulding?

DJSimmons
Wessex
Centrado

I can buy ahead, probably 400 to 600 ft of moulding at a time, double that if I include Slips/spacers. Its generally all one or two colours of the same profile.

Interested in reasonable price, quality and service.

Thanks

L

LIon have always been helpful.

You could also have a look at:

Ashworth and Thompson
Lion
Mainline
Larsen Juhl
Nielsen Bainbridge
Flagship Framing

Rose and Hollis have excellent customer service in my opinion.

Nick

I buy mainly bare perhaps 90% bare wood mouldings and perhaps 10% factory finished moulding, I am fairly price oriented and do quite a reasonable amount of stacked moulding, where part of the object is to create profiles which command a good price, but the various mouldings used to create that profile give me a cost advantage in my purchasing. I also do a lot of hand finished frames, so I'm not all that typical when compared to more mainstream businesses.

I like some mouldings which I can slice into moulding sections to stack with other mouldings, or sections of mouldings. I'm really not at all typical, so be aware of that where considering what I buy and why I buy what I buy. I buy mouldings from Simons and Rose & Hollis as my main suppliers and from time to time from Wessex and Frintons. I am very much pursuing the quality oriented customers and more interesting niche market stuff. Anything most "run of the mill" picture framers don't supply is my sort of thing.

I always avoid the rubbish bottom end of the market, everything I do is made to last a lifetime and beyond. That not to say that I'm only interested in the expensive end of the market and I do a certain amount of items for the value for money end of the market, but low quality is not remotely my market. During times when the economy is tight, being known good quality work keeps you going. Some deals may be about price, but they are never about customers settling for rubbish.

I'm not put off about using lower price pine mouldings. I see plenty of pine mouldings again it's all about the quality. I also sell plenty of oak mouldings and that includes a reasonable amount of ready made frames. If ready made frames are difficult for you to sell, try making some from nicer real wood mouldings. The bulk market for ready made frames is saturated with polymer mouldings and all sorts of cheap and nasty stuff, but there still are customers looking for something better at the right price.

Both Simons and Rose & Hollis have an enormous range of different mouldings to choose from, which has a lot to do with why I use them as my main suppliers, also I'm pretty good at making interesting frames using cost effective mouldings, but I use plenty of up market mouldings and nice hardwood mouldings too. I will also mention buying discontinued mouldings, which can be a good thing too, if you are good at ringing the changes to turn less popular mouldings into something special.

Thanks all for your suggestions, I want o be moving up the quality ladders but I have tried hand finished frames and found them very time consuming despite following advice from FF, maybe I will give it another crack later in the year. I am sure part of the problem is just practice.

Part of the problem may be practice, but the hand finishing solution is not necessarily viable for everyone. If you are running a business from premises with high overheads, you may well need a higher volume of orders combined with a rapid turn over of orders to maintain your higher level of overheads. If this is the case you probably will be hard pushed to do this as a hand finishing framer unless you have plenty of customers who expect to pay higher prices.

If your business model requires a less modest level of work to keep going then relying totally on hand finished work will probably not be your best choice, but this does not mean that you won't find some hand finishing options worthwhile. Such options might include wrapped deep bevel mounts, or other niche market means of adding extra value to you existing work volume. Hand finishing does not have to be all, or nothing.

Something that does not get mentioned very much in regard to hand finishing is the marketing an promotional aspect and how you formulate this is down to what suits you. If you go into a restaurant and look at the menu, you won't find anything on the menu that they don't want to spend time doing when it not in their interests to be offering that particular menu choice. There may be many reasons why they don't what to offer something and the same can also apply to what a picture framer is willing to offer.

I don't think that you are going to be offering all things to all people. Why? Because making money is not always about giving everyone whatever they want. Common sense tells you that some things are bad for you business and some things are good for your business. Some businesses make quiet a bit of money by offering extras, which customers choose on top of what they are willing to pay beyond just the price of the basics, such extras are optional. The customer does not need them, but they decide that they want them, well nice things cost money.

This is where you can a bit more to you bottom line. Also there's no logical reason why you should offer such extras at a cut down price. There are lots of reasons you can use to explain to customers why you can't do this. More specialist materials, not everyone wants this, so you don't order enough to buy in bulk and get discount price, etc. So perhaps there are a few so called hand finished option, that might suit you very well. Such as painted mount reveals on double mounts, wrapped mount bevels, painted slips behind mounts and whatever, the choice is yours.

You may even want to more mainstream hand finished stuff, but who says that you have to? As Arthur Daily once said "The world is your lobster". Whatever items you choose can still be something that is hand finished and therefore special. You choose what options you are going to offer and for how much. Sounds sensible?