The Framers Forum

With all of the talk of price increases over the last few years I thought it would be interesting to mention this.
I have just had a return customer in from September 2019, wanting another photo framed to the same spec as the last.
In three years the price has increased from £88 to £95 and includes updated material costs, overheads rise and an hourly rate increase.
That's not enough to scare off any of my customers imo.

Is that all? That's not a lot, when you consider that the headline rate of inflation has usually increased prices more than that!

This is what the value of the pound has been doing this year.

https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/GBP-US ... story.html

If you normally have this moulding in stock, it might cost more when you come to reorder it.

Seems like you might be leaving a little on the counter Justin. That’s only an 8% increase over three years whereas inflation in that time would be something like 15%.

I called up all our jobs during 2019 that we charged £88 for and there were 4! At todays prices the same orders would be priced at £133, £126, £117 and £102. The three more expensive ones are handfinished frames which we probably undercharged for in the past. The £102 frame is a simple ¾ black, mount, dry mount job, which is double again your increase.

Actually the £102 job would be £109.50 now as we didn’t used to charge for a backboard within our pricing structure but we do now.

Good to know, thanks Fruitini.

Justintime wrote: ↑Tue 27 Sep, 2022 10:36 am That's not enough to scare off any of my customers imo.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever took on board (which probably came from this forum…!) was if no-one ever tells you that your price is too expensive, then you aren’t charging enough! We never used to get any kickbacks on price and I never even really thought about it. If you can earn the same money from 9 jobs as you previously would doing 10, don’t be scared to lose out on the occasional sale. You’ll be just as better off and have 10% more time!!

Agreed. We're a work from home studio business, so it's rare to lose out on a job once we have them in the door. If people ring up for a price, we don't usually hear from them again. I used to hate giving prices over the phone, but its proved to be a useful method to sort wheat from chaff!