The Framers Forum

According to what I have read, it is said that for picture framing businesses the most significant "Key Perforance Indicator" is the ratio of cost of sales vs turn over.

By analysing my turn over vs cost of sales together with my minimum mark up, I discover my materials wastage is about one third. I want to reduce this wastage and so I am thinking of introducing a minimum charge for framing orders.

Although I cannot prove this, my instincts tell me lower value orders are less beneficial because the contribution to turn over from indivdual orders is less, but the wastage is still of a similar ratio.

So I am considering introducing a minimum order value.

Is this a good idea?
Does anyone else already do this?
Can anyone offer any guidance?

Thanks in anticipation,
Mark

When I do jobs like board mounting or canvas stretching when the material cost is low I charge a minimum order value just to cover the time taken. This is the only time I cost in labour.

I also sometimes add a bit on to cover the cost of the stick of moulding that way at least my costs are covered.

I use a good old fashioned price chart to determine framing charges and it would be easy to adjust this to include this minimum charge, without having to mention that there is a minimum charge at all.

My mark up is already graduated according moulding price to avoid being out priced as moulding values increase. This new change would only involve a some minor changes to the top few lines on my chart.

Rather than imposing a minimum order value on orders, just bottom a bottom line on smaller orders. So if forexample an item would usually cost £15, set a minimum rate of £20 so the price is now £20. Otherwise your customer will have to purchase something else and probably spend alot more money than they originally wanted to and simply go somewhere else that will do the same job at a little bit higher price.

I think that is what we were trying to say, we should have a minimum workshop price.

arcon5 wrote:Otherwise your customer will have to purchase something else and probably spend alot more money than they originally wanted

Hi Arcon,

What I meant is to set set a minimum charge for framing orders. I can simply take the bottom two frame size lines of off my price chart. Any thing before 12" x 12" won't get any cheaper, although it is smaller and uses less materials.

I'm still formulating my ideas about this and may change the basis of how I price these lower valus orders instead, but more about this later.