How do you price your HDU signs?

[tuck]

Routing HDU signs has been my bread and butter since I became a BotHead, about 4 years ago. I am not a "sign company" per say. I make my living making signs for smaller sign co.'s that don't have a CNC and need my services. I have to allow room in my pricing for their mark-up, so I guess you could call me "wholesale".

Over time, I have seen the price of HDU sheets climb steadily. Here in Georgia, the cheapest you can get a 4'x8'x 1.50" sheet is around $300.00 including tax. Up until now, my practice has been to tell customers (sign shops), "You buy and bring me the HDU, and I'll cut your signs for X amount." This has worked well, but it has some draw backs. If someone needs a small sign, say a 2'x3', for instance, and I don't have any drop laying around the shop, I tell them to go buy a sheet and then of course they don't want to shell out $300.00 for a sheet to get one small sign from, and I lose the job. It goes without saying that I have come to the conclusion that I need to start stocking sheets of HDU, 1.00" & 1.50", and therein lies my delimma. If I'm going through the trouble and expense to purchase and stock the material, shouldn't I mark up the cost of the HDU somewhat on top of what I charge to machine the sign(s)?

I know that some folks charge by time. I try to charge by the square foot so I can give a definite bid on a job. Those of you who have cut enough of these type signs (typically routed-down background with raised letters/graphics) would agree that it can take longer to cut a smaller sign with a lot of copy in it that it takes to cut a typical 4' x 8' sudivision sign that just says "Jefferson Oaks" or whatever.

Thanks in advance for any advice/thoughts/ideas.

Mark

[paco]

Don't give it away!

If you provide the material, you should definitly make $ome money on it. How much depends on you...

Keep in mind that they'll save time from this (shipping). They would anyway have to buy it and that they readily plan to make $ome too (on material).

Do you always make money from charging on square foot?! Not so much and (on the other hand) a lot can happen on a square foot...

[tuck]

Hello Paco my friend. It's been a long time! LOL!

Yes, I have been making good $$$ charging by the square foot. I get $20.00 per sq. for raw unpainted signs and $25.00 to $30.00 per sq. for painted. The adavantage (to me) by charging by the square vs. time is I don't have to "guess" how long it will take to cut the sign and I can give my customers a bid price right away. The prices mentioned above has been with THEM furnishing the HDU to me. So do the math,...a 4' x 8' sign cut and painted is 32 sq. ft., x $25.00 per sq. = $800.00. Nice money for a day's work. (ok, painted, maybe 2 days)

However, now I have to start figuring in material cost. I heard somewhere that the standard mark-up for most materials is "x 1.66%". A sheet of 1.50" x 4'x8' HDU is $300.00, that comes out to $9.37 per sq. If I mark that up x 1.66%, ($9.37 x 1.66%), I come up with $15.56 per sq. If I charge that, plus say $25.00 per sq. for a routed and painted 4'x8' sign, that comes to ($15.56 + $25.00) $40.66 per sq., or $1, 301.12. The retail market around here is about $55.00 to $75.00 per sq. for these type of signs, so I should be leaving plenty of room for my customers to mark up my signs and make $$$ as well.

Am I on the right track? Thoughts, anyone?

[tuck]

BTW. Paco, here is a link to that primer I was telling you about:

http://www.alumapanel.com/view_produ...Based%20Primer

I haven't tried it yet, so I can't say how helpful it might be to solve that problem we were talking on the phone about.

[den73160]

Mark

Have you considered gluing pieces together to make the 2'x 3' from scraps? This would be simular to end jointing wood. Any thoughts?

[den73160]

Sorry as far cost per sq ft. I am working with Joe Crumley and he is changing $150 on the more complex designs that he makes.

[tuck]

Dennis, yes, I have glued up HDU with Gorilla glue many times and it is terrific. When all is said and done (sanded & painted), no one can tell that the sign is a glue-up. Sometimes, however, I am simply out of scrap. Like now.

$150.00 per sq.??? Wow! A 4' x 8' would be $4,800!!! :-0 Well, most all of the signs I make aren't that complex,...just routed down back grounds with raised letters/graphics. Pretty simple, really. I think it's reffered to as 2 1/2 D.

[donchapman]

I regularly get $100/sq.ft. for simple but attractive HDU signs, dealing directly with the user. Routing takes the least amount of time. Meeting with the customer, designing, matching paint and obtaining mtls., painting, delivering and often installing take 80% of my time. I usually get extra for installation and charge for time plus materials whenever I can, or estimate them if I can't. I still regularly fail to get enough for my design time. I've never had it happen, but if someone brought the HDU to my shop, provided a clean and simple dxf file ready to cut, and all I had to do was set up and rout the file, I'd feel good about getting $25/sq. ft. for an unfinished sign but I'd want more than $10/ft to paint it.

[tuck]

Don, you're right, I probably should get more than I do for painting, although I've got that down to a science. I use Behr exterior grade semi-gloss acrylic latex enamels for the background colors and I apply that with an airless sprayer, 2 to 3 light coats. I have an old furnace fan to blow-dry between coats and I can start rolling on the copy/graphics color(s) usually within a couple of hours. I generally use no primer. I've never had a problem with paint adhesion except once when I used a cheaper grade paint and that taught me a valuable lesson.

On occasion I have to do the design work but I don't charge for that if it's a relatively simple design. I can draw up a typical 4' x 8' oval subdivision sign in just a few minutes and make changes easily enough. I use to work as a full time sign designer for a large company in Florida and they never did figure out how to charge customers for design time. Back then, I did things the old-fashioned way, on a drafting table with pencils and pens and T-squares, french curves, etc. (My, how times have changed!) Sometimes I would spend hours on end on a design and we'd lose the job to another company because of price or whatever. My company chalked up the loss to the cost of doing business.

I'm starting to get the feeling that we're not charging enough for our routed HDU signs around here. I'd like to hear from some more folks in here as to what your local market(s) allow you to charge.

Mark

[joewino]

While we haven't done a lot of work for other sign folks, when we do we are normally asked to do the complete job - paint, assemble, install - the works, except the design.

Our dimensional HDU work is priced by the job rather than by the square foot because we try to stress the advertising value of the sign, along with the positive image it produces rather than just a commodity that you take off a shelf.

For a starting point, though, it will usually run around $100 a square foot and then go up, with the addition of hand carving, gold leaf, etc. Any posts, finials and such are additional plus the cost of installation.

Unless it is an extremely simple project there is a separate design fee that is billed apart from the sign. When the client receives the artwork he is free to have anyone actually do the sign, although I can't think of a time when someone has taken the design to another shop for the actual blasting and installation.

If we do the work for another sign shop it is figured exactly as if we were doing it for one of our customers, less any selling and design time. It takes the same amount of time to do it for another shop as it does for our regular client.

We don't have a flat bed router (yet) so our work is either sandblasted or done in cut out layers. That is time consuming and costly. However, whenever we begin routing our work the price will not go down....they are buying the image and advertising value of the finished product, not letters by the pound.