Mug pricing

[RogerC]

The customer knows he is buying my expertise, not my camera costs

, he can get his prints done in Boots for a tenner. Same with the customer buying £80 jeans which were manufactured in the Far East for £3. People have a rough idea about profit margin.

At £6.99 for a mug, a customer can guess the profit somewhere between £1 and £6...it's not exactly a huge figure compared to the jeans? I don't think that customer is going to storm out of the shop annoyed about paying a small amount of money for a one off mug...he had a present budget of a tenner and he got something cool. I doubt he has the slightest interest in the profit margin, as long as it looks as if it was worth the money he paid for it, you will soon find out if you are charging too much.

I'm sure the customer knows they are paying towards a lot of things in reality. Apart from your expertise they are paying towards your overheads, equipment costs, heating, lighting, wages etc etc etc hence what I said in my previous post..........'what is acceptable to one supplier makes no economic sense to another'.

[NASH]

I just had one customer asking me to quote on 12 t-shirts which i did. Then she said "i`ll take one to show my huband". I said okay then the 1st one will cost 40% more and i`ll refund the difference when you order the other 11. You may ask did she place the order, well the answer is "NO"

i spend half my life quoting on multiples and then sell only one

[Andrew]

That is correct, so why tell everyone the costs on an open site like this?
I bet you wouldn't divulge where and how much you get your prints for, and where to buy your wedding albums including cost prices etc.



It's never too late to put structure and new rules on a forum.

Can't say I have read the old rules on what information we can divulge let alone new ones. Personally, if people are happy to discuss their pricing I have no problem with that. If we stop discussing the cost of blanks and consumables that's a big part of the forum dead. At the end of the day, sublimation is a very small, niche industry which very few have heard of or care about. Most punters just decide whether they are happy to pay for what is in front of them rather than thinking how much it costs to make. That would make the shopping trip to Tesco somewhat longer otherwise.

[John G]

I can understand both sides of the argument regarding what's available on the forum - what I can't understand is why some of the businesses, and professionals, on this forum are so open with facts, figures and info that has taken years to gather or learn.

When this forum was first set up there were little, if any, rules in place, as it was a hobby site, so everyone posted what they liked. The forum has changed massively over the past 3 years, some good changes have been made, some were not so good (in my opinion). I just think its time to treat this like a professional forum, rather than a hobby site - its well past the stage of a hobby site.

[Andrew]

I am not so sure it has changed that much other than a larger base of opinion but still a similar split between those who have knowledge and those that are learners and then many in between. Sublimation is getting cheaper to access all the time so I see a growth in hobby users. Many of these will have aspirations to make a business out of it but will find out the hard way that having the equipment in place is the smallest of steps in getting going. I don't know who is best placed to judge at what level of involvement in sublimation the cut off should be if there ever is such a thing. What we need to remember is that there is always people about that are larger than ourselves who would see us as a hinderance and don't think there are places for smaller companies in such industries. I would personally love to have entry into sublimation at well over £10k to take out all of the smaller users but it's only going the other way where it takes hundreds these days. Easier to accept that the lower end is faster growing and don't think it fair to shut them off with an industry specific forum. If I ever think information is best not given out then I don't post. If someone else doesn't mind then that is upto them. A forum for the elite would find itself very stagnant. All just my opinion ofcourse.

[John G]

All just my opinion of course.

And everyone's entitled to one too. :biggrin:

I agree with a lot of your points Andrew, I also don't mind healthy competition, it keeps you on your toes and gives you the kick up the backside, which is sometimes needed.

What I do object to is when the playing field isn't level, and the competition isn't healthy - when people see a get rich quick scheme, buy into it with ebay crappy second hand printers, crap inks, presses etc and run it out of their bedrooms for beer money. We are actually showing them how to do it, helping them fix set up problems, fixing their print problems, giving them all this valuable info for free, along with the best suppliers to use, cost breakdowns, and our selling prices for them to undercut us by £3 or sometimes even £4 a mug.

Now that's why I feel so strongly about forum members putting their costs/prices on the forum - maybe if the forum had a different, or new structure, it wouldn't be the death of the forum - but the making of it.

[purpledragon]

I tend to agree with John on this , this site has evolved from a hobby site into a industry site, and i have to disagree with you andrew an industry specific site wouldnt get stagnent theres plenty of forums out there which are industry specific which are very sucessfull and are far from stagnent. My opinion is (and it is just my opinion)you have 2 sets of people in this industry the hobbiest making holiday money whislt holding down a job and the struggling business owner who has to contend with all the overheads that go with running a shop be it on line or a physical shop. Personally i have no problem with any competitor who plays on a level playing field but when you get fred blogs come along and asks how much to do this wheres the cheapest to get that etc etc only to find they can make a £1.00 per item which goes towards their holiday then you have the likes of me , john and all the others in buisiness who have to take into account tax NI staff shop overheads etc etc etc and have to make £3.00 per item im afraid it does make you cynical but its a fact there are members who have come on gleaned the info they need then disappeared and there are those that post info which makes you cringe ask yourself this you might tell me how much you sell a mug for would you give me the address and phone number of your biggest customer ? Highly unlikly and you would be a fool to but if you think letting all your pricing secrets become public knowladge well you might as well go the whole hog and do just that ok you may say well my customer knows and trusts me but thats a bit nieve to think that customer wouldnt consider one of your competetors if he under cut you theres no friends in business!
I supose at the end of the day what info you choose to give out is really up to you and could be your down fall or could make you who knows personally id prefer to err on the side of caution

[purpledragon]

And everyone's entitled to one too. :biggrin:

I agree with a lot of your points Andrew, I also don't mind healthy competition, it keeps you on your toes and gives you the kick up the backside, which is sometimes needed.

What I do object to is when the playing field isn't level, and the competition isn't healthy - when people see a get rich quick scheme, buy into it with ebay crappy second hand printers, crap inks, presses etc and run it out of their bedrooms for beer money. We are actually showing them how to do it, helping them fix set up problems, fixing their print problems, giving them all this valuable info for free, along with the best suppliers to use, cost breakdowns, and our selling prices for them to undercut us by £3 or sometimes even £4 a mug.

Now that's why I feel so strongly about forum members putting their costs/prices on the forum - maybe if the forum had a different, or new structure, it wouldn't be the death of the forum - but the making of it.

I tell you whats really annoying spending all that time typing stuff out clicking send only to find johns jumped in with half the points you were making LoL

[John G]

Sorry mate :biggrin: excellent points you raised though - if I do say so myself.

[Andrew]

That's it though Brett, I have always been careful with what information I give out. Very few people will know on this forum what I do, where I get my business from, where I buy my blanks from and so on. I would prefer not to have hobbyists about but I would also prefer not to have one man/woman set-ups, market traders, full time ebayers, someone having sublimation as an add-on to their print shop and the list goes on. It would make my life easier and more profitable but that is not the way it is. I accept that with sublimation being an easy to access market there will be a full spectrum of users, which in-turn caters for all needs of buyer. Those that want the cheapest of the cheap, those that want rip off designs, those that want highest quality or unique to them etc. Very few people or businesses can cater for all so it is easier to accept where you fit in or what you want to achieve. I don't get all the whinging that goes on about things like how low someone sells a mug for on ebay. If they are whinging about that then in all probability the customers that buy the cheapest stuff wouldn't be the same that would buy from them. It's better to focus on what you need to achieve rather than worry about factors you can't control. (None of that is aimed directly at you Brett or John by the way

If it becomes more of a closed community then I see this place becoming very quiet. There is only so much to discuss in sublimation. I lost interest long ago in general sublimation talk as novelty wore off but there are always many new users coming through. It would be a brave step for the forum to start distancing itself from the new start-ups who the vast majority will consist of pocket money users.