Farm Scene -Special Thanks to Jason

[JJsCustomDesigns]

I cut this out this morning. 36" wide and about 19" tall. unfortunately this customer didnt want a patina finish or even powdercoat. So this is getting the rattle can treatment.

Just curious too - What would you guys charge for this?

This lady caught me when i was doin a promotional christmas discount. She got it pretty cheap. Needless to say i will word my discount sales a little different next time.

just short of 1500" of cutting and 487 pierces... (btw, i did this project and 2 others similiar in size on 1 set of comsumables. Thats Alot of pierces!)

And i owe Jason @ Cascade Metals a HUGE THANK YOU for helping with this project.

[Gamelord]

That is very sweet. Nice design and great cut.

[34chev]

If it was us we would charge $90

[steelfx]

I would have charged $225.00, bare steel.
Could easily get $350.00 with patina/s & clear-coat.

Nice design & cut. Very impressive!

Bill

[JJsCustomDesigns]

I would have charged $225.00, bare steel.
Could easily get $350.00 with patina/s & clear-coat.

Nice design & cut. Very impressive!

Bill

I cant take credit for the design. This is a design from Jason @ Cascade Metals. I just took out the the oval, put a box around it and attached a name.

[metalart]

I think the pricing for that should be around $250, and as Bill mentioned more for patina and paint. Very nice!

[bigcreek]

That looks great. I would have charged $330 powder coated or $300 bare metal cut from 10 gauge or 3/16. Jason has some awesome artwork. I better go back to his site and see if there is anything new..

[ctorres3120]

Cutting a long time, very nice trbajo, from $ 250 to $ 300, depending on the finish.
Carlos

[Marcus]

could i get a dxf file from you i would even pay thaks

[Marcus]

could i get a dxf file from you i would even pay thaks

[BrianMick]

I would be at 175.00 just for labor to cut. That does not include material and or any design time.....
Brian

[icmplasma85]

Wow! I'm reading all of the prices you guys are saying you would charge and 2 things come to mind. One, how do you get anyone to pay such a high price for this in particular(bare steel or not), and 2, why am I not selling something similar for close to the same price?? The highest I estimate I could get for this, at the same 36x19 dimensions from say, 14ga mild steel, would probably be $80. That is bare steel, so if I painted it or put a patina on it, I could probably get between $150-$200 depending on how crazy I got with it, but I am amazed at what I'm reading here.

Let me also say that I don't do crummy work. I get excellent cut quality and usually little to no dross on my cuts. If the customer wants something finished (paint patina etc), if I don't like the way it comes out I'll sand it and start all over. I do get metal fairly cheap because my day job is a steel fabricator/warehouse, but still.....

I'm trying to get more on the side of mixing art and metal fabrication together. Just did the lettering for a local restaurants main entrance sign. Made very nice profit on that, and if I had 2 of those jobs a month I would make more than I make at the day job. Seems the people that want more than just an artistic cutout are more willing to pay for what something is worth than harry homeowner that wants his favorite football team logo to hang on his garage wall. Apples and oranges I guess.

Bottom line is if I could get what you guys are getting for stuff like this, I would not be working a day job anymore. And I have definitely tried to sell stuff for more money, but sometimes a small profit is better than no profit.

[abmetal]

That's kinda' where we're at on pricing artwork. We can't get that kind of money in this area. That's why we rely on production parts. Granted, we do have a few good customers who know the value of our metal art but most run to Hobby Lobby.

Allen

[Shane Warnick]

I'm in the same boat as the last two guys. I couldn't get anyone to even stay long enough to get a business card if I said that was $300. I priced it, and I would be around $80 raw steel 14g, $100 for 10g, I would only be at $165 if I cut it from 1/4". I would add $50-$60 if I powdercoated it. Of course, there are several factors at play such as what the market will bear, market saturation from a cutting standpoint, and material cost.

Just for grins, what are you guys paying for your material where you are saying you could charge $200-$300? Here (West Texas) I can get steel for around $50 per hundred weight in sheets, delivered. Of course, they won't deliver for 200# of steel, but I usually buy 2 tons or more at a time. I am just curious if material cost isn't a big factor in the perceived value and what the market will bear as far as pricing goes.

Shane

[muzza]

If you want to compete with the cheap Chinese imports expect to be remunerated accordingly.

Again if your designs are straight out of a catalog you'll be competing with everyone else that has the same files. Take some time and browse Etsy and Ebay, you will see these pieces time and again from different vendors each under pricing the last one. At the end of the day nobody makes any money except Etsy and Ebay.

Original designs will always command a better price. You can also modify and personalize existing files, be it by changing the image or enhancing with something like Bills patinas and dyes, value add by incorporating that piece into something a little more unique.

As for material costs, I don't think that's going to have a huge bearing on the final price. Yes every dollar helps but on a per item basis it's minimal. My material content is probably between 5% and 20% of the finished raw price of most items I sell so if it's a $100.00 item and the material cost is $20.00, paying 25% more is only $5.00 in the equation. If I'm that close to the bone then I shouldn't be doing the job.

Even if your material is free, to cut a file like that and charge $80.00 your kidding yourself if you think your making money, you wouldn't even be making wages. If your in the market of lowball prices expect your customers to try and beat you down because they can see that you're an easy target and the moment you drop your price you have lost all credibility with the customer, you have not only undersold your product but you have also undersold your integrity.

If doubling your prices halves your sales you are ahead by half of your input costs. If your trying to compete with the guy in the next stall or down the road make your products different and more desirable and above all make yourself the reason the customer wants to deal with you.

The hardest thing about selling product is getting the customer inquiry or "marketing". If you let them go then you have lost all effort to get them there in the first place. As soon as they are talking with you you are already over 50% of the way to getting a sale, just make sure you don't lose that other 50%. Be competitive and fair but don't be cheap. More people buy on emotion than price. If it's all about price, they probably aren't talking to you in the first place.

Yes, I get customers asking if I can do it cheaper. My standard reply is along the lines of "sure, we can save you some dollars, would you like it smaller or out of thinner material but either will mean less detail ? " At the end of the day neither are going to effect the price much really but the customer now realizes they have to lose something for the price drop and virtually never go for it.
Just a bit of my person opinion based on experience, hope a bit of it helps.
Murray

[Shane Warnick]

Even if your material is free, to cut a file like that and charge $80.00 your kidding yourself if you think your making money, you wouldn't even be making wages. If your in the market of lowball prices expect your customers to try and beat you down because they can see that you're an easy target and the moment you drop your price you have lost all credibility with the customer, you have not only undersold your product but you have also undersold your integrity.

Murray

Well, my integrity aside, perhaps I am so ignorant as to not even know what wages are??? Who knew. I thought surely, taking something that I had $8 worth of material in, and less than 30 minutes in from start to finish, and turning a $60 profit (if my math is correct that's around $120 / hr PROFIT ) was a pretty good deal. Apparently, that's not even making wages. Hell, I may just roll up and throw the whole shooting match in the trash, and go enroll on some entitlement program. Works for a whole lot of people I hear. Or perhaps, I will just go back to the shop and keep on keeping on. I may even drag my integrity along with me.

Have a good evening, and stay safe.

Shane

[muzza]

I wasn't meaning to offend Shane but there are a lot of other inputs other than just material costs.

I also realize I am in a different country to yourself so wages will differ. I currently pay a tradesman $42.00 per hour on casual rate on top of which I pay half as much again in his superanuation, workers comp insurance etc. I also have an outside sub-contracter who charges me $80.00 per hour and covers his own extras which is a long way short of what a lot of other are having to pay skilled workers here. I can get unskilled labor much cheaper but you only get what you pay for.

Another thing you don't have to worry about when on wages is who pays for the 11 public holiday days, 10 sick days and 20 annual holiday days that a worker is entitled to. So that takes out 41 days of the 260 work days in a year that is part of the wages a wage earner collects.

I have worked for myself for 32 of the past 40 years, I spent another 5 years managing and running other peoples companies mainly to help them get back on track and the biggest problems they had were in not factoring in true costs and not allowing for NPL (non productive labor) which are often over looked. Many businesses develop and grow because the person who kicks it off is very good at what they do and lots of work comes in and goes out but they often neglect the administration end and don't make any where near the money they should.

Like I said earlier, I wasn't meaning to offend and as I said in my last post, I hope some of what I say will help.
Murray

[cbassjr]

I think if you are not charging these higher prices then I think how can you justify the price of your machinery, labor and selling yourself short. My first question to most customers is what are their expectations in terms of dollars/budget. If they are wanting something for nothing why waste your breathe and time. I won't turn my machine on for less than $100.00 and some form of deposit or payment up front. The cutting is the easy part its getting it ready to cut. On smaller jobs I cut it for the customer while they stand there and wait. They start to appreciate your efforts and prices after they stand on concrete for 3-4 hours while you design what they want and understand we don't just pull this stuff out of our butts. You can tell if someone is real or memorex. Sorry if I sound like I'm on a tear but I just think if you don't ask you don't get. There is value in what we do and I make no apologies or excuses for my prices.

[icmplasma85]

I hear and understand both sides. When you are doing this as a side gig you can charge what you need to to just make a little money. But as a business you have to cover costs. Cover your costs and make some $ for the shop. Shane, seems you do more fab work than art. That is the direction I think I want to head. I started out doing stairs and handrails and would like to start a business doing the same.

I guess what im trying to say is after I get the metal home and cut it, even as a hobby I want to make a certain amount of money. But even thinkin about it from a business sense, if I charged $200 bare steel for this I would most likely only be able to do that once a year. And it would look no different than the picture above other than being cold rolled. Thats more expensive off the bat and in my opinion looks better, polished or not. So my point is, I am not an artist in the normal sense of fhe term. I can cut the same thing that people above say they sell for $250 but im only gonna get $80 for it. We are talking no finish at all. Even if I draw and cut a custom piece @ 36x19 I would have a hard time getting over $100 for it, unless it was a very difficult design.

[Shane Warnick]

No worries here. I understand that there are a lot of people who have much higher overhead than other places, and that in and of itself accounts for a lot of the price variance. If it costs you 3x more just to operate on an hourly basis than me, than it stands to reason that you have to charge 3x as much to still turn a decent profit. A lot of the people that are on here and are working for themselves, have a very low overhead and as such, can still make a great profit while charging less than others. I have the luxury of owning everything I have, including my shop the land etc. I am currently kicking the donkey's of all my direct competitors, and pulling a lot of their business. My overhead is WAAAY lower than theirs is, and I am growing my business, and subsequently market share, making a great profit margin, and providing a superior product as well. Once I get as busy as I wish to be, I will bump prices a little, 5-10%, and keep on keeping on. Now, if I decided to spend $300k on a new shop, and hired 2-3 people, then I would have two choices. Either quadruple my volume, or increase the volume some (more aggressive marketing) AND raise prices simultaneously. I am in a market where for the last 36 months, if you had a pulse, could pass a drug test, and would show up, you could make $60-75,000 a year driving a truck, or as an electricians journeyman, etc. Heck, welders helpers (the dudes dragging the grinders around and spooling up the cables at the end of the day) were making $20-25 / hr. It was to the point that you about couldn't go eat at a restaurant, as there was an extreme shortage of cook and wait staff. Now that the price of oil has come down, that is reversing some.

Back to the original post I made, when I said I would cut that for $80 out of 14g, that was just for the material and cutting. I would charge a CAD fee if it was a custom file (like adding a name) not a lot, but $15-20 if it was less than 15 minutes to modify the file. Then finishing would be extra, I don't paint but would powder coat for $10 a square foot. I pay someone to do that, and I pay $6 a square foot, that includes sandblasting, and coating the entire part on both sides. I only throw that in there because I know a guy that was charging not much to powdercoat but was only spraying one side, the other was just what it was. Lets just say not everyone was ok with that deal. My guy warranties the work, so my exposure is minimized, and I still make a decent markup on the coating, with minimal effort.

I was more inquiring about the material cost, as I am interested in trying to determine what causes the market values to settle at one point in a given geographic location. I thought perhaps that the material cost might have something to do with it. I know that what the customer perceives as value is what ultimately makes them either ok with the price, and they buy, or not so much and they walk. I want to try to understand what factors shape their perception, so I can try and capitalize on it. If, for instance, material is 30-40% higher in another location than mine, then it would stand to reason that everything made from similar material would be higher. BBQ pits, custom fire pits, gates, security fencing and window / door covering,patio furniture, you get the picture. If it's all higher than it is here, then of course the customer would not balk at some of the prices I see people proposing that they would charge. I think another factor is competition , and how saturated the market is with similar pieces, or tradesman doing the same style of work. If there isn't another guy with a plasma / laser for 300 miles in any direction, or if you are in a large urban area where the average joe doesn't even know who to call for something like we make (if it ain't sold at Target or Walmart it doesn't exist to these people) then you can command a higher price, and the customer perceives the value as higher, since they view it as more unique. That's my theory anyways. Out here, there are 2 lasers, 3 other plasma shops, and 4 waterjet shops within 50 miles of me. The lasers are stupid busy, but funny thing is most of their stuff is cut for customers not even in the area. They are cutting quantities of 10,000 or more, and shipping the parts. The biggest shop has a laser that will QUALITY cut 4" mild steel, I have seen it in action. Know what they cut the most of? 18g and thinner steel, and some aluminum and stainless. 90% of their customers aren't even within 250 miles of us. They leased that big honking laser, then took on all this other work just to make enough to break even, or maybe make a small profit, just to keep from losing their butts. The waterjets are maintenance queens, and hence have a higher operating costs and subsequently a higher price per cut inch, plus they are SLOW. They can cut non-conductive material that I can't, but they are also 2-3 weeks minimum on getting an order out the door. I am working on that for them, when I started they were 6 weeks out . The other plasma competitors are twice my price, and have cut quality that is not so good to say the least. My cuts make theirs look like someone cut their parts by hand, and a shaky one at that.

I said all that, to say that I have to offer a higher quality product at a very competitive price, in order to get people to even give me a chance. When they do, they all come back, and bring their friends. Problem is, when you are spending someone else's money (ordering parts for you boss or someone else's company) change is hard. The norm is easy, and I have to convince them to change. The art stuff is a little more expensive, but still has to be competitive, as every dude with a truck and a welder is making stuff for people, using material they stole from work, and often cutting on someone else's machine (work). Hence, my customers have to perceive a value, I know my stuff is better, but MOST people aren't willing to pay double for twice the quality work, especially for stuff that is going outside on the wall, the gate etc. I can get a little more than the other guy, but not double, otherwise I wouldn't be making anything at all.

So, in an attempt to set myself apart, I am trying to get a better grasp on what factors influence the value a customer perceive, and subsequently the most money they will pay for a given product, and essentially establishes what the market will bear. I know what factors influence my perceptions, but not others. If I can glean some insight into these factors, perhaps I can find something I can exploit to my benefit. I made a post recently highlighting a gentleman that was cutting a file that was on here, from 18g mild steel, and selling them raw through a wholesale or direct sale magazine / marketing company. He provided them with the pieces, they took orders and shipped them. They were getting $180 each (plus shipping) for the garden sea serpent (raw finish) that is on here, at a size that I can sometimes get $140 for, powdercoated. That guy found a niche, and exploited it, as I bet he was getting $80-$100 each for those pieces, and selling a ton of them. I am just looking for some understanding, so maybe I can get a nut like that dropped in my lap.

I hear and understand both sides. When you are doing this as a side gig you can charge what you need to to just make a little money. But as a business you have to cover costs. Cover your costs and make some $ for the shop. Shane, seems you do more fab work than art. That is the direction I think I want to head. I started out doing stairs and handrails and would like to start a business doing the same.

I guess what im trying to say is after I get the metal home and cut it, even as a hobby I want to make a certain amount of money. But even thinkin about it from a business sense, if I charged $200 bare steel for this I would most likely only be able to do that once a year. And it would look no different than the picture above other than being cold rolled. Thats more expensive off the bat and in my opinion looks better, polished or not. So my point is, I am not an artist in the normal sense of fhe term. I can cut the same thing that people above say they sell for $250 but im only gonna get $80 for it. We are talking no finish at all. Even if I draw and cut a custom piece @ 36x19 I would have a hard time getting over $100 for it, unless it was a very difficult design.

I do about the same amount of fab work as art, but also do quite a bit of production cutting. Sheet level quantities, nested out, hit the button and watch it eat. I am in the same boat as you, as far as the art stuff goes. For example, I can( and do) sell 10 pieces a month, make $60 PROFIT on each one ($600 a month), OR I can sell one a quarter (maybe) at $200, and (maybe) make $180 profit. I routinely sell 25-30 pieces like this a month, along with gates, entry signs, etc. The more I sell, the more contacts I make, the more people see my work, the more the phone rings, etc. I also sell a ton of stuff that gets cut out of the drops on some of the production parts I cut. I make flanges, and cut trivets, stars, etc out of the middle circle (which is paid for by the flange job) and sell those parts cash and carry. I also cut stuff out of the drops on other signs etc, such as animals, inspirational saying, bottle openers, etc. I am establishing a fairly sizeable group of guys, that each swing by every 3-4 weeks, just to pick through the buckets and shelves, and walk off with $500 worth of stuff. Now if they walked in and asked me to cut it for them, it would easily be $800-$1000 for me to shut down other stuff and make those items for them. I make a great profit, they get a bargain, and subsequently have a perceived value high enough that they are coming back. With their friends. They also refer a ton of work, and often call and order custom entrance signs etc for projects they are working on. I suppose I COULD ask for more, but the business would drop off some, and I would have piles of stuff laying around in the way. Or I could just cut the circles, and sell them for scrap. As far as being a side gig, this is my gig. This is all I do, and this is how the food gets bought and the lights stay on. Well, that't not true. I go shoot sporting clays every chance I get, but even when I win it just pays back basically what the day cost me.

I won't turn my machine on for less than $100.00 and some form of deposit or payment up front.. Sorry if I sound like I'm on a tear but I just think if you don't ask you don't get. There is value in what we do and I make no apologies or excuses for my prices.

FWIW, I always get a deposit, if it's less than $100 for the quote, then it gets paid for up front. I don't go out and fire up every piece of equipment in the shop for one $20 piece. I take orders, and explain to the customer that I cut a sheet of 14g , 10g , 1/4 etc when it's nested out, unless they have a large job. If that's tomorrow, so be it. If it's next Wednesday, that's when it is. If they are in a rush, and don't mind paying a material handling fee for me to do it as soon as I have time, then there is a price for that.

As far as not asking and not getting, I think you can only ask what the market will bear, and I firmly believe you can price yourself out of getting a job. I have seen me do it.

Have a great evening, I started this post 2 hours ago, and have finally wrangled all the midgets into their beds, now I am going to grab an adult beverage and see if I can whoop on a few drawings. Unless my fingers fall off first

Shane

[tnbndr]

I go shoot sporting clays every chance I get, but even when I win it just pays back basically what the day cost me.

My metal cutting pays for my sporting clays addiction, has for the last 20 years.