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Workroom Operations
Pricing Guidlines
Adopting some rules and recognizing pricing issues can make determining
prices more profitable.
by Kitty Stein, WCAA, CWP
Revisiting your labor
price list to fine-tune it for current business demands should be
an annual practice. Many of you do this in the first few months
of the year. Even seasoned veterans still may be uncertain if they
are using acceptable industry guidelines.
What are the industry pricing guidelines? Nowhere do we have such
documents cast in stone. That is as it should be, because the only
guidelines you need are what will be fair to your customers and
profitable for you.
If any of you are familiar with the industry products I have created,
you will know that the consistent undertone in them is that no two
businesses work the same way. I want to quickly add that I am speaking
of business methodology and not communication. The Window Coverings
Association of America (WCAA) has now developed industry standards
that will facilitate communication, which the industry has desperately
needed. But even its Workroom Quality Standards are bare bones requirements
as there are multitudinous ways to fabricate anything and still
end up with a beautiful treatment.
PRICING RULES
The following are what I have learned over the years from my own
experience. I encourage you to use them as guidelines and change
them or add to them as you need to for your business:
1. Have a minimum or maximum price: Some items are going to
take just as long to do in a small size as they would in a larger
size. I researched large workrooms and discovered that they normally
charged soft shades beginning with nine or 10 square feet. It takes
just as long to do a smaller shade and requires almost the same
amount of notions as do the minimum.
Use this same idea for the various units of pricing, i.e., running
feet, widths, yards, etc. I also discovered that there needed to
be a maximum length on top treatments (I chose 18 inches) and panels.
Panel length may be the length that you can table accurately in
one step. In general, I found four running feet to be a good minimum
for top treatments or railroaded panels.
2. Have different ranges of lengths: Even though I set 18
inches as the maximum length for a top treatment, I then added the
range of 18 to 26 inches for extra-long valances. For cascades,
I used the price ranges of “Up to 24 inches,” “25
to 65 inches,” and “65 to 100 inches.”
3. Always round up!: Whenever you are dividing a number to arrive
at the number of units, always round the decimals or fractions up.
It doesn’t matter if you are working with widths, square feet
or calculating an estimate for a client, you should always round
up. Depending on what you are doing, it doesn’t necessarily
mean you round up to the next whole number. This is especially true
when calculating estimates for retail clients.
You probably know the marketing tip that you always price an item
a few pennies less than a whole number, e.g. $19.95 or $19.99, but
have you heard of the value of using the magic number 7? Marketing
surveys have proven that using the number 7 at the end of the price
makes more sales. Try ending your estimates with a seven, e.g. $1,099.
97 or $1,100.77, and see what happens.
4. Halves as wholes: Many workrooms question the validity of
charging for four widths when doing a pair of draperies that are
three widths, i.e. 1 1/2 widths per panel. It takes almost as much
time to do that half width as it would to do a whole. In wider panels,
that may not be quite the case, but it’s too time consuming
and confusing to charge differently for the same treatment.
The majority of the industry does charge a half width as a whole
width. Look at that extra half width as your cushion on that job
that took you longer than expected to complete. Many areas still
are not making good money on pinch pleats, so this could be a good
way to help that situation.
5. Difficult fabric up-charge: We all know that velvet and casements,
to name just two, are very difficult fabrics to fabricate. Therefore,
they, and any other fabric that you know is difficult, must demand
a higher price. When a customer brings you fabric that appears suspicious
to you, warn your customer upfront that you may have to up-charge
if the fabric is difficult to work with.
The best policy is to require your clients to give you at least
a yard of new untried fabric ahead of time for you to determine
if an up-charge is necessary and, if so, what it will be. How many
of you wish you had this policy in effect the first time you dealt
with the “crinkle” sheer? I even had one workroom tell
me that they up-charge to fabricate antique satin because it ravels
so much.
6. Expensive fabric: If you are asked to fabricate fabric
that wholesales for a $100, and much more in many cases, you definitely
need to up-charge to cover your liability. No insurance company
will insure you for miscutting fabric or for underestimating fabric.
I once miscut $100/yard-fabric. Thank goodness, it could be fixed.
You may not be so lucky.
7. Pricing by the hour: There are situations in which charging
by the hour only makes sense.
Alterations can never be quoted accurately, especially if you have
not seen the work first. Rework, i.e. making drapery panels into
swags and cascades, is another situation that can never be calculated
accurately upfront.
I also charged by the hour for “alternative fabrication.”
I used this often because a couple of my decorators insisted on
trying to save fabric. One even cut and pinned together a frame
for a pillow from very small scraps of fabric. Because it was not
cut straight with accurate angles it took much more time to determine
what size could be made, which was smaller of course, and then get
the OK from the decorator.
8. Consultations by the hour: I made this a separate item
because so many of you give away too much time helping your designers
and decorators do their designs or estimates or helping your retail
customers. Many workrooms solve this problem by giving those designers
a higher price list to compensate for their time. I chose an hourly
fee to stop one designer from asking me to do estimates for truly
unusual things and then we never saw the work. It wasn’t that
she took it elsewhere, she just “couldn't bring herself”
to sell such high-priced labor!
Incidentally, she is also the one for whom I was fabricating when
I miscut the $100/yard fabric!
DO YOURSELF A FAVOR
You might be leery of using some of these charges because you are
afraid of how your clients will react. If you have retail clients,
they should never be shown a break down of their proposal because,
as you see, the labor depends upon a combination of the fabric chosen,
the treatment style and the yardage. Choosing different fabric could
change the yardage and the labor. If your clients are designers
and decorators, educate them that they are paying for your time
and expertise, not draperies.
Price fairly for you and your customers. Then you have double insurance—one
for your customer and one for a profitable and enjoyable future
for yourself.
 Kitty
Stein, CWP, WCAA past board member, is a 26-year veteran of the drapery
workroom industry. Having owned drapery workrooms as one person and
as a company of nine, she is now president of Workroom Concepts, a
consulting firm offering educational resources to the industry on
its Web site (www.workroomconcepts.com).
Her experience in the window covering arena has contributed to her
success as a business consultant. A professional speaker and writer,
she has authored several industry products including Order in the
Workroom, The Price List, Workroom Specifications and Price Your Work
with Confidence, available through D&WC. |
