What have you done to raise your income and profits in the last 12 months other then working longer or harder?
Limit yourself to only 3 things please.
Thank you.
1. raised my prices
2. built a full retail price list
3. charge for supplies for every job about 10% of labor as an add on.
4. bonus: dropped the BS work and raised price 3 times to $120 minimum for junk work. (yep, I don't get much bs work, but if I do it's well worth it now)
What have I done? Moved on to another way of making a living, so much easier.
Quote from: scottymc on November 13, 2010, 02:06:25 pm
What have I done? Moved on to another way of making a living, so much easier.
So you don't do upholstery anymore then? Must be nice!
I do a bit in the winter,but only for friends and people I've done work for before. If I don't like the look of it I don't do it ;D. I have a guest house now, it's not really work time consuming but not work as we know it.
This is my place, www.marengobeachbreak.com.au
Very nice Scotty. My next trip to Oz I want to head down to Ballarat and see the old mining operations and the town itself. I heard it is gorgeous and filled with history.
Do you know why all the trees in Victoria lean to the North ?
Because NSW sucks............:) heard that joke once and had to laugh.
My wife is a Northern beaches baby. Born and raised near Manly. We typically stay at Bonnels Bay near Gosford with her Mum when we go over.
Very nice place you have.
Back on topic. I raised my prices.
Chris
Ballarat is a nice place, a renovaters delight, to far from the ocean for me. You'll need to raise your prices if you come over here, sound like your dollar has dropped below the peso.
Oh yeah congradulations I hear America won the world series yet again.
QuoteWhat have I done? Moved on to another way of making a living, so much easier.
Can't top that one.
Rich
I told my wife we will never, ever, and this time I really mean it, pay $600.00 for medical treatment for a cats eyeball. The next time a cat gets an ulcer in their eye we will go with the eye patch.
gene
I'll take a serious stab at this;
1) Take on more products to offer
2) Become more efficient in the office so I can focus more on other things, as in being more productive with things that make us profit
3) Better follow up, with customers and clients, as in doing the things a professional salesman would do, if we had one
Extra credit; I have to pimp out my web site; it's too difficult to navigate, and find what you need. Very scattered. I can't just wave a magic wand, either, as I am the one who does it soup to nuts.
Working on designing some new products, haven't been able to build them yet, still tooling up.
Added a couple new trade shows.
I am planning on redoing my web site, adding some video and making it more interesting and easier to navigate.
Unfortunately none of this has payed off yet.
Quotesound like your dollar has dropped below the peso.
Yes the dollar is going the way of the peso, does anyone remember the Weimar Republic.
[quoteI am planning on redoing my web site, adding some video and making it more interesting and easier to navigate.
][/quote]
When my wife started our web site over a year ago, I didn't think it would add any new business. Turns out I was wrong. Theirs a lot of people who don't use the Yellow Pages any more. She put samples of our work and pieces we have for sale on it. It adds about one customer a month and for a mom and pop business it really helps. Shes also planing on making it bigger and better.
Well I closed my shop and decided to save the on the overhead and just work mobile fromy home.
I so sold my old home and moved to a canal spot to Save on Marina fees.
That when I got a real blow and had a TIA stroke.
not making as much but it dosent cost much either.
I just noticed in the local news paper an add for a Home Show. Its a big show and it happens the first weekend in March and sells out by February. I'm just wondering if any one has had any success at one of these trade shows. The entry fee is $525 for a 10'X10' booth and you can sell products while you're there. Any info would be helpful.
I did a chair and ottoman in a really 'far out' black and white fabric, kind of like a panda print, sort of, for an Interior Designer who does a home and garden show once a year. I did this several years ago. She used it to get upholstery business for herself, and thus for me.
She is a fairly consistent customer of mine. This home and garden show was her #1 source of new business for many years. She does everything in terms of Interior Designing, so I don't know how well it would be for someone who only did one thing, like upholstery without all the other stuff.
One piece of furniture could pay for your expenses and time. I think more important than the price of the booth is what kind of people go to the home show? Are they potential customers for you?
Good luck with it if you choose to dive in.
gene
Many years ago, while working for my previous employer I "did booth time" at a Home show in a local community. It was a fair amount of work to set it all up, as I recall. He was really trying to make a name for his business in lateral arm awnings and marine work. I'm not sure he derived the kinds of sales he thought he was going to, but that may have been because the concept of a Home show wasn't really the right venue for what he was trying to accomplish.
Yeah, I did one of those "Home Shows" many moons ago. This one turned out to be more of a "county fair" type crowd. They just plowed through the exhibit hall looking to sign up for give-aways. By mid-week, I stopped even manning the booth.
Seems to me that small town home shows WILL be more "county fair" type.
If you want serious lookers, you gotta go to the big cities. Kinda depends on how close your shop is to the kind of lookers you'll get from a big city home show.
Not a home show but I've attendand the local boat shownand use tonnage food success with contacts.
It seems to have been slowing down yearly the amount of jobs I get. When it is food i spend about the same amout and don't get any work done while ok there and spend the next week running around see the contacts I made at the show ( don't get any work done that wek also) if I'm lucky I'll song some Jobs
last tear jt really didn't pa at all. Or were there many boat deals pleased who sold boats also.
This January I think I'll stat at work instead but if time were good it would be a different story.
Thanks for the input. Your response is helpful. Last year I visited a home show in a small city close to where I live. It was a lot like you said Sofadoc. The booths were nice but the crowd didn't strike me as the decorating type. This show is at the University Of Florida. Gainesvilles a fairly affluent town. I know what you mean Bobbin, if you're putting in the effort you want results. This is a big show with other categories besides interior decorating. Some of the people there will be potential customers but a lot of them won't. I think I'll go as a "spectator" and hand out cards to vendors who are interested in my services. If it looks like something I want to buy into, theirs always next year.
To continue the original theme of this thread. Last year I rented a booth at an antique show. I broke even as far as costs and sales go, but I picked up some good upholstery jobs. I'm going to try a few more this year.
If any one has more thoughts on attending shows to drum up business I'd like to hear them. Thanks, Kody
Mike your post came in right before mine. I know what you mean. Some times it feels like your spinning your wheels and not getting anywhere. But if you don't keep trying you never will.
At the Home Show that I did, there was an A/C guy in the next booth. I watched him for a few days, and caught on to what he was doing.
He had some entry blanks for people to fill out and drop in a box to win $100.
When someone came up to enter, he "sized them up" as being a potential customer, or just "riff-raff". Depending on his determination, he either handed them a red ink pen, or a blue one.
I got blue ink. My helper got red ink. A few weeks later, I got advertisements from him in the mail, my helper didn't.
This was before the days when you could just fire off spam e-mail to EVERYBODY.
In another life I was a basket weaver. Trying to make a living selling hand woven cedar bark hats and baskets. Emphasis on the 'trying'. I did a large christmas craft show, eleven days of torture. I did reasonably well, in spite of the pain of tending a booth 10 hours a day. My biggest mistake was #1 not having any thing to do while sitting there and #2 not having anything for sale under $20. The guy beside me had a range of products; $15, $25, $50, $95, and made a mint but mostly on the lower end. Customers would see $15 and stick around and look at everything else and maybe spend more than they intended.
I fixed the problems about day three by weaving little do-dads in my booth and selling them for $10. It kept me from going nuts with nothing to do and gave people a reason to at least slow down when walking past. It also put into peoples minds that I was making this stuff and so stopped people asking the same stoopid questions over and overandoverandover. Doing this show was a big factor into my 'getting a real job'. I realized I am not a retailer and would much rather just do the work than the real work of selling the stuff.
Long story short- find away to bring the craft of upholstery into your booth. Could you upholster a wing chair while you sit there? Like a stripped frame with everything pre-cut ahead of time and fire a staple every few minutes, not production speed. Show people the inside of furniture and give them an idea how it goes together. Or a sewing machine? I don't know, wizz up some pot holders or something? Could be a good $8 item....
kpcy id rather get a blue pen more usefull i gues that was a negative over the red. id do it again in just think everyone is cutting back now i did get plenty of contack in the past. you cant write a job up at the show though and peppy i have tried selling a few small iten like window cleaner and waterproofer but that is not the point of the show. it is a good thing to have a big jar of mint at your booth. bring people over and you can then start a conversation and see how it goes.
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