Dental Chair

[lalen]

I am a new member of this forum. I have been in the trade for 35 plus years and would now like to start doing dental and medical upholstery. Anyone here have any advice and pricing suggestions? Thanks in advance for your input.

[sofadoc]

Welcome to the forum.
Post in "General Discussion" for more responses.
I've done a lot of dental/medical type chairs over the years. It's always been hard for me to develop a standard pricing structure on this type of work, since the degree of difficulty can vary quite a bit.
As for the actual dentist/patient chairs, just keep this one factoid in mind when pricing:
The dentist is weighing the alternative of recovering, or buying new.
The new ones in his supply catalog are OBSCENELY expensive.
So don't be so afraid of pricing yourself out of the job. If your price is anywhere within reason, he'll pay it.

35 years! I'm sure that you can offer a lot to this forum. Again, welcome.

[kodydog]

With doctors and commercial in general it seems to be hit or miss when it comes to getting the job.

Doctors don't like to be without their chairs and want a quick turn around. Tell them you'll work around their schedule. I recently finished 6 orhtho chairs. I did them over the 4th of July. Picked them up Fri. Had them back Tues morning at 7:00. They will pay a premium for this service.

You could spend hours giving an estimate and not get the job. Have them send you an e-mail photo for your phone estimate. If they take the time to do this you'll know their serious. And it will give them their first taste of the price.

One of the members of this forum, Stery56, posted his list of things to do to get commercial jobs. I adopted this method to my business and it helped. Here's the link. He's the 9th one down,

http://get-up-and-go.com/upholstery-forum/index.php?topic=9302.0

Like sofa doc said, you need to get this post over to general or business discussion. We may be the only two to see it.

[lalen]

Thanks kodydog and sofadoc for your advice. I did also post in business. My experience is across the board with hot rods as my primary. I am thinking about  doing dental and medical. I have done medical equipment in the past but the work came to me. I seems like a different animal going after it.  Working on brochure and cards and will make hard calls in the area.  I will learn as I go. As far as pricing goes I will charge time and materials.  Again, thanks for the warm welcome and I hope I can be of help to any.