The Hardest Part of My Job

[Mojo]

It has nothing to do with sewing. It has nothing to do with making patterns. It has nothing to do with estimating yardage.

It has everything to do with estimating. It is NOT one of my strong points. I look at a job and have a heck of a time coming up with an accurate quote. I do not want to gouge a customer yet I want to make money. So I always struggle finding that middle ground.

Is this something that goes away over the years and with a vast amount of experience  you can take one look and nail the estimate ? Or do you Veterans still have problems sometimes with part of your job ?

If I did the same thing over and over I am sure I could grasp it all and nail estimates dead on. But
part of my problem is the work I get. I don't know if the word was spread around my area or not but I seem to get every dang weird project handed to me that you can think of. The dash job was a perfect example. How many of you have recovered a cantilevered dash with strange curves on a 1/4 million dollar
motorcoach ?

I had a project which was to make a topper for a golf cart. Straight forward right ? Nope. It was a 1960's restored golf cart and the customer wanted an exact replica of the topper made. This thing was weird as hell in how it was originally made. My wife and I struggled with it for a day trying to come up with the right cuts and patterns. Bolts had to be covered but accessible. The stretch had to be just right in order to install the cover  The former pattern was not much of a help as it disintegrated when I removed it. The topper also had to be done with no attachments ( snaps, velcro, etc. ). It sounds easy but it was pure hell.

Then there was the guy who wanted solar screens but still wanted to be able to open his lower vent windows which were under the solar screens. I spent two days pondering on that one but came up with a design that worked perfectly and actually I used that same design on several other customer projects. I am still only one that I know of that makes these screens with this option.

I have a new job coming in where the customer wants new awnings made for his coach. Straight forward ? Not really. They are basement awnings. Who has ever heard of a basement awning ? I have been in RV'ing for years and never seen one. But the deal is you open a basement door, pull out the slide out tray and some goofy mechanism opens other goofy contraption and then this opens an awning and cover. I cannot wait to get started on that one. :)

So do you old timers ever get to the point that you can look at something and know immediately the total cost of a project along with yardage ?

Chris

[Mike8560]

If a basement compartment had a awning. How would tou get I to it
I generwly k ow when I look at somthing what it will cost
I mess up when I try to give a low price to a acuatance somtimes.  
My hardest part of the day is like now sitting on My patio having coffee getting up and started

[sofadoc]

I remember in  a post a year or 2 ago, you (I think it was you) asked "Why do you specialize?"
Estimating is probably why I don't venture beyond the realm of furniture upholstery.
I'd rather stay in my "comfort zone". I can just look at a piece of furniture, and give an accurate estimate. Sometimes, they can just describe it to me over the phone, or e-mail a photo.
I can certainly see where RV type work wouldn't be so "cut and dry".

[mike802]

I have to agree that specializing saves you a lot of money.  I have developed a price list so that anyone in the shop can give an estimate without me taking a bath.  But occasionally we do a job outside of our normal work type and usually end up under estimating.  Sometimes a job comes in that is imposable to correctly estimate, in that case I usually tell the customer its time plus materials, I hate doing that but sometimes it's the only way to stay profitable.  If the customer insists on nailing me down on price I up it at least three times what I think it will be.  I have learned over the years that if I have to give an estimate on the spot I usually end up under estimating, so I generally like to return to the office and work the estimate up from there.

[kodydog]

I try not to get to hung up on finding the middle ground. If a job looks difficult I charge more. If I think a customer will pay more for a job I raise the price. I don't call this gouging if their happy with the finished product.

On estimates that are giving me a hard time I'll tell the customer I need to go back to the office to work it up. This gives me more time to think about it.
The hard part is no two pieces are exactly the same, with furniture I can go back to my records and find a similar piece and start from their. With large jobs, conference rooms for example, I add $400 or $500 for things I didn't foresee.

I wouldn't even know where to begin on a cantilevered dash but if your trying to give the customer a "fair price" on the difficult jobs then that's what your mostly going to be doing. Your costumers have money. 1/4 million is on the low end for a motor coach. Don't feel bad about charging them.

Recliners are a job I'd rather not do. So I raised the price near or above new retail. And I still get my fair share.

Sounds like your doing a lot of costume, from scratch work that takes a lot of time.
Charge what you need to do a quality job.

[Mojo]

I have to admit, these weird jobs have really helped my learning curve. yes some have been very difficult but when I am finished I come out of it with a great deal of knowledge.

I have never been the benefactor of going to a stitching school or working next to an Upholsterer. I have had to rely on everyone here on this forum, a few books and making one hell of a lot of mistakes. :)

When you get these goofy jobs it normally makes you think as well as explore different ways of doing things.
I enjoy the challenges and as long as I can turn out work that is near perfect I will keep taking them.

I do have a real problem with charging customers for some of the time I take to figure things out. It is not their fault that I do not have 20 years experience so I give them a break on my labor sometimes. On the solar screens, I give no breaks. I charge full retail and thats it. But then I can do these dang screens in my sleep so I whip through them fast. Real fast......

Maybe when I am old veteran like some of you and have years under my belt I will get the hang of estimating as well as buzzing through the work quickly and with precision.

Mike, I haven't a clue as to what this guy has. It should be interesting though. :)

Chris

[MinUph]

Estimating odd ball is always a challenge but it does get easier with time. furniture is easy if that is all you do but if you take in other jobs the learning curve is harder. What I do is think about what I think it will take me in time and add 40% to that. It usually works when I haven't done allot of the work. Sometimes you win sometimes you loose that's the way of the business. Just do the best you can and it will all work out.
  Anytime you get stuck doing something, give me a call and maybe I can help. Be happy to.

[Steve at Silverstone Fabrics]

Estimating is a skill set that takes time and insight.

My skills when I first started were horrible but as I mastered the upholstery skills, I moved to mastering cutting.

Once I became the cutter for the entire shop.....my estimating skills improved dramatically.

Now that I retired from having an active shop  and have become a fabric/leather dealer, I still encourage my customers, that need an estimate,  to send me pictures of their furniture with basic measurements. With this information, I sit down and I draw out my "battle plan".

I pretend that I am getting ready to cut the piece in the picture......I write down of the parts (in back, out back, in arm (x2), out arm (x2), seat deck ...etc.) Now that I have this (yes, I do try and make them a little bigger than I think they might really are.... I would rather have a yard left over, than be a 1/2 yard short), I draw a "roll of fabric" and I lay the measurements out.

This takes a while but it gets the job done. Steve

[gene]

How do you figure the cost of lining kitchen cabinets with fabric? Or how about that refrigerator that I covered with fabric? Now that was a cool job.

Or how about upholstering a dog? Yes, a dog. And no, the customer did not request me to do this. She wouldn't pay her bill. (Just joking.)

With odd jobs I try to break it down into parts. There are some parts that I am familiar with and some that I am not. I price the familiar parts, and it is a guess at things that are new.

The problem with odd jobs is that you cannot learn from them for the next odd job. The next odd job is just too odd.

gene

[hidebound]

     
     I have been told I am OCD so take this for what it is worth. Keep in mind that I am just learning upholstery but I am an electrician at my day job. I plan every job I do, my first boss taught me "plan my work and work my plan" so I think of every step then gather all my pieces and parts before I start. Now nothing ever goes according to plan so that becomes part of the plan. By thinking this way it is easy for me to break each project down to step 1 thru step ... If I run into something that during the planning stage I think how am I going to do that, and the answer is I dont know, the job becomes time and materials. Because nothing goes according to plan I add a percentage, usually 15% but for upholsery maybe 40% is better as Paul suggests. Just my 2 cents.
                                                    gail

[stitchm]

Some people in some industries operate from something called minimum retained value....or the average value of a project that is worth taking on......where this could be of value to you is by establishing a clear set of policies, one of which is projects which fall below our minimum retained value are estimated on but are subject to materials costs + hourly rate, only projects beyond a certain value are quoted on and price is held to regardless of time/materials involved.