Quotation help

[Mrs C]

Can I yell help to those people that do bespoke commisions on a regular basis?

I have been asked to quote for a 1.5m wide set of bedroom drawers. The total is eye watering, but when broken down seems reasonable. Roughly half materials and half labour.

This is my first paying customer - would anyone be kind enough to sanity check my numbers by private messaging?

Thank you

 

[Yojevol]

The formula I was taught was to charge 4 x the material cost for standard furniture making. If the client wanted special embellishments or exotic timbers then the quote should be enhanced.
It may be the case these days that the price of timber has inflated faster than the reasonable labour rate in which case the 4x factor may be too high.
If this is your first foray into bespoke furniture making it is probably worth going with a mutually agreeable price and learn from the experience at the end.
Happy to look at your figures if you send them over.
Brian

 

[peter-harrison]

I've had many of those "how much?!" moments. Over the years I've developed the habit of just entering things on an Excel spreadsheet, and not looking at the bottom line until iI've finished. Sometimes it looks too little!
I have given up trying to guess what my clients think will be a reasonable price. What I do is to aim high- ie using good materials and fittings, and trying to be generous with time. Surprisingly often, people accept that. If they don't, as I have started high, I can reduce the price, painlessly to an extent, by using cheaper stuff, and maybe trimming the design. This can be quite productive as it focusses the client's atention on what they really want.
Sometimes the price is so far from what people are expecting that it kills the conversation, and they go elsewhere. That's fine in my view, as I would probably be buying the work if I was to get near their expectations.
It is the one thing no-one teaches you, isn't it- how to price your work and what's a fair price?
I've attached a copy of the spreadsheet I use which you are welcome to copy. Just be careful that all the formulas are OK before you send the quote off!

 

[Cabinetman]

Two well experienced voices there, I made all the mistakes known when I started, it does depend on the method of making, if it’s in the style of Ikea, faced chipboard it will be quicker to make, starting with rough sawn wood followed by hand cut Dovetails it’s going to be a piece of a different class altogether. The first could be 3times cost, the latter for a really top end piece maybe 6 times? There are no hard and fast rules a spindly piece won’t use much wood compared to a chest but could take the same time to make.
Just don’t sell yourself cheap!
Ian

 

[Jacob]

Can I yell help to those people that do bespoke commisions on a regular basis?

I have been asked to quote for a 1.5m wide set of bedroom drawers. The total is eye watering, but when broken down seems reasonable. Roughly half materials and half labour.

This is my first paying customer - would anyone be kind enough to sanity check my numbers by private messaging?

Thank you

First look at off-the-peg equivalents in size and quality. Double it (or more) as yours is bespoke. Add £50 for luck. Add for anything extra compared to shop bought.
If too high, offer to supply and fit shop bought at say £15 an hour minimum plus cost.
Ideally you should aim at being seen as bloody expensive but well worth it! Better than being thought of as cheap, and a high price makes it worth going the extra mile, cranking up the quality where possible.
PS basic rule of bespoke: the client is always wrong. basic rule of pricing - it's what the market will bear.

 

[Max Power]

First look at off-the-peg equivalents in size and quality. Double it (or more) as yours is bespoke. Add £50 for luck. Add for anything extra compared to shop bought.
If too high, offer to supply and fit shop bought at say £15 an hour minimum plus cost.
Ideally you should aim at being seen as bloody expensive but well worth it! Better than being thought of as cheap, and a high price makes it worth going the extra mile, cranking up the quality where possible.
PS basic rule of bespoke: the client is always wrong. basic rule of pricing - it's what the market will bear.

Fifteen pounds an hour, you're still living in the 80s, wages have increased somewhat since then.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

... if it’s in the style of Ikea, faced chipboard it will be quicker to make, starting with rough sawn wood followed by hand cut Dovetails it’s going to be a piece of a different class altogether. The first could be 3times cost, the latter for a really top end piece maybe 6 times? There are no hard and fast rules ...

I've generated 'quick and dirty' estimates taking little or no time except getting a rough idea of how much all the solid wood will cost (excluding all the other costs just for this estimate job, e.g., plywood, hardware, sundries, workshop running costs, etc) and then simply multiplying by ten, e.g., rough sawn wood cost = £1000 X 10 = £10,000 client invoice. This is generally for someone who sort of casually asks for something like a top quality mostly solid wood desk, X number of drawers, lots of handwork, wire management, keyboard tray, blah, blah, blah, and therefore likely to be just fishing or tyre kicking, but sometimes with genuine interest in the background. What's surprising about this almost no method methodology is how frequently it works out close in price to a properly designed and priced desk piece, or any other high end one-off piece.

The methodology is highly suspect for a host of reasons, e.g., variations in cost from one species to another, and many more, but for 'quick and dirty', 'don't waste my time' ... next please enquiries it can be handy, ha, ha. Slainte.

 

[HOJ]

offer to supply and fit shop bought at say £15 an hour minimum

Treble that at least!

 

[HOJ]

Roughly half materials and half labour.

I try to work in 1/3rds: materials, labour (including costs -O/H), profit, the profit never ends up at as high as a 1/3 because the jobs, for some reason always take longer than planned, so probably better of calling it contingency (or bum covering)

 

[Jacob]

Fifteen pounds an hour, you're still living in the 80s, wages have increased somewhat since then.

OK £30.

 

[RogerS]

OK £30.

Thus proving the old adage ...."You get what you pay for "

 

[spiritburner]

If too high, offer to supply and fit shop bought at say £15 an hour minimum plus cost.

That is far too low for installation work,I charge €40 an hour over here in Spain plus VAT and the market here will stand that for a proper carpenter and more depending on the type of work that's needed.

On top of that here you can charge for parking, lunch and fuel.

 

[RogerS]

Can I yell help to those people that do bespoke commisions on a regular basis?

I have been asked to quote for a 1.5m wide set of bedroom drawers. The total is eye watering, but when broken down seems reasonable. Roughly half materials and half labour.

This is my first paying customer - would anyone be kind enough to sanity check my numbers by private messaging?

Thank you

Not to dampen your good news but don't be disappointed if they think you're too expensive as so many people use the likes of Oak Furnitureland prices as a yardstick. And then there are the others who are 'tyre-kickers' and you spend all that time and effort in producing quote but their intention to buy was never more than 10%.

To counteract this, one way is to ask people o send you a few photographs of the area where the item is going to be located so 'you can get a sense of proportion'. You would be surprised how many people never get round to doing this. So I never get round to working out a cost as I know that they are not serious.

Another category of customer is where you provide a quote, it all goes quiet for months and then they want it tomorrow.

And as your business progresses, don't forget that sooner or later you will get the Customer from Hell. It's not you. We all get them.

But the very best customers are like Nick who has become one of my closest friends.

Good luck with your endeavours.

 

[Samkilby]

I dont know anything about the design and make of the piece, but half materials and half labour sounds incredibly cheap to me as a starting position.
Let’s say I can buy rough sawn to fulfil for £500. Even if I have “no” overheads (I.e. I’m using all my tools that I bought and paid for for free, my garage (for example) and power etc for free. Blunting up blades, wear and tear on maybe not top of the line industrial machinery etc.
I would say a fair way to work out you pricing is to work out a fair charge for absolutely all overheads per annum, and a fair wage that you as an individual would like to make per annum. Divide it by what you think would be a realistic number of hours to be busy in the workshop per week , if you were doing this full time. Let’s say no more than 30, other time you would be designing, back and forthing on the internet and with suppliers and doing the books.
So my hypothetical overheads 10k, I want to earn 30k 40k / (30x47) so £28 p/hr
I cannot state this enough, be realistic about pricing from an hours point of view. Add a contingency for messing up, like you would with timber. Add crime for sweeping up the workshop. Always assume buying all materials new, don’t think ah well I’ve got this in stock and it owes me nothing. If you can reuse offcut then great for you, but don’t hand that saving onto your customer. Add a generous allowance for consumables, and price hardware appropriately (I.e. cost + delivery + profit if you think you can make it.) Price hardware on internet pricing, then see if you can negotiate a trade discount.
Re office time, build in pricing for site visits, providing the quotation, design, finding stuff on the internet. I for example won’t do any design work now until I receive a deposit.. but I used to.
Be realistic about site costs, labour and installation, travel time, fuel, use of a vehicle.

Now take that fair and realistic price, and try to get the client to pay it. Don’t gatekeep or try to obfuscate your pricing, and if they are interested engage in thorough discourse with them, up to and including how many hours you think each element will take.

Working up quotes properly takes a lot of time, as you have to thoroughly think through every part of the make, including jigs, manual handling of materials etc so I would suggest maybe doing it as an exercise for this first one, then working out what this represents as a proportional value vs the timber. After a few you will get a feel for it, and be able to say to potential clients “I’m afraid design and project planning to provide accurate quotations takes such a significant amount of time, so what I tend to do is provide a ballpark figure initially to gauge interest” - for fitted furniture with a certain spec it could be a price per linear m, for bespoke hardwood standalones it could be overguesstimate price of timber x 4 or 10 or whatever you work out your average to be.
It all depends on if you want to run it as a business or if you are doing it for fun either. But if you want to ever do it as a business, don’t give anything away for free (for example add a cost for premesis rental based on research in, even though you don’t pay one)
Long winded but fair

 

[Samkilby]

I dont know anything about the design and make of the piece, but half materials and half labour sounds incredibly cheap to me as a starting position.
Let’s say I can buy rough sawn to fulfil for £500. Even if I have “no” overheads (I.e. I’m using all my tools that I bought and paid for for free, my garage (for example) and power etc for free. Blunting up blades, wear and tear on maybe not top of the line industrial machinery etc.
I would say a fair way to work out you pricing is to work out a fair charge for absolutely all overheads per annum, and a fair wage that you as an individual would like to make per annum. Divide it by what you think would be a realistic number of hours to be busy in the workshop per week , if you were doing this full time. Let’s say no more than 30, other time you would be designing, back and forthing on the internet and with suppliers and doing the books.
So my hypothetical overheads 10k, I want to earn 30k 40k / (30x47) so £28 p/hr
I cannot state this enough, be realistic about pricing from an hours point of view. Add a contingency for messing up, like you would with timber. Add crime for sweeping up the workshop. Always assume buying all materials new, don’t think ah well I’ve got this in stock and it owes me nothing. If you can reuse offcut then great for you, but don’t hand that saving onto your customer. Add a generous allowance for consumables, and price hardware appropriately (I.e. cost + delivery + profit if you think you can make it.) Price hardware on internet pricing, then see if you can negotiate a trade discount.
Re office time, build in pricing for site visits, providing the quotation, design, finding stuff on the internet. I for example won’t do any design work now until I receive a deposit.. but I used to.
Be realistic about site costs, labour and installation, travel time, fuel, use of a vehicle.

Now take that fair and realistic price, and try to get the client to pay it. Don’t gatekeep or try to obfuscate your pricing, and if they are interested engage in thorough discourse with them, up to and including how many hours you think each element will take.

Working up quotes properly takes a lot of time, as you have to thoroughly think through every part of the make, including jigs, manual handling of materials etc so I would suggest maybe doing it as an exercise for this first one, then working out what this represents as a proportional value vs the timber. After a few you will get a feel for it, and be able to say to potential clients “I’m afraid design and project planning to provide accurate quotations takes such a significant amount of time, so what I tend to do is provide a ballpark figure initially to gauge interest” - for fitted furniture with a certain spec it could be a price per linear m, for bespoke hardwood standalones it could be overguesstimate price of timber x 4 or 10 or whatever you work out your average to be.
It all depends on if you want to run it as a business or if you are doing it for fun either. But if you want to ever do it as a business, don’t give anything away for free (for example add a cost for premesis rental based on research in, even though you don’t pay one)
Long winded but fair

Oops. Then try to add something for profit

 

[Filament]

A few years ago I got quotes for alcove cupboards (built but to be painted by us) then due to Covid/finances ended up reading and watching a lot and making them myself as my first DIY project. The quotes I got were very different (like by £thousands)

Looking back at the quotes once I knew a little more about the subject it really struck me that all of the people who quoted had (IMHO) missed a trick.

When I got the quotes I didn’t know much so I thought ‘an alcove cupboard is an alcove cupboard’ so my choice was based on price combined with whether I trusted the maker.

Quality didn’t really come into it as I thought they would be much of a muchness.

Now I know what I’m looking at - and assessing the plans and pictures of previous work some of them sent me, I can see how different they were in terms of materials and structure. I could have made a huge mistake in terms of the cupboards I may have chosen. Some of the pics look like they are made from 12mm cheap MDF.

In retrospect, had any of them actually given even the briefest details such as:

‘I make the cupboards out of 18mm Moisture Resistant MDF with 22mm doors. The reason for that is that it takes paint better (often lower grade MDF is fluffy edges and will take you a lot longer to get a decent paint finish and even then may not be so good)

Also lower quality/thinner MDF may warp over time, meaning the doors don’t close so well and whole cupboard looks bad.

This does increase the price a little but the quality is far higher and they will last as long as you’
It would have entirely changed my way of choosing.


Also, none made the distinction in terms of where they made them. Thinking about it now, I think some had their own workshops so made them off site and then come and fit over a day or two. To the punter, the difference between that approach and the maker without a workshop who has to take over your living room for days and make on site with all the associated mess is night and day.

But none of them mentioned which was their approach.

To my mind, giving customers enough knowledge so they can compare you to competitors (or even if you don’t have competition, so they understand the difference between what you make and Oak Furnitureland) gives you a lot more flexibility than just worrying about price.
All of the above only has to be written once then can be used for every quote you ever do.

 

[eribaMotters]

I always started a consultation with, "If you can buy what you want ready made, buy it, as this is going to be a lot more".
I'm going back over 10 years on my labour prices. I used to keep a crib sheet of up to date materials prices, so that bit bit of costing the job was easy. I would then to list everything on the job when trying to work out a labour price, from site visits, working out materials needed, order & collect materials, rough cut, second cut, machine, mark out, joint timbers, glue and clean up, etc. I charged £20/hr for large jobs or those that were fairly simple. Anything involving a lot of head scratching, small mouldings, difficult fitting etc was £25/hr as things will go wrong.
If I got a job I kept an exact log of my actual hours and I was usually accurate. I never made a big error either in favour of the customer or myself.
Having gone through all of that I did eventually get a feel for a job, which did take a while as I was not doing the joinery full time. I could give a decent max-min figure which saved going through a time consuming accurate estimate.
Bespoke kitchens and built in cupboards usually came in at an average £300/£350 for a single width unit, irrespective of height, width, doors or drawers, as long as it was part of a full fit out and not a single unit. For built in cupboards this was for fitted, primed and a moulded edge top fitted. For kitchens it was for a MR melamine faced mdf carcase, polar M&T framework planted on and a simple panelled door. The solid timber was primed and included fitting of the carcase to a prepared area, but no top.
Interestingly on most jobs I did the labour cost of 4x the material costs also seemed to give a realistic figure.

Colin

 

[Samkilby]

A few years ago I got quotes for alcove cupboards (built but to be painted by us) then due to Covid/finances ended up reading and watching a lot and making them myself as my first DIY project. The quotes I got were very different (like by £thousands)

Looking back at the quotes once I knew a little more about the subject it really struck me that all of the people who quoted had (IMHO) missed a trick.

When I got the quotes I didn’t know much so I thought ‘an alcove cupboard is an alcove cupboard’ so my choice was based on price combined with whether I trusted the maker.

Quality didn’t really come into it as I thought they would be much of a muchness.

Now I know what I’m looking at - and assessing the plans and pictures of previous work some of them sent me, I can see how different they were in terms of materials and structure. I could have made a huge mistake in terms of the cupboards I may have chosen. Some of the pics look like they are made from 12mm cheap MDF.

In retrospect, had any of them actually given even the briefest details such as:

‘I make the cupboards out of 18mm Moisture Resistant MDF with 22mm doors. The reason for that is that it takes paint better (often lower grade MDF is fluffy edges and will take you a lot longer to get a decent paint finish and even then may not be so good)

Also lower quality/thinner MDF may warp over time, meaning the doors don’t close so well and whole cupboard looks bad.

This does increase the price a little but the quality is far higher and they will last as long as you’
It would have entirely changed my way of choosing.


Also, none made the distinction in terms of where they made them. Thinking about it now, I think some had their own workshops so made them off site and then come and fit over a day or two. To the punter, the difference between that approach and the maker without a workshop who has to take over your living room for days and make on site with all the associated mess is night and day.

But none of them mentioned which was their approach.

To my mind, giving customers enough knowledge so they can compare you to competitors (or even if you don’t have competition, so they understand the difference between what you make and Oak Furnitureland) gives you a lot more flexibility than just worrying about price.
All of the above only has to be written once then can be used for every quote you ever do.

Couldn’t agree with the above more, when submitting even rough prices give a thorough explanation of material type and thickness, any considerations you would make as standard (real shaker doors vs shaker, scribed panels to fit to walls, type of drawer boxes, fittings manufacturers and their quality etc)
Then follow this up with a phone call to discuss, as to the average client they will have no idea what any of that means, or why you made these choices (usually hard won experience of doing it the wrong way, being called in to fix shockers etc. providing a quality and long lasting product etc. you can tailor this very easily to the specific quote, by assuming the cheapest easiest and often worst way to do it, then highlighting how your offering differs)

 

[johnnyb]

The above method(listing the things that make yours better) is totally wrong. Someone who is eventually going to make it themselves isn't a typical customer. People really don't care. If people could have an exact replica of a black range rover on the drive as a status enhancer at a 10th the price seriously that would be a thing. No engine no suspension zero. People are this shallow.
I'm just considering working for a company atm. There literature/marketing is a complete fabrication. Hundreds of reviews. 9.8 trust pilot everything. They haven't completed a single job. Guess what....they've got lots of work....lots and lots. Now there trying to find a way to fulfil!

 

[HOJ]

I'm just considering working for a company atm. There literature/marketing is a complete fabrication. Hundreds of reviews. 9.8 trust pilot everything. They haven't completed a single job. Guess what....they've got lots of work....lots and lots. Now there trying to find a way to fulfil!

Are they outsourcing to you @johnnyb, how will they price for you to make?

The above method(listing the things that make yours better) is totally wrong.

I'm always hesitant to give away information with regards specifications, lost jobs in the past when client's gone to "Fred in the shed" with my spec.

I try to establish the level of budget the client has or is prepared to spend, and quite often that's where the conversation ends, you just know its a non starter.

I was recently asked to price up a job, client had done detailed drawings so that gave me a good heads up, was told budget was only £1K, I did a quick tally up, and for the materials alone would have been in the region of £800.00.