How far do your customers "travel"

[Trinity]

How far from your base do you pull your customers in from? What % from the 15 / 20 / 50 mile radius, for bespoke work? (not ebay / volume).
Thanks
Keith

[prospero]

Just finished three frames for a customer who lives in Tunbridge Wells. Not absolutely sure where that is. Somewhere the far side of London in the sub-tropical south.
Also, I've been framing aviation prints for 25-odd years for a guy in Holland . His first name is Dick which isn't short for Richard. He's a real Dick. I call him the Flying Dutchman.

[Tudor Rose]

I would say the majority of our customers are from within a radius of up to 30 miles from our location, but we are increasingly seeing customers travelling much further than that and as repeat customers which is always good. Up to 50-70 miles or so isn't uncommon.

We have a few trade customers from a reasonable distance, just over 100 miles for the furthest currently but we did do a series of orders a few years ago for an artist from New Zealand who posted his prints to us and we then framed them and delivered them to a gallery in Cornwall about 70 miles away, so quite a distance on those jobs.

Like others on the forum we live in an area with a fair amount of second/holiday homes and so frequently do framing for customers who live elsewhere in the UK but bring their framing with them to have done while they are here or to collect on their next trip down. So they have a local address but also one quite a distance away too, so you could count those either way.

As for percentages, it's hard to say as it changes and our database foolishly doesn't go back to the beginning but as an example today we had 30% customers today from our own town, another 20% from the next set of towns in various directions so up to 15 miles and the other 50% travelled up to 35 miles and we took a phone order from a customer in the Midlands who will collect on their next trip down. All of them were bespoke customers.

Hope that's useful.

[pramsay13]

Probably a 20-mile radius for my regular customers, with the odd one or two from further afield.

[Not your average framer]

Being based on the edge of Dartmoor creates some unusual business demographic results and the mix for my business can vary quite a bit both over time and seasonally, but it tends to be something like this:

About 35% from up to 10 to 15 miles.

About 25% from the rest of Devon.

Historically anything up to about 8% from Wiltshire (Don't know why?)

About 15% from in and around London and adjoining counties.

And the rest come from just about anywhere up to about 300 miles away and these are nearly all people with a local connection such as family, second homes, or people who regularly holiday down here throughout the year. Unfortunately, with so many customers spread over a larger area, the bad weather, railway problems, plus local business failures/redundancies earlier in the year were not helpful.

Half term holidays can be particularly good, customers include school teachers and families with children. Many of the second home owners want handfinished frames, or restoration work done and their order values are often very good. Locally based order values can vary considerably and since the recession came along, I do my best to cater for both ends of the market.

Recently many of the more frugal customers are tending to spend significantly more than they used to and I've been putting together some interesting framing options to encourage this trend to continue and hopefully see some growth in this area. My sales pitch to the frugal customers is strongly quality driven and this is creating a promising level of repeat orders.

It is my impression that the Dartmoor tourist traffic is in decline and judging from many of the comments I hear, much of this is connected with the poor state of local roads with drivers needing to concentrate on avoiding pot holes in the road surface, rather than enjoying the local scenery. Also hedges and verges are no longer trimmed, which diminishes the enjoyment of the scenery.

[Kwik Picture Framing]

Our customers come from all surrounding areas of Bradford and west yorkshire for picture framing including Keighley, Halifax, Leeds, Brighouse, Skipton, Ilkley, Cleckheaton, Batley, Huddersfield, Wakefield, Harrogate, Dewsbury, Kirklees area. Sometimes we get customers as far 20 miles away. So we offer a while you wait service.

[Steve N]

Ours range from the next street to 20 to 30 miles for most of the time, we have one customer who now sends his L/e print to us then travels from Northampton to collect, plus we have a couple bring their work from Kent when they visit their daughter.
Then on the other hand I have a customer who orders online and we post it to them, and they are in the same town, 2 miles as the crow flies

[Trinity]

Thanks all - my little bit of research suggests a realtively small catchment area for the bulk of stuff - bespoke but not so unique as to be of interest to a much wider area, where others operate perhaps.