Ready Mades

[DaveJ]

Hi all, dies anyone make ready mades? Any advice for standard sizes, mount tolerance, posters, photos? Thank you, D.

[prospero]

First bit of advice: Unless there is a demand for them in your location - don't bother.
It's fine to have a few made-up frames about as examples but if you make a quantity you likely will
still have most of them in ten years time.

As for standard sizes, at one time photos typically came in set sizes - 6x4", 7x5",etc. Today they can be any size.

[DaveJ]

Thanks mate, I guess one should take standard sizes and then come in a few mm on the mount? I get asked quite often I just thought that with Christmas on the horizon I could do some ready mades as people will be watching the pennies, Cost of living etc. Asa we all know that excess moulding will inevitably get chucked out in the end might as well try make some money out of it!
I'll make a couple of each size and see how it goes. I am the quietest I've been in 7 years so need to do something!
Ready mades in the same materials and same quality as a bespoke frame must be a good pull, lets see, Cheers D.

[Not your average framer]

Hi Dave,

Yes, I make ready mades, but not too many. I sell a few, but not massive quantities, it's a bit of a limited market. I am mostly making ready mades to use up my waste materials. I don't find that there is much future in making bog standard ready mades, which look like cheap ready mades which can be bought anywhere. It's good to have a few nice ready mades for when a customer needing some thing framed while they wait and there's also a much more helpful profit in doing this. It's not that easy for customers to find a decent range of ready made deep box frames anywhere, so I like to have a limied range of these as well. Standard sizes has always been for me a very difficult question.

I mostly try to adapt larger sizes of frames to suit small sizes with the addition of a mount. Really small frames rarely make any worthwhile money. I sell a few smaller "rustic" frames for the locals who live in small cottages, but it's probably quite a local market only. Mount sizes and glass sizes need to allow a little bit extra clearance to clear the flexi-tabs. Most of My customers for ready made frames want something significatly better than the "run of the mill" ready mades, but I you are expecting to sell the all day long. it might not that likely!

As for Christmas, that can be a bit hit, or miss. I'm honestly not sure about making items specially to sell for Christmas!

[Tudor Rose]

We've always had a selection of ready-mades available and a few things we've learnt along the way:

1. Don't waste too much time on them, the return is not big enough to justify it - we make them up in batches when we have a moulding tidy up;
2. Have a selection of sizes - from small squares, standard photo sizes and so on, upwards - biggest we do is 20x16 and only ever a few of those;
3. Mix a selection of imperial sizes with metric sizes - we make up imperial sizes here, but have a range of Nielsen ready mades in metric sizes;
4. If you mis-make a frame and can't reuse it for a bespoke order, it is worth putting out as an odd size at a hefty discount;
5. Don't waste time glazing or backing the frames - instead use it as an opportunity to offer AR or UV glass, it is a great way to get rid of glass offcuts - on larger sizes they are often for canvases anyway so you'd end up having to take the glass and backing out;
6. Offer to cut a mount and to do the fitting - and charge it at your normal bespoke price - it increases your profit margin on ready-mades;
7. Ready-mades are often a useful item to have on hand when someone is having a lot of things framed, and then bring out that one thing that they've put in the pile but really don't want to spend any money on!
8. What you see is what you get! Don't agonise over making batches in the same moulding, just have what is available and stress the quality of the moulding but that if they want more, it will be the bespoke price to make them up;
9. If you have LOTS of moulding to use up, don't make it all up into stock frames, put some aside in length for special offer, in stock availability orders, particularly useful for last minute Christmas orders;
10. Have a few simple mouldings (your bread and butter ones) - but generally only bother with your nicer mouldings (the jam on top ones) that catch the eye.

We have one display unit with our ready-mades cut by us and one Nielsen branded one for their metal frames we also keep in stock. We sell enough to make it worthwhile, but only because it sits alongside the bespoke orders.

Hope that is useful.

[Richard Photofusion]

6. Offer to cut a mount and to do the fitting - and charge it at your normal bespoke price - it increases your profit margin on ready-mades;

I am a printer, not a framer, and am based in a reasonable sized city. A few times a week, I get request for prints to be framed - gifts, celebrations, because I want to's etc - and when there is a short deadline**, I send them down to one of 2-3 local framers to find out what they've got on the shelf, then I'll print to suit. I'll often call the framers to make sure they have something that can be worked with, and that I can make their lives as simple as possible.
35mm ratio images work great in A-series frames with a moderate border. Square images become polaroid ratio in 4x5 shaped frames.

One of the framers carries Nielsen and basic black or gold frames in 400x500. These work well for funeral service prints*, and with suitable borders, can accomodate many image ratios.

Square frames - 10", 12", 16" covers your Hasselblad and instagram images.

*If you've got a printer, or know a local/fast reliable remote printer, you'd be amazed by the printed results that can be got from what should be awful low res compressed cell phone / screen grab type images. Topaz GigaPixel has allowed me to take 400x600px portraits up to 300x400mm, and larger. We don't advertise funeral printing, but it is not uncommon, and knowing that important pictures will look fine to those to whom it matters most, helps me to help them. As a lot of our printing is for photographers, I sometimes have to remind them that no-one but them will notice or judge that an image is less than technically perfect, when it perfectly capures the subject.

**When the deadline is longer, I still send them down to a framer, because I haven't the time to click through endless webllinks to John Lewis, Habitat and iKea, but I'll still often make a call to the framer to confirm we're both on the same page.

[Bobble]

Surely all galleries carry A4 readymades? Make black frames in narrow and wider mouldings, the former for plumbers/electricians etc. and the latter for certificates or proud Dads. They hate shopping so it's a five minute sale!

[Not your average framer]

Hi Richard,

As someone who did not already know anything about what you have just shared, concerned what fits into different formats of frame shapes and sizes, what you have just shared is priceless information to me. I find that I have quite good success selling square format ready made frames, without knowing why. I just assumed that people just like square format frames. Thanks to you, I now know why!
Thank you for sharing you insights,
Mark.