The Framers Forum

When I started out, I bought the stock of a very well stocked Devon framers, which was closing down. This included around about 850 complete and unused sheets of mountboard, mostly in packs of 5 sheets. It was a lot of colours, but I still needed to order other colours of board for jobs needing another colour.

As the years have gone by I have used the major part of this stock and have gone from operating with a very wide range of mountboard colours before the recession, to a deliberate policy of reducing my stock levels and increasing my rate of stock turnover since the start of the recession.

Slow moving stock is an inefficient way of investing your businesses cash and also is not always justified, when you can get stock from your suppliers within a few days. So these days, I am trying to be a lot more focused about which mount board colours I need to stock. The main favourites are purchased in packs of 5, while a few more colours are purchased in ones and twos.

I've never counted how many colours I still have in stock, but it's nothing like the full range from any of the main manufacturers. There's just too many colours which I are never use, so I'm trying to use many of these slow moving colours as undermounts to get some use from this dead stock.

The really difficult colours are from the green and blue end of the colour spectrum, as although only the right colour will work properly with the job in question, you may not neccessarily get much call for that colour after the job has been done. If you are on a weekly van delivery route from a well stocked distributor, then why keep any slow moving mountboard colours in stock, when you don't have to.

While this recession continues, I would rather have the cash in the bank, than a large range of slow moving mountboard colours.

Two steps back. Robo what a fabulous Batik and I love where you're heading with the colours. Please can we see the finished thing.

Sarah

Top left corner all around will be what it is, but yes, I'll post a photo of it when it's done.

Look forward to it!

I agree robo, horses for courses and all of that

Both ways work for diff people for diff reasons

Glad u got the photo thing too, reckon if ya save it with slightly lower quality setting it would be even quicker

Robo I can see where you are coming from I used to be in a very similar circumstance to you I had an Art shop and I stocked evrey colour of paint that windsor and Newton Made and 90% of Daler Rowneys range plus 100+ colours of mountboard. We felt that to be a good independent shop you had to carry the full range and by looking at photo's of your shop this is probably your philosophy also.

This business model obviously works well for you, and by the sounds of it you are probably a destination retailer where people will travel (and pay) for the service you provide because you go the extra mile.

However I bet that level of stock has taken a long time to build up and unless someone had a large amount of capital to stock and sustain the business that that level of stocking would be impractical for most start ups.

Of course the level of stock has taken time to build up and with things like tubes of watercolour (or ribbon, threads etc in our case) that are simply taken off the shelf to the counter, then you have to have the stock, it would be no good saying to most customers "Come back in a week" - they'd just buy it somewhere else and wherever else that was would be where they'd go in future; not you.

But it's different with mount board, (unless you sell full sheets) you can show a whole supplier's range but only actually stock a few colours, you'll have a week, or whatever your turnaround time is, to get the stock you require, and in most framers' cases even a small mount would at least break even on the cost of a full sheet........ but then of course there's the "what if someone wants just an 8x6" mount (no frame, no fitting etc) in flourescent orange that I'll probably never sell again" situation.

The two main things being discussed here are stock and choice/selection, I've no issue with the fact that low stock levels can be good for business, especially small operations/start-ups - but you can still maintain low stock levels whilst offering a large selection and showing a bit of flair.