The Framers Forum

A conservation board is a conservation board whether you pay more for it, or less. For an undermount, no one sees it, so visual qualities don't matter, so why pay more for it, when you can pay less?

I agree Mark a pound is a pound and the more I can save on a job the happier i am.

well...............

how much do you charge for labour per hr

up to now how many minutes have you spent looking for this saving

let use my example again

100 sheets needed for the job

say up to now used 20 mins of time, and maybe 4 phone calls. and to save your £1 means using and stocking a board you dont use now

i charge a min of 50 per hour for my time

so 20 mins up to now - say 16
say 4 phone calls - 10 mins 8 + the cost of calls

so there over £20 of ya savig used

then ....... need new space to store so it doesnt get mixed up with you normal stuff. explain and make sure staff dont use stuff by mistake etc

can you see where i am going............


even say retail on my 100 sheet example is say £100 per sheet for a frame which doesnt seem like a lot


thats a 10K job

isnt that a 1percent that your looking at saving minus the stuff above, so maybe 0.5 percent

time is worth more than that and there are way more ways to save way more money

No I don't see where you are comming from. My deal was brokered with my arqadia rep during a normal visit. £100 is £100 as I said you can get a deal on just buying 125 sheets not a lot really especially since it can be mixed colours and thicknesses.

And you only have to make that commitment to research the once so your 20 quid would be spread over many purchases.

And usually time on the computer researching is done when I am having a coffee or lunch or at night or when I am quiet and I can't charge 50 an hour. So really £50 per hour isn't an accurate figure for your labour unless you work 24/7 365 days a year.

It's a fact that one big way to increase profit is to reduce material costs.

My point is to save less than 1% on my example job isn't worth the effort

There are ways to save much more as labour is the biggest cost not materials

Spending time working out ways to do the job quicker would be much more efficent

I don't believe you are saving 1%. You may save 1% on a frame and mount but on the mount only you will be saving considerably more. You are assuming that the job will include a frame.

If you apply this to framing and glass then material cost savings and thus increase in profitability can be quite considerable.

I agree that savings in time and labour would far out weigh savings in materials, which is what i do all the time, but I increased my % gross profit by 10% over the last 2 years and that made a hell of a difference to my profits.

Ignore you bottom line at your peril. Things might be rosie now Steve but you don't know what is around the corner and you may wish you had saved a few £k on mountboard costs.

The op mentioned it was in a frame

I agree saving money makes sense, just that saving money by finding the biggest savings is a much more efficient use of your time.

On materials compared to the retail price of a single frame, the savings are so small relatively.

Like I said method and workflow are where the best savings are

Even saving 20% on cost price of a single sheet of board compared to the retail price of the frame is such a small amount of that retail price.

Say a sheet of board costs £3 and you save 20%

Using a full sheet for one frame, the frame might sell for 100 , so your saving of 60pence on the board is such an insignificant amount to save

Where as saving even 10 mins of time, is such a much larger amount

Yes but couple that 60p with an increased work flow say make 10 frames a day then that £6.00 a day times that by 250 working days then its £1500. Now if you made savings of £3 on moulding per frame thats £30 a day or £7500 a year. Now I wouldn't sniff at an extra £9K a year, would you?

i am not disagreeing just trying to point out that saving time will save way more than that over a year

and so its worth trying to spend most of your effort doing that first

I think that about one pound saved per sheet of mountboard is quite a good saving!

approx how many sheets would you use in a year?

No idea, but I could get easily make up an order for forty sheets at a time!

One idea is to pick a board that you use a lot of. Everybody has a magic colour. Try and wangle a big discount for a couple of hundred sheets. You have two choices then. Use it as a top mount or an undermount. And you'll never run out of either or get stuck with it.

Thats what I do


Anyone for Hayseed

kinda what i do too, only keep about 6-8 colours

and 1 colour is about 95% of it

NYAF it still boils down to what deal YOU can strike with YOUR suppliers. Someone else on here could tell you of a fantastic deal they have, but it may be relevant only to them or someone doing their level of business. So a few quick phone calls or emails to your suppliers could resolve the problem of what deal you could get very easily. It is obvious that the more of one board type you can buy in one go is going to get you the best deal but the deal a supplier is willing to offer YOU will depend on factors relevant to YOUR business and if you are able to play suppliers off against each other if the level of business you are offering them is worthwhile.

Mmmm, I'm not sure about as much as 200 sheets of one colour. It would have to be a big discount for me to consider that many sheets of one colour only!

Funnily enough, if I did that I think it might have to be hayseed!

Arqadia do a discount on 125 sheets of mixed coulours and thicknesses as self adhesive can be added in.

they wont do it for everyone

i met with there rep a little while ago

when i was looking at changing

i told the rep i buy approx 300 sheets a month, and he wouldnt do any kind of deal, it was catalogue price or nothing

needless to say i dont buy from them