Good design vs Cheap.
Posted: Fri 01 Jul, 2022 12:58 pm
We've all seen it before recessions come and go and people switch from buying decent quality stuff to cheaper stuff, but fortunately it's generally not everyone that switches to buying cheap. There are usually some of those who can still afford to buy some of the nicer stuff, which is just as well for us picture framers, but maybe we need to be more on the ball this time to stay ahead of the game. So, what makes the essential difference as things get tighter. Not everyone is going to have the same approach, but for a lot of us we may need to get more out of less. I think that it's reasonable to assume that at least some customers will be tightening their budgets, but there is still going to be a market for custom framing and maybe there are some areas, where we can sharpen up our acts to still pick up the business from those who won't be spending as much as they once spent of top end of the market stuff, but stll want something special.
Maybe part of the answer might be more of an emphasis on design. Assuming that to meet the customers budgetary limitations, we can be a little bit more careful on how much is spent on mouldings, but still make the overall job look really classy, by what else we can add to the mix. Sometimes a basic frame can be embelished by adding slips, or liners in the form of smaller frames, perhap adding decorative mounts, or even deep bevelled mounts. Just to be clear, I am not actually talking about hand finished frames, you can even do this with normal factory finished mouldings, you are adding something of the designer look to just raise the look of the frame to a higher level. Simple, but approprite added embelishment, which works well at an appropriate cost level can protect you necessary profit requirements, but also to enable your customer to get more out of their available budget and hopefully you still get the sale.
There usually ways and means of creating deep bevel mount stips by sticking two scrap stips of mountboard together and wrapping them, or even paint the cut bevelled edge with paint. I'm not really in to the now a bit dated look of 5mm deep bevel acents, as they were once called. I much prefer a double thickness of 1.4mm conservation mountboard where two normal mountboards have been stuck together and the a full depth bevell has been cut. It's only me personal preference but I like to paint my deep bevels with a 50/50 mix of chalky emulsion paint and a similar colour acrylic paint. Equally speced miltiple v-grrove also look great, but don't usually mean adding extra material costs, to do them. While we all are still keeping adequately busy, there is not much point in making any changes from what we are already doing, but if things start to slow down then itmight be a good time to start looking at how we get a bit more out of a shrinking market. I hope that this at least will be something useful to be looking at.
Has anyone else got any useful recession busting ideas to share?
Mark.
Maybe part of the answer might be more of an emphasis on design. Assuming that to meet the customers budgetary limitations, we can be a little bit more careful on how much is spent on mouldings, but still make the overall job look really classy, by what else we can add to the mix. Sometimes a basic frame can be embelished by adding slips, or liners in the form of smaller frames, perhap adding decorative mounts, or even deep bevelled mounts. Just to be clear, I am not actually talking about hand finished frames, you can even do this with normal factory finished mouldings, you are adding something of the designer look to just raise the look of the frame to a higher level. Simple, but approprite added embelishment, which works well at an appropriate cost level can protect you necessary profit requirements, but also to enable your customer to get more out of their available budget and hopefully you still get the sale.
There usually ways and means of creating deep bevel mount stips by sticking two scrap stips of mountboard together and wrapping them, or even paint the cut bevelled edge with paint. I'm not really in to the now a bit dated look of 5mm deep bevel acents, as they were once called. I much prefer a double thickness of 1.4mm conservation mountboard where two normal mountboards have been stuck together and the a full depth bevell has been cut. It's only me personal preference but I like to paint my deep bevels with a 50/50 mix of chalky emulsion paint and a similar colour acrylic paint. Equally speced miltiple v-grrove also look great, but don't usually mean adding extra material costs, to do them. While we all are still keeping adequately busy, there is not much point in making any changes from what we are already doing, but if things start to slow down then itmight be a good time to start looking at how we get a bit more out of a shrinking market. I hope that this at least will be something useful to be looking at.
Has anyone else got any useful recession busting ideas to share?
Mark.