The Framers Forum

Hello from the land of the misty Highlands, ( i tell a lie, Edinburgh is hardly the highlands)

I'd like to know if any of you guys have experienced an untypically busy January.

we've seen a definite increase in framing jobs being taken, and normally for this time of year we'd be working at a standard week turnaround, it's currently a 30 working day turnaround. I certainly cannot remember being this busy before in January.

We are having to reassess our staffing arrangements as a result of this, it's crazy.

How is business faring for you guys?

Aye, Mary, it's uncanny.

Our Jan is up 45% on last year! Flash in the pan, or an upward trend?

Welcome to the forum.

Hi Mary,

I haven't done the sums yet, but we are so busy I can't manage with my present staff and this is just the over the counter stuff. I also have 34 pictures to restore for a company which provides us with insurance work, a further 19 cleaning & restoration jobs from other customers and several large mountcutting orders for various art and memorabilia dealers who normal order far less and usually fairly infrequently at this time of year.

I haven't a qlue why, but things are booming!

I'm very busy and also selling the high end well, latest Larson Juhl, musem glass, washlines etc.

Want to have a clearance sale of mounted prints - offering the print free (selected) if we frame it - just too busy to think about it.

Right now, most of our business is the higher value end too. Very little cheaper work at all. It's a big suprise, because December was well down.

thought i'd check in with you all, and ask if business was still brisk!

We're slowly getting our backlog cleared up, (lots of night shifts) and we're hoping to get the turnaround back down to its usual 1 week.

Lots of new faces through the door which is encouraging, the new signage and things seem to be working for us.

After being up consistently from the start of the year, business has dropped back to normal this past two weeks.

We are still booming, but also low on staff (due to one member sick and possibly not coming back) also we are running out of space to take in any more. On Good Friday we are closed, but I will be in to build a new moulding rack to help with our space problem.

We are learning to work smart in new ways to save time and drastically re-thinking our materials stocking plans as we are running out of space fast.

We've also just got an ongoing job to frame two hundred pictures for a local pub.

While all you Poms try and outdo yourselves with record months, my January consisted of 3 weeks holidays, back to work for a couple of days, then a public holiday (Australia Day) and then a few days work till the end of the month!!! So no records here!

Ross

I thought it was supposed to be winging poms - We have the same problems come summer.

yes very busy january, the usual slack february but still a lot busier than last year (and Tom went on holiday to Goa for the whole of february, as we thought it would be quiet lol) and very busy march.
No sign of a recession yet