The Framers Forum

I'm just a part time garage framer, so I don't get the volume of a high street framer. But I was wondering how you've all found the framing business during 2012? Up, down, flat?

From my (admittedly limited) experience 2012 has been much like 2011 and 2010, but I'm based in a fairly well-off area that's so far escaped the worst of the long recession, and I've managed to balance a slight dip in volume with a compensating increase in prices.

From a business been going 3 years, we have grown both turnover and net profit by over 65% and 40% respectively. We have found 2012 a very good year with the exception of 2 months, have grown month on month.

We like you are in a pretty affluent area, but our success has been through good marketing and word of mouth.

We are expecting further growth for 2013 and will be hoping to move into bigger premises next summer.

Dont think this belongs in Introductions ?
Can a moderator please move it ?

Thank you Keith. Done.

Start-ups would expect to grow more quickly than established businesses. We are into the 6th year and have maintained a good level of growth and quickly filling out our third premises. We grew 315% in the second year and 70% in the third but after a while that would become nearly impossible in what is a skilled job, with precious little supply of trained labour out there. Though you can start breaking it down into simple repetitive tasks. We are still growing at a rapid pace compared to most businesses but Xmas has required 7 days working at peak till late at night.

I think most framers on the forum do well because by nature they are outward looking and progressive and passionate. The more long established retail businesses will give a better idea of how bouyant demand is overall or relative to other years.

I think that by the end of the financial year we will probably be about level with the previous year. I certainly can't say that it's been a fun year for me. The start of the year will a bit slow. but we're not back to about level with last year.

A rough patch healthwise with many hospital trips and medical appointments did not make things easy for me, but my health is now much better and I'm able to be more proactive in preparing for a better year in 2013.

Generally, I 'm quite up beat about things for next year. I've taken on an extra member of staff, who has been a woodworking professional most of his working life. He is becoming a real asset to the business and hopefully will help me to cope with the growing volume of handfinished framing jobs.

He's also been creating display fittings to enable me to display a substantial range of my own ready made frames. This is a growing area for us and has needed to be given some added emphasis for some time, unfortunately it's always been on the back burner until now, but not anymore!

We decided to add a framing service to our photography studio just over a year ago as we were buying readymades in from all over the place and without paying quite a lot (and rightly so) we couldn't offer bespoke sizes or mouldings.

The photography studio although still doing ok is now running quite a way behind our framing service.

In November and December we have been working sometimes until 11pm to keep up with orders and they are still coming in.
We also offer a scanning/printing /framing service which has also ben busy.

In a year we have learnt quite a lot though the majority of skilled framers on here have probably forgotton more than we know but lifes a learning curve and we are learning every day though we have refused a couple of jobs that we know are way out of our league.

There is only one other framer in the city where our shop is so competition isn't massive though he is a qualified framer and can probably take on most jobs.

If it carries on in this manner we are seriously considering scrapping the studio and just concentrating on framing 100%