How do you package your ready mades?

JbNormandog

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Apr 8, 2004
Posts
3,751
Loc
NJ
Hi all,

I have been making ready mades out of my extra moulding scraps (8x10, 11x14, 5x7)and now have a good supply of them.

I do not have a shrink wrap maching and really don't want one.

Any advice on where to get shrink bags or other suggestions on how you wrap yours or other packaging ideas?

What do you think?
 
I hang mine on the wall (no, not on pegboard) in a neat little corner of the shop.
The larger sizes sell much better, that's 11x14 and up. 14 x 16 sells like crazy.
I can hear the 5x7's barking from here.
I put them on clearance once a year or so, two for the price of one. People come in with PILES of stuff. Edie's happy.

edie the BOGO goddess
 
I make standard size ready mades with the size price and other info printed out on nice paper mounted to foam core and packaged with glass with a saw tooth on the back with flexi points holding it together.

All of it is scrap and I get a good buck for them.

The 5x7 frames are 8x10's with an acid free mat that I would have trashed anyway. I charge more for them and have new hires cut down neutral colored mats to fit 5x7's for practice.
 
Have you sold any?

I did best with readymades when I left them open-backed and picked from them when I needed to save a sale. Slap it down, no visualization necessary. I got tired of opening the shrink wrap, cutting a new mat in blue and putting wire on them on the spot.

I also found that packaging them made them look like "made in China" frames that folks can pick up at discount stores for $5.99.

Just my opinion...

edie the forwhatitsworth goddess
 
I agree with Edie. I visited several frame shops last week and the most impressive display of readymades was open back, just the frame. They looked like custom frames (just in standard sizes). And being able to set the frame on top of the mat and artwork without taking glass and backing out or removing shrink would be wonderful.

We currently display our frames with glass and backing with flexible points.... to much trouble. We usually end up fitting for the customers anyway so the glass and backing could be cut at that time. We will be changing to open frames soon.
 
My readymades are made from scrap and hang on the wall...yes, I confess there is still some pegboard in my shop.
I like having them for sale savers and quick fixes for "crisis framing."


Edie, how do you have yours displayed? Would you post a photo.
Please?
 
OK, I will ask the obvious question (It seems I am the only one who does that...) And please. do correct me if I am wrong:

Don't you sell your ready mades at a "less-expensive" price? (Note that I didn't say "Cheaper").

If yes, then, how come your ready mades are cheaper, sorry, less-expensive, than the same ones a customer would order (please, don't tell me they are the same price).

How do you explain the discrepancy to your customers?? Overstock, sale, temporary insanity, price amnesia, customer empathy, mass volume production??
 
We cut out great ad pages from mags like Brides and Departures and plop a piece of glass and easel back and make a glass shelf display.

More than once people have bought that great looking frame with a picture of Jennifer Aniston because of the picture.

We bought a bunch of custommade easel backs (with a safety strap and longer legs from Easel King forless than we could buy those cheap premades (with the too short easel leg).

Ours are made from those perennially short legs of someone else's custom project. How dowe explain the discrepancy? We don't and it doesn't come up

If it did,I guess we would just respond by saying "Well, which one do you want to buy"?

Paul, you might be too worried about the "what if's"
 
Paul,
We sell the ready mades at a cheaper price, then put a fitting fee if they want us to put the photos in. Thats when we make up the difference. Some won't agree with this but so be it.
 
A friend of mine (JudyN) gave me the idea of a few price points on each size. As an example 5x7 is either $9-$14-$19 depending on how nice it looks. After finishing my new display and pricing them this way, I have found that some are much more expensive than custom and some are much less. I've never been questioned about it.

But this is about displays isn't it? Here is mine.

photoframesdark.jpg


I have added a few more shelves but I think I'm done. I have way more frames than I do room. It seems that by "displaying" every single one like this takes and amazing amount of room. I think I'll end up shrinkwrapping them. I might add a mat and include a hanger instead of photoframe back.
 
Paul,

My prices for ready mades are barely under custom price and higher than ready mades you can get at a home store.

If people ask why so much(which hasn't happened yet) I will tell them they are hand made here instead of in china.

If they ask why is it cheaper than custom (again hasn't happened) I will tell them they were built on speculation of what may sell and doesn't have any of the typical charges for mounting or conservation glass attached to it.

All parts of my ready mades are scrap, glass, fc everything. When an 8x10 sells for $40.00 it's gravy.

I wasn't going to carry them but in my first 6 months open I had at least 1 person a week come in for one. Now I have them I sell a few a month and they don't take up a lot of room. (I sell gift items also so I get a bunch of browsers).

It's also a great project for new hires to practice on before going near customer work.

So far it works well.
 
A great common theme is that people don't seem to ask about pricing differences,do they?

Establish your prices at levels that will sell through these items quickly.

If youwant to debate anything,debate how quick is quickly.

Every frame shop has a forest of 5-6ft lengths of moulding, mountains of glass end cuts and enough ends of foamcore to build a house in Mexico.

It's all about turning non-moving inventory into something that sounds like "Ca-ching"
 
Yep, love those ready mades. One grumbler a while back liked to refer to them as "custom standards." I like the sound of that and it IS closer to the truth.

I have never had a customer question the price of them compared to custom sized frames. I tell them right away that I make them during slow times out of my leftovers from my regular line. I tell them, "It's the same stuff as these *pointing to corner samples*- the good stuff." And I tell them that they are 20-50% off the price. They are.

I have a few small boxes of glass scraps, FC scraps and mats cut to standard sizes. I pull from those boxes quite often.

Every day after I am done cutting and building frames for the day, I cut up the moulding scraps and either build or bundle them. It keeps the forest from getting too dense.


Deb, I'll see what I can do about getting a photo. Santa brought me an early Xmas gift- a digital camera, but not the brain to figure it all out quickly.

Dave, my RM frames are priced "a la carte," I say. I write the price on the back, frame only, and will add regular fitting, matting, glass etc charges from my POS just like any other order.

Jay, your display looks quite nice.

edie the crisisframer goddess
 
My theory is once a frame is an "oops" or sized to a standard it is a ready made and no longer a custom frame. Michael's used to collect "oops" frames by the boatload and they used to mark them half off the original price and nobody would buy them and then they would get banged up and eventually thrown away. My thought was what are the chances that somebody will come in with a piece of art that happens to need a 17-3/4x38-1/8 dark green rustic frame? Especially one that retailed for $350 and is now "half off" for $175. Nobody will, that's who! It is a big 'ol oddly sized readymade. Luckily they rethought their "oops" prices and they sold for $2, $5 and $10. Then even more oddly, "oops" frames started multiplying like rabbits and the employees were buying them all. Obviously, the "oops" were being created deliberately. So, now the policy is that all "oops" frames must be destroyed by a manager in the compactor. Seeing all that beautiful wood disposed of because some twit doesn't know how to read a ruler was painful to say the least.

Anyway, I digressed. I've taken the theory with me to my own store that they are no longer custom pieces and I assign prices to them that I think I can get somewhere in the range from $9.99 to $49.99.
 
This is good, I like this. I have heard of folks selling and many more not. So I am seeing the price range that you all feel comfy with in order to sell them.

Got to think...like Bob, it is dead inventory, and if it is too high it will become damged inventory-sell it asap

Patrick Leeland
 
Emibub,

If you have oops frames hanging around in odd sizes you can get cork board very reasonably and mount it on foam core and fit it to you oops frame and sell them as cork boards.

They don't sell quite as quickly as ready mades do but they hold their own and you don't have to go through the labor of cutting down a bigger frame to be a standard size.

On the ones I have hanging on display I put notes with sayings like,"Don't forget we do mirrors too" and other add type stuff.

It's also another item that your competition doesn't sell.

It works for me, hope it helps.
 
"If you have oops frames hanging around in odd sizes you can get cork board very reasonably and mount it on foam core and fit it to you oops frame and sell them as cork boards."


Where do you get the corkboard?
 
We're known for our ready-mades, in these parts. We have zillions (maybe half a zillion, after our last sale). Our shop is frequented by artists and budget-minded consumers. We buy ready-mades from Mexico, and we also make our own out of scrap. The scrap frames are priced 60-70% of custom retail price. Plus, we don't charge for fits when it's a canvas. We also have a pile of mini's (6x8 or smaller), in all sizes. Because we have been doing this for a long time, we have a steady customer base. Our sizes range from 2x2 to 36x48. (The owner cuts the small ones,... keeping the trips to the infirmary to a minimum.)

These ready-mades make up about 35-40% of our annual sales. And our shop frequently looks like a Tijuana open-air market, but this is our nitch and it has worked well for us. And, yes, we even do the high-end custom framing when we have time. ;)

I think it all depends on your market. We have a LOT of amatuer artists in our area, so we're geared to serve that market. It's good fit.
 
Back
Top