Baer,
What an attitude; if it's more pricey for the customer, who cares? In my business , I can tell you cares, me. And I might add, in most instances the customer. Every buying decision of ours a is predicated on getting the lowest price for our customers.
I think Baer's attitude is all too common in our little industry which may explain it's current problems. I hope this isn't news to Grumblers, but the demand for our products isn't inelastic. In fact it's very elastic, probably the most elastic demand/supply relationships in our economy. The higher the price, the lower the demand and that means fewer customers.
All the discussions here about the problems of the framing business seem to avoid the elephant in the room: the cost of our products. There are endless discussions about how to make our product more expensive and very, very few on how to lower prices. My shops are not running near capacity so if there is an opportunity to lower cost by adding labor, we jump on it. After some 34 years, that attitude seems to have served us well. The cost of strainer material, which btw, we make out of whatever is lying around our cabinet shop, is probably marginal but it's the way of thinking that "so what if it costs more, we'll just pass the extra costs along to the customer" that disturbs me. An attitude that eventually leads the customer to pass up us.
I almost hesitate to say this because it's antithetical to so much I read here but it's entirely possible to run a shop based on low cost, high quality, and excellent service. We've been doing it for we've been doing it from the beginning.
Lower costs, greater demand.
Rick
