it's me again. i have so many ?'s and ideas running thru my head at night. my question today is...how should i price out deer mounts (that is if i get any busines this year.) the price for a deer mount in my area is around $400. and to tell you the truth nothing is special about the mounts. and guys are paying that with no problem. would you guys/gals say it is fair to start off by charging +/- $275 and in time raise the price slowly in a couple of years? any help on what guys charge for the manikin, tanning, labor...that kind of stuff. again, thanks for any input.
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You're going to have to start reading the archives. That exact question has been posed here dozens of times and it's been talked out. There really IS a volume on every question you might have just as close as that SEARCH icon. We've all been there and made the same mistakes you're about to. Take advantage of what we've learned and use those archives.
I am new to this myself, and my other job schedule is effectively preventing me from getting any of the taxidermy work done that i want to do.
this question of yours is a frequent one here on the forum, and if you use the orange button to the left, you can find many different answers to your question. my personal opinion is that you should list out the cost of the materials you intend to use, then, if you send the capes out for tanning, that needs to be figured out as well.
once you have all of the extraneous costs figured in (do not forget the overhead of your shoft... electricity / rent etc), you need to see how much time you invest in the prep work, then the actual mount, and figure a good average time per mount. take all of the extraneous costs, and subtract this from your 275, then take the remainder and divide the number of hours into that to figure your hourly wage...if you are doing this on the hobby level, charging 275 per mount might not be that bad, but if you are trying to run a business, once the the math is done, you might find that you are selling yourself for less than minimum wage.
i think it was in one of the Breakthrough manuals that I saw formulas for how to effectively figure profit percentages etc for setting your prices. I cannot remember for the life of me at the moment which one it was in, on a guess i think it might have been the habitat manual.
one of the potential problems you face by underpricing your work is that you might find yourself swamped with work that you are doing for very low profit. this can also create adversity between yourself and the other taxidermists in your area... (you might need thier assistance for one reason or another) if your work is on par with thiers and you have a similar turn around time, then charging a price on par with thiers is not out of the question.
good luck
You never know, your first year you my get 30 or 40 deer and you are stuck at doing them all at $275. I'm telling ya, start out higher. It takes the same amount of work to put together a $400 vs. a $275 deer. The same amount of work, the same results. In fact, you will be putting more time to do it until you get the process down for speed. In your mind you are thinking that it's your first year, don't know what's going to happen, just testing the waters, Why work for less and start out in the hole? If you want to be lower than the other guys, be $10 or $15 and not $125 lower that the rest. The competition will like you better than thinking of you as a cutthroat.
Do not start your prices that much lower than your competition. I did that, and am now in the position of having too much work at not enough profit. I have been raising my prices for the last 2 years and still have not caught my competitors, with the work load growing each year. Next year I am raising my prices above my competition, and we will see what happens.
Don't lower your price just to get work in. I have a problom with guys doing that because they end up messing with and practicing on someones once in a life time trophy. Make sure you are doing quality work first. Your work should speak for it's self. Then the jobs will come in. There are no do overs, get one chance to do it right. A good reputation takes time to build. Good quality helps you achieve that. Poor work can ruin a reputation, and that spreads like wild fire. I feel that a taxidermist's work should be able to pull a 3rd or better professional ribbon in a state compitition in order to do commercial work. Anything less and you're practicing. If you do the best possible job you can and still can't pull a 3rd ribbon what does your production work look like. The ones that lose are the client and the taxidermy industry. If you feel you need to get $275 to draw work from other guys don't bother doing taxidermy. You will make more fliping burgers. You are also telling yourself that the quality of your work isn't worth much. It wll also come back to bite you in the ass. If you feel your work is as good or better than your compitition charge what they charge. If not get the quality up before you charge for it.
$275 deer head will yield approx. $13.50 hr.
$400 deer head will yield approx. $22.00 hr.
Consider overhead and $22.00 is not enough. Price with the competitors I'll bet there behind, the more you charge the slower you can go on a project and pay more attention to detail which is related to quality which snowballs into happier customers which snowballs into more referrals which snowballs into more biz. Been down the low price trail, you get overloaded, tired, and under paid. check the archives also. Low prices bring in cheapos who are slow pay or no pay and that brings your pay down real quick.
mike, good point! cheapo's also what the "best" for cheap. and are never happy. thanks every one for your help.
sounds like fuzzy math. Figure this, form, eyes, earliners, thread, needle, hide paste, tanning costs, shipping, paint & everything else it takes to mount one. Then figure 25 hrs, for a new b, that's from the time talking the customer, to skinning, turning, tanning, mounting and finishing. At $275, just the hours to mount it - materials is less than $10/ hr. Now I know that some of you guys are quicker than others, but next deer you work on, keep a time sheet with it, some of you will be surprised. Keep track of the five minutes you adjust the eyes the next day, everytime you check it and or touch it. I started with my prices low and slowly raised them, but I also told people that I was learning and also never took in more work than I wanted, usually 2-3 deer at a time and told people to hold onto theirs after that. Yea I lost some work but believe it or not, I gained more than I ever lost, people liked the honesty.
Your right, just a quick response. But i have to say you guys have got get this low price crap out of your heads. What about the time learning before going into business and while in business. Don't forget the time out hunting and fishing obtaining specimens for display!(-: The labor, material, equipment etc. list is endless, if you did a serious time study you will be making minus $22.00 hr. If you love what your doing the hours don't matter. I have to say I like all aspects of taxidermy from skinning to getting a hand shake from a happy customer. Even the smells of the shop such as opening up a box of hides fresh from the tannery or the fishy smell of a walleye just going into a new solution of borax. But there's nothing wrong with getting paid a living wage for something you love, Trump loves what he's doing and look what he gets paid. Just trying to help, I have 37 yrs. in this biz and made a ton of mistakes and will make a ton more before i'm done. jmho good luck