Custom work equals custom cost!

“You’re like what, $5 more, than what they charge?”

When I give quotes to customers for a custom piece of work, it often reverberates the look of shell shock.  Once the shock wears off a bit, it’s quickly followed with the same question of “Really, why so much?”.  I swear, I never was, or currently am, a used car salesman.  I am not here to acquire all of your money in any way possible, but at the same time, I don’t work for free.  Unfortunately, I compete with companies that mass produce similar items (though not the exact look and quality you are wanting from me) for a much lower price which seems to be the base line price people have in their heads when they come to me to build a project for them.   “If Walmart sells this for $75 then he will likely sell it for $80 or somewhere in that range”.   Wrong, I’m not Target, but yet this seems to be the mindset so many have when it comes to my pricing!  So, why does my custom work cost so much?

Well to answer that question, let’s first break it down a bit.  Custom.  A strong, solid word that everyone recognizes as such.  It derives from the Latin word consuetudo, which translates to “costs a bunch of money!”  No, that’s not what it means but it might as well, right?  Has a great sound to it though, doesn’t it?  When you describe anything of yours as being “custom” your audience almost immediately ooh’s and ahh’s over this custom item and how “unique” it really is.  It’s that uniqueness that is going to cost you more money than usual!

If you read my last blog (if you didn’t, I encourage you to do so as this is a follow up to it and reading is exercise for your mind), you might recall my discussion of being a one man shop.  I am not a manufacturer of a select line of products.  I do have products that I sell that are all the same and guess what, those are going to be much cheaper in comparison than a one of a kind project.  So why is that?  Well, it boils down to Manufacturing 101 – time efficiency.  Let’s say I am going to build a box, nothing fancy, just a box with 4 sides, a lid, and a bottom.  Now, bare with me here!  Let’s just focus on the sides of our box and obtaining the final overall dimensions.  The thickness of the material for the 4 sides will be the same.  The 4 sides are all going to be the same width (otherwise you may have a wonky box on your hands).  The length will be the same for 2 sides and the same for the other 2 sides, or even the exact same (though for this example let’s make 2 sides the same and the other 2 the same).  So let’s break down the dimensioning process a little more.  There are a ton of ways one could do this but here would be my “preferred” way of doing it.  Note, there are a couple of steps that will be glazed over to get us to my point.  Okay, so we have our board that’s going to be used to make our box’s sides.  It’s a long, straight grained, beautiful board that will make a lovely box if I do say so myself.  First thing I’m going to do is get it to the width for my box sides.  I am going to run that board through the table saw and get it ripped to width.  Guess what, that single board is now the uniform width for all of our box sides.  Next I want to obtain the thickness that I need for my box sides.  I run that single board through my thickness planer until the board is at our desired thickness.  All that’s left is cutting the board on the miter saw into 4 smaller boards that will comprise our sides.  And since 2 sides are the same and the other 2 are the same, I only need to adjust a stop block twice to get my needed lengths.  Now, had I taken that initial board and chose to first cut it into the 4 sides before doing any of the other dimensioning (thickness and width) it would have resulted in 4 times the work since I would have to run 4 boards through the table saw and then 4 boards through the thickness planer instead of the single board.  This is a perfect example of where efficiency saves time, which saves money. 

So what does this have to do with custom work you may be asking?  A custom piece typically means a single piece is being made.  Let’s use our box example from above.  Sure, it doesn’t seem like what I mentioned above is that much work, but like I said, I glazed over some steps to “quickly” prove my point of efficiency.  In my example I had to set up 3 machines to obtain the box sides; a table saw, thickness planer, and a miter saw (or some means of cross cutting the boards to length).  I did all of that for one box, but what happens if I want to make 20 of the same boxes.  Well, I can just repeat the process 19 more times without having set up or adjust a single machine.  That’s huge when it comes to production.  This is why Walmart or Ikea can sell a bookshelf for a fraction of what I will make a bookshelf for (disregarding the difference in material which I think I covered well in the last blog.  Seriously you need to read it if you haven’t already!).  They make their bookshelves in a factory, with multiples of machines dedicated to doing a dedicated task again and again.  They never, or rarely, have to set up a machine or make changes.  They are set up for production runs.  Repetition, repetition, repetition!  They can pump out parts in no time because they don’t ever have to worry about setting up a machine for a different task.  This saves time and, everyone say it with me, TIME IS MONEY!  If I am making an individual piece, I am setting up my machines for a single run before having to change them back for something different. 

Now so far we have only covered the manufacturing of your custom piece, but what usually gets forgotten is the design. Unless you come to me with exact blue prints of what you want made, I typically have to first come up with a design. When I do a design, the first and foremost requirement is that it meets what you want. If it doesn’t do this, I have failed you, so a fair amount of time is spent up front to ensure a happy customer. So I first focus on meeting your requirements. Next, I start trying to break down how I am actually going to build this project and here is where I start trying to design it in such a way that I can construct it as efficiently as possible (think 2 paragraphs ago where I milled 1 board instead of 4). I want to try and do tasks in a manner that I can repeat multiple pieces through a single machine before having to change the set up for a different task. A little planning up front can go a long way in efficiently building it in the end. This varies from my mass production competitors. They are selling millions of the same product. They don’t have to come up with a unique design each time, or plan how they are going to construct their product. But then again, what they do isn’t custom. So try not to be so surprised when my price comes in “custom” from the mental basis you gave yourself before asking me for a quote.