Cheap Car Wrap
Selling us short
Time and time again, we get customers coming back to us saying that they have received a quotation which is literally half your price from some company I have never heard of. So why does the client come back to tell us this, do they want to prove a point to explain that our prices are too high? Or are they looking for reassurance from us?
Anyone can start a branding company and learn as they go along. Like with any business you put in the effort you will get the results. But lately it’s getting a bit out of hand. I can guarantee that our price margins are the industry norm, so why are our customer coming back to us to tell us we are too expensive? I am sure this has happened to a few other branding companies out there!
Well let me tell you why: when we quote on a job, no matter what its application may be (a fully-wrapped car, a van or even a simple A board) the materials we have chosen for those applications are the best available on the market and when our clients ask us about our guarantees we simply tell them the truth: this is the material used, this is its spec sheet and this is what you can expect.
When we get clients coming back to us, telling us we are too expensive, we sometimes really feel sorry for those clients, because we are not afraid to ask the question, “well, what was the amount you were quoted?” and when the client spits out a figure that is less what our cost will be for the same job, my next question to them is “well, did they tell you what materials are going to be used?”
I can guarantee you that it isn’t the best. And that’s the trick; educating the client on correct material choice, is something we have learned over the years!
To anyone on the street not involved in branding, white vinyl is white vinyl, red is red, black is black, and pink has many variations. What I’m trying to get at is, for example in the range of digital media there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different products out there, and, to the client, they all look white. But we know the difference; there is cast material for vehicle wraps, flat surface material for truck branding, and entry level material for your one-month campaigns. Now each one of these vinyls has many different specifications that you can also choose from. So the options are really limitless! Same goes with pre-pigmented vinyls.
We had a customers come back to us once after she had sent a job to another company. She wanted our help fixing the abysmal results. We asked her to send the job to us and bring along what material they had left and we would try sort out the problem. WOW! Not only did they have no idea how to apply vinyl, but the entire vehicle had joins, crease marks and bubbles; it looked like a dog’s dinner, BUT to top it off, the vinyl they were using was promotional one-month campaign vinyl as thick as cardboard.
I was horrified, and these people exist out there to sell us all short! We get annoyed when companies quote customers for jobs and don’t use the right materials. You are selling us all short! But at the end of the day, you are selling yourself short most off all, because it will only be a matter of time, before those vinyls fail, and you either have to replace at your cost or the client will never recommend you to another person.
One lesson we can take from this is, educate clients on proper material use and don’t sell yourselves short by trying to make a quick buck overnight by quoting on wrong materials for the job! It will come back to bite you!