threadartist

I need to price out my first "paying" customer for a vinyl project and was hoping an experienced person wouldn't mind looking at my calculation and letting me know whether it looks correct.

My cost for 1 yard of vinyl was $6.25, which is 540 square inches (15" width x 36"). My customer's design is one color and 8.0 inches wide by 4.0 inches tall which multiplied equals 32.0 square inches.

So, now if I've figured out this correctly, my raw cost is .0116 per square inch (6.25/540), which would make my cost for the design $3.71 (34.5 x .0116).

Does that look correct?

 

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Chani

Don't forget to add a little for the cost of waste, not IN your design, but you most likely can't butt one design directly against the other. Most people add an inch to the width and height of your design for waste. Plus, you need to figure out how much vinyl is wasted on the edges of your vinyl. Can you fit your designs so that there's only an inch or so on each side of your roll for your pinch rollers? You need to pay for that vinyl, too, even tho it will never ever be used.

I'm not sure where you got your actual 34.5 measurement from, unless you're including the space between your designs, for your actual design itself with no waste is 32 x .0116 = $0.3712

You can fit APPROXIMATELY 12 designs on one yard of your 15" material (3 wide and four tall), so it costs you in actual design vinyl (again, no waste) $4.4544

So the amount of vinyl you're not using is $1.7956

Devide that by 12 ($0.1496) and add that to each design. $0.52(08)

I know that's getting really nitty gritty, but you do need to count all of your costs.

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threadartist

Thanks so much Chani. The 34.5 was a typo. My brain was in the midst of trying to calculate and type too.

I hadn't even considered capuring waste so thank you very much for teaching me how to do that.

It's time for this machine to do a little work because I haven't been trying to sell because of not determining cost of materials and a little profit. But now many of my customers know I have it and they are pushing me into using it. I know that is weird because it should have been the other way around.

 

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Chani

I went in to a little more detail than a lot of other people do, but most people don't count the vinyl that they CAN'T use, like on the edges of your roll. What others have told me when I was first learning was to add about an inch to each dimension, like I said. But the method I just told you accounts for ALL of your vinyl.

If, for some reason, you can use some of your scrap vinyl for something else, yes, you'll be paid twice for it, but at least you KNOW you'll be paid for it at least once.

Good luck!

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