I have a customer who wants a bid on custom kitchen cabinets. He sent me a list of cabinets from a “Big Box Store”. Wants me to give him a “ball park estimate”. I informed him there is no way I can compete with thier price. I’m skeptical of his intentions. I’d like to give him a price,but, not invest too much time. Any suggestions? My instincts are telling me to run away!
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Trust your gut... I'd be vague by telling him that finishes, hardware etc can drastically effect the cost so between 10 and 13 grand (or whatever you can come up with quickly) and see what he says. I just wouldn't invest hours of design and number crunching until you know he's not pulling your chain.
PaulB
http://www.makeabettertomorrow.com
http://www.finecontracting.com
Not a problem but due to the "paper work" involved and working out there is a $300 fee for this. Only refundable towards an order for the cabinets.
Price the cabinets at $350 per linear foot. Plus or minus what you feel.
$350/linear foot....that's either base OR wall....not both, correct?
J. D. Reynolds
Home Improvements
Yep! Each, but its very rough. Curved stuff can be tough and could be much more.
Edited 1/23/2009 10:22 pm ET by USAnigel
Just dbl-checking myself.
Don't do a whole lotta custom cabs....and usually when I do, I don't feel I made enough money on the project.
Recently gave a woman a "ballpark" for a somewhat detailed project. Told her to figure between $600 and $800 a linear foot for paint grade.(Floor to ceiling) She almost choked, but I explained that it would all depend on the intricacy she decided upon, and that's why it was only a ballpark.
J. D. Reynolds
Home Improvements
They just don't get "Your cabinet will be a perfect prototype, and that's expensive"
But order 200 plus of the same thing and I can drop the price per unit! After you paid for the prototype!
I can walk into a Lowe's or a Depot, kitchen plan sketched out and in hand, and sit down with one of their desk jockeys while we configure the job and price it.
My takeaway is a fully priced quote and a set of drawings that include plan views, elevation views, both dimensioned, plus prints of 3D renderings.
The software they use (almost always 2020), allows them to quickly do my kitchen plan and quote in every single product line they carry.
The bozo that is asking you to quote is hoping you beat the price quotes he has, and that is a losing proposition for you.
That is what I see on the surface here.
But, maybe I am wrong.
The "bozo" may not in fact be one, but a bright, well-informed individual, who knows what benefits custom cabinetry might bring to the table.
Ask him or her, specifically, what is expected in custom cabs that cannot be had with the stock stuff that has been quoted. If the answer gets muddy, excuse yourself politely, and walk away.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
tell him the new Yankee stadium is costing 1.6 Billion dollars.
and absent any major unforeseen problems you will not exceed that figure...
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"After the laws of Physics, everything else is opinion"
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
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If Pasta and Antipasta meet is it the end of the Universe???
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according to statistical analysis, "for some time now, bears apparently have been going to the bathroom in the woods."
Your reference to bears:
That is not the case with zoo bears, coming from an exceptionally reliable source.
I build custom furniture, primarily chairs. Early in the conversation with a potential client, I tell them, ' If you can find something you like, and will be happy with, in a store, then you should buy it because I can't compete. However, if what you want isn't otherwise available, then I can build it for you. But remember, custom always costs more'.
I find this statement eliminates most tire kickers, but it also opens an opportunity to explain and sell custom and has turned some tire kickers into clients.
Paul
"If you can find something you like, and will be happy with, in a store, then you should buy it because I can't compete. However, if what you want isn't otherwise available, then I can build it for you. But remember, custom always costs more'." That's almost verbatim to what I tell my prospective customers, but I take it a bit further. Two of my first questions are "Have you done any shopping?", and "Why didn't you buy?".If they haven't already shopped around, I tell them to try that first, then call me if they come up empty. I also usually give them 2-3 minutes on mass production v.s. one-of-a-kind costs.I get return calls more often than you might think, and have even gotten calls from their friends. The original "customer" bought from a store, but the friend had a unique situation.
Here is a quick pic of a townhome cab scope, which includes a tight U-shaped kitchen for which the R leg is a peninsula, a run of walls over the laundry, some stuff that flanks a fireplace, and four bath vanities.
Playing around with the footages and figuring that a bath vanity that has no uppers counts for half, when doing plf rough pricing, the job has more or less about 55 lineal feet.
Using my unbundled approach and buying flatpacked carcases from one source, fronts, trim and d'boxes from Walzcraft or Conestoga, and hardware from my jobbers, my hard costs for this come to about $193 per foot.
To find out what I was up against, I took a check price from a KraftMaid dealer and another from a lumberyard that carries the Homecrest line, similar to what I specified in KraftMaid. Both bids were in the $200 range, and close to each other.
I figure that if I were basic in this, meaning I was a real cab shop making stuff from raw materials, and not doing my 100 percent outsourcing like I do, my hard costs, including labor and burden, might be down at maybe $160 or even $145, but still, I could not make a reasonable profit by selling this at $200.
You really cannot compete with scale. Sure, you can get even higher priced stuff from Lowe's and Depot, and lumberyards, than the competitively priced stuff I had quoted here, but most buyers look at the low numbers first, and drift back there when deciding how much to spend.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
i'm trying to get a clearer picture here as i am just finishinf a set of cabinets.
when you talk price per foot,is that 10' of base cabs and 10' of wall count as a 10ft run at 200. or is that 20' of cabs at 200 a foot.
i just built 13'base,16' wall,all 3/4 oak ply carcass,red oak face frame and red oak door frames with oak a/b ply panel. i'm at 2000k with 29 foot of cabinets. nothing real special,glass in the top ft of the uppers and a floor to clg narrow pantry.so i'm in the 75 a running foot with no labor figured in.maybe i need to start buying my cabinets.............
YOU ONLY NEED TWO TOOLS IN LIFE - WD-40 AND DUCT TAPE. IF IT DOESN'TMOVE AND SHOULD, USE THE WD-40. IF IT SHOULDN'T MOVE AND DOES, USE THEDUCT TAPE.
The way I approached the "per foot" number here was to figure a foot as either a basecab with wallcab above or either a tall cabinet like a pantry.
With that method, a foot run of basecabs with no wallcab over only counts for half.
I would never ever use that per foot way of discussing cabinet costs or pricing with a client. To me, it is as ridiculous as talking about how much my F150 4x4 cost per kilogram.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
Probably something that should be considered that is often not pointed out in the comparison between a big box quote and a custom cab, is that the biog box does not deliver nor install for free, while the custom quote often includes both.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
AND...A custom quote will include any fillers or panels or field modificationor blocking or moving wires or pipes or drop clothes or cleanup or dealing with out of square walls and/or cabs or moving can-lights ...................
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"After the laws of Physics, everything else is opinion" -Neil deGrasse Tyson
.
.
.
If Pasta and Antipasta meet is it the end of the Universe???
.
.
.
according to statistical analysis, "for some time now, bears apparently have been going to the bathroom in the woods."
Depending on where you are located, I'd make it $425-475 LF.
Things vary a lot around the country, and sometimes I hear incredibly low prices. Often I find that I'm bidding against people who commute an hour or more from towns with significantly lower COLs, and that exerts downward pressure on my prices.What kind of market do you live in, what do you try to make per hour, and what kind of competitive undercutting do you face?AitchKay
Westchester County, NY . . . . . 20+ miles north of NYC. $$$$$$$ problems just starting to surface with my client base. Have been making $60 per hour, do mostly T&M work. Called a Handyman ad, locally, he wanted $80per hour. (Just checking on myself for competitive priceing.) I'm there . Others in the $70 range depending on the task at hand. My client base trusts me and obviously feels comfortable with the $60,00, they never question it and don't price shop me. Have the keys or combination to get into most of their homes.
I work in the St. Louis Mo. area. Pay is in the $25-$30 per hr. range
When you say "Pay", do you mean wages or billing rates? I've seen situations where hourly billing rates run between 2.5 - 3.5 times the hourly wage.In my experience (30+ years in engineering and construction management), few employees understand that it costs an employer much more to have them on the payroll than they actually get paid.The costs of benefits, insurance, taxes, facilities, tools and equipment, maintenance, administration, support, etc generally follow employee head count and have to be recovered from somewhere. That "somewhere" is the revenue generated by the folks at the pointy end of the spear who actually make the products - or provide the services that the customers are paying for.For example, someone has to prepare the paycheck that pays a worker his/her $20/hr wage. Since doing payroll isn't directly providing the product or service the customer is buying, the customer gets charged more than the actual wage so the employer can pay whoever is doing payroll.About once a year, I'll get into a discussion with some young, full of himself, high tech, type who doesn't understand why a "service workers" billing rate matches (or exceeds) the hourly wage rate which gives him a six figure income. I usually suggest that they talk to their management and find out what their employer charges as the internal and external billing rates for their time. If they can find out those numbers, they're usually pretty meek afterwards. - lol
I have a relative who is an independent distributor for some several cabinet companies. He says anytime a customer brings him a quote from one of the box stores he's pretty much guaranteed to get the job. He can usually beat their high markup by a couple thousand, and that's apples to apples (same product, delivery, and install). Maybe you should bid this job for custom with a nice profit margin and also bid it with working a deal with a independent dealer in your area. Either way the customer gets what he wants and you make some change.
Ball parks are okay at this point, specifics are not. Be honest with yourself about your interest in cabinet making. Just for reference, my first kitchen (last year) was almost 40 l.f. of quarter sawn white oak and prefinished maple ply with plenty of 'well hung' drawers all hand built in a small home shop for $11k. I didn't earn my normal working wage on it, but the second time I think I would come very close (if I overlaid rather than inset everything). The customer seemed very pleased with the price, very willing to pay, yet for individual cabinets at same l.f. price the same customer and others balked immediately. Interesting. Anyway listen to your gut. Be generous to yourself at this point: later you may not be able to.
Brian
I am doing a job where the customer chose cabs from Lowes. So I priced the same units from HD, Lowes, and both of my normal suppliers.
They were about 6% less than Lowes, and HD was outrageously higher than Lowes. And they deliver to the island here.
My point being that assuming that the big box is low cost is not accurate.
I could have built the same units for about the same money sans paint.
Welcome to the
Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
where ...
Excellence is its own reward!
Unless you own a cabinet factory, or are willing to work for very low pay, you were right to tell him that you can't compete.
Others in this thread use linear-foot estimates that start at $275. Depending on their location, they're either right, or low.
I once had a potential customer that was convinced that I could build and install a house full of cabinetry, with ALL work to be done on-site. He was clear that this should not affect the quality of the finished job, since (in his opinion) portable tools were just as good as stationary ones. And he was also just as convinced that it could be done for less money than a cabinet shop would charge.
I walked away.
Using a portable table saw, a portable router table, and setting it all up in a gravel driveway -- I was supposed to compete with the quality produced by a factory that has a million dollars worth of precision equipment.
One other thing that might not have been covered.
When you order from big box stores you will most likely have problems.
They probably will have problems with you as well.
But, and this is big for some people, the way you handle it and the way a big box store handles it with their installers is VERY different.
Some people don't care because they are like the big box store in a way.
But most people don't want to have to fight about problems.
My neighbor just had a simple fence put up. I recommended a friend who does everything himself and is a nice guy.
She went with a guy who contracts the fence and has low paid workers come in.
They made a mistake and she had to fight for the fix a couple of times.
Most people hate that. Above all, that is what the customer is buying. Your integrity.