[Fred Atwood]

This is my first post here on FabNet and first of all, THANKS to all of you for sharing your experience with those of us that have less and would like to soak in as much as possible.

My question is how many edge options do you offer on the solid surface tops you fabricate? Which ones to you consider upgraded edges ( as in charge extra for) and why?

[Tom M]

RWIM, (sorry, I’m a lazy cuss)

I often wonder if I might be wrong on this, but I will only charge extra for an edge that requires different material (sandwich, double quarter), different quanity (thicker) or is exceedingly difficult (colonial and other harsh angles requiring complicated sanding).

I also build a little extra in, so that on site possibilities (that cool ear-notch past the corner) won’t cost extra. This is a Cadillac material. There shouldn’t be too many extras.

I give my customer so many different prices in so many different ways, that I owe them some courtesy.

Welcome to the other side of the forum.

Don’t feed the bears.

Tom

[Andy Graves]

Hello RealWorldIdeaMan,

We have three categories:

1. FREE – Simple edge like 1/8″ Radius top and bottom, 3/8″ radius
2. Upcharge 1 – Chamfer or Bevel, small ogee, classic
3. Upcharge 2 – Bullnose, tall 2″ edge with radius top and bottom, large o’gee
4. Upcharge 3 – custom edges, very intricate with lots of hand sanding

Hope this helps. Welcome to the FabNet.

[Karl Crooks]

Hey RM, (I am even lazier than Tom)

We do pretty close to what Andy does.

Free- Anything that can be polished with a sander, eased edge, any radius edge, chamfer, bullnose.

Upcharge- anything that requires hand sanding of intricate detail.

Major upcharge- intricate details needing high gloss hand polishing.

upcharges run from 4.00 to 12.00 per foot.

Hope that helps..

[Shane Barker]

We do pretty much same as Al. The way I figure it is that if it takes my guys much longer I will charge more otherwise like Tom I try to keep it simple. I will even offer a free sandwich inlay if I have the material in stock. People get bombarded with up charges at some places and it makes it easy to sell against places like that just keeping things simple. It is amazing how much trust you can earn with people by not charging them for every little thing, like radius corners, or edge styles that don’t even take more time or money to fabricate. I save the add on’s for the biggies. I went out to a job yesterday to confirm all the details and ended up selling over $900 in extras, but they were good ones, 2” edge, upgraded finish, heat rods, and a routed drainboard. Easy money but the customer gets value for their dollar.

Lots of ways to do it and you need to see what works best for you, good luck and welcome to the board.

Shane

[John Christensen]

I am in line with Andy and Al. Extra cuts and glue ups take more time and material. Ogee and full rounded bullnose take more sanding. Pricing is similar. I use a base pricde for my tops and everything else is an add on. My philosophy is this. Don’t use the simple tops, that require nothing extra, to subsidize the fancy tops. Charge for what you do and do what you charge for. The people who want the fancy tops have the budget to pay for the extras.

I sell only wholsale through several local dealers (no big box). They understand my pricing and the price they give to the customer is a total price.

I have a standard base price for tops and everything else is an add on. One thing that this allows me to do is attach a time value to each aspect of the job and come up with a total time allowance for fabrication and installation. I include this in the shop order so the fabricator knows what he is shooting for and whether he is being efficient or milking the dog. I can also use this as an objective benchmark for figuring pay scale. In the past eight years this system of figuring a time allowance has been pretty true to actual. Fabricators in training come in at about 110 to 130% over. Fully trained fabricators are usually at or slightly below allowable time. Truly accoplished fabricators can achieve 66 to 75% efficiency regularly.

Johnny C

[Dan S]

Johnny C, would you share your data on time allowances for fabricating? I’d like to see how the compare to what I have gathered.

Thanks, AL.

[KCWOOD]

Andy wrote

Hello RealWorldIdeaMan,

We have three categories:

1. FREE – Simple edge like 1/8″ Radius top and bottom, 3/8″ radius
2. Upcharge 1 – Chamfer or Bevel, small ogee, classic
3. Upcharge 2 – Bullnose, tall 2″ edge with radius top and bottom, large o’gee
4. Upcharge 3 – custom edges, very intricate with lots of hand sanding

Hope this helps. Welcome to the FabNet.

Andy, I don’t see any difference in the time involved for your free or your upcharge one. The one thing I got an eyeopener on, I did a top and bottom 1/4″roundover on tempest CoffeeBean. Because of the translucent chunks, I had to bring the bottom radius to 1200 grit or I could see a milky line around the bottom. Took us a lot of time to get it right. Just one of those quirks I ran into…..

[Matt Kraft]

Shane wrote

We do pretty much same as Al. The way I figure it is that if it takes my guys much longer I will charge more otherwise like Tom I try to keep it simple. I will even offer a free sandwich inlay if I have the material in stock. People get bombarded with up charges at some places and it makes it easy to sell against places like that just keeping things simple. It is amazing how much trust you can earn with people by not charging them for every little thing, like radius corners, or edge styles that don’t even take more time or money to fabricate. I save the add on’s for the biggies. I went out to a job yesterday to confirm all the details and ended up selling over $900 in extras, but they were good ones, 2” edge, upgraded finish, heat rods, and a routed drainboard. Easy money but the customer gets value for their dollar.

Lots of ways to do it and you need to see what works best for you, good luck and welcome to the board.

Shane

Shane, dumb question. When you sell a 2″ edge, do you drop down over the face frame? Never done it here.

[Shane Barker]

Matt,

Sometimes, it just depends on the job. In our showroom we have a 2” bullnose that does not lip over because the cabinets would not allow it. We are working on two jobs at the moment that need to lip over, one 1 ¼” and one 1” so it will cover where the tile was, both of these customers went to the 2” edge just so they did not need to trim or repair the marks on the cabinets.

Shane

[Shane Barker]

I forgot, the job that needs to lip over an 1¼” we are doing a 2¼” edge.

Shane

[Andy Graves]

KC,

We don’t base everything on whether it takes more time or not. We feel that everything has a perceived value and the customer should pay for the extras.

Example a drainboard. It takes about 20 extra minutes to do a drainboard (real time). But the perceived value is high. We charge for almost 2.5 hours of time. The reason is because the machine and initial setup is being paid for.

[Fred Atwood]

Thanks for all of the info. It looks like we have things set as most of you do. We include the simple edge options that are quick to fabricate and then up charge for the more time consuming edges. My thought is that it not only builds in perceived value for the customer, it also makes it easier for me to price. We also sell cabinets and pricing can take half a day on some more complex homes, so it is nice to be able to “crank out:” a price for those items that are pretty simple.

Also, thanks for all of the welcome notes. I am sure there will be more questions to follow and someday, maybe I will have enough knowledge (or there will be a REAL simple question) and I can post an aswer or two also.

[Author]

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