Question
I own a high end custom shop that has done frameless plywood boxes throughout the years and I have just bought a point to point to go with my panel saw. Now that I have doweling capabilities I want to get into commercial work, with particle board and laminate cabinets, but I don’t know how to price them. Does anyone have suggestions?
Forum Responses
(Business Forum)
From contributor A:
I am an estimator for a fairly large cabinet company, and I will tell you how I do it. I have worked at smaller shops and most of those guys have used linear ft. pricing, but the company that I am with now prices jobs by the box. We have developed prices for each different size and configuration of cabinet that we offer. After the unit take offs are done, then we assign the corresponding price to the cabinet and total them up. Of course, then we add shipping, our profit margin, and any other additional costs that we may have. The prices that we use are basically derived from the following two items: total cost of material and total cost of labor necessary to achieve a finished product. We calculated the total cost of material used in each individual box. We have also done time studies on each individual aspect of machining, assembling, and finishing these cabinets or cabinet parts. I think that the time studies are most effective when you measure the amount of time it takes to do a specific task for a large job and then calculating an average for each cabinet. These rates are most accurate when this is an ongoing process, because obviously the more jobs that you do, the faster and more efficient your operation will become. This in turn reduces your labor time per cabinet and provides you with a more competitive price. I hope some of these ideas are helpful.
