How much have you or would you want to spend on Signage?

[Hiles Stickers and Signs]

Hi everyone! I'm in the business of making all kinds of signs and vinyl decals. One of the biggest on going problems in my industry is pricing, there is no one way to do it. My understanding is that most sign makers use "market pricing" as their model. I like to use market pricing as a guideline, but I also like to consider what a sign is worth to the customer. This leads me to the point of this post, I like to put feelers out there to see what the public thinks certain products might be worth and what they have paid to check against my pricing system. I also believe that this may be a valuable tool for other business owners who have not yet purchased custom signs to see what to expect to pay for their signage.

How much would you or have you paid for:

A 4' x 8' plexiglass sign for a back-lit sign

A 2' x 8' plexiglass sign for a back-lit sign

A 4' x 8' banner (solid colors not digital)


or any similar signage you may have purchased!

Thanks in advance!

[Steve B]

I've gotten all my signs from Wholesale Bannerz dot Com. You can look up their prices and see what I've paid (I can't remember). I've probably gotten 6 or 8 signs from them in the last 6 years. I don't have a need for anything more substantial than a banner.

[MyITGuy]

Paid $1,300 for a "non-illuminated composite core PVC" sign which included design (Copying my logo), material and installation. It was a buy one get one free special too since they made the first one too big so instead of throwing it in the trash I talked them into giving it to me just in case =P

[greenoak]

i paid 1500 for a metal billboard and the asking price was about that for printing our 2 other billboards, but it ended up being part of the yearly contracts...so they were free in a way..

[cbscreative]

Though I'm a former sign guy, I haven't kept up with what the pricing is any more. Back in my day, the biggest threat to sign shops was the franchised strip mall places. Now you have the Internet.

Your questions are very open ended, so the only real answer is whatever your customers are willing to pay.

With that said, the question you should be asking is who are you selling signs to? Is your business primarily local, mostly online, or a mix of both? I took a quick look at your site but I'm not seeing how you differentiate yourself from the other sign shops. For your walk in customers, you would have the opportunity to do that, but for the online buyer, it's a self serve market so only the lowest price can usually win in that setting.

Since I've not shopped for signs online, I would have to do some investigating to see what your competition is doing so I could recommend an effective strategy. For an offline strategy, the franchise model leaves you plenty of ways to stand out. Those shops rely on the customer knowing exactly what they need. In my experience, very few people know the distance rule for calculating how large of letters they need to be read from a certain distance. Just being a real professional will attract the buyers who realize that places with minimum wage workers behind the counter are like the difference between McDonald's and Olive Garden. Which type of customer are you wanting to serve?