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You asked this question December 3rd, 2013
How's it been since then?
(I was looking in your post history to check if you were a suspicious client).
Personally, I never do any mark-up on anything................. it seems slightly dishonest to me. I'd certainly include my time in getting/sourcing materials though..If you want more money for the job, just increase the labour cost but no need to kid a customer that his £20 plant was really a tenner. I always feel its very unjust when for example, you have some work done in a garage............ they charge you £50 for some brake pads............. look them up and you can buy the same ones for £25 from a shop/online and the garage is probably getting them for less than that.
Its called business. Put the markup where you want. On labour or material its still a markup. I run 20% on all materials. It's not dishonest in my view. The profit i make on that contributes to all sorts of cost overheads related to both the sourcing of material, quoting, and other overheads.
Locate a wholesaler, where you will buy plants at discount and charge the customer at local retail price. If you buy from a local Garden Centre, you should be able to negotiate at least 10%, that is yours, plus collection time.
Depends on many factors -- i would imagine 20% mark up would be a minimum -- but 50-100% would be preffered. This does depend on you sourcing plants from good wholesalers at a good discounted price and adding a mark up that is either slightly under or equiv to a garden centre retail price. Obviousky at this point you are going to replcae any for free that fail - so you have to have made enough mark up for that situation as well as time spend finding wholesalers and building a relationship with them -- all of this takes time, which you need to be paid for
Absolutely right.
Commercially we do something slightly different in that we typically charge an all-in price per shrub to cover costs, planting, watering AND importantly profit for large(r) jobs. Mulch mats, geotextile, supports/canes, guards & mulching etc are then add-on costs.
As stated before - you're paying for 'our' experience not the item price or time taken to do it ......
I have bought plants in quantity before eg. Photinia for a hedge planting job which came delivered on pallets to my yard, involving some hanging around waiting for the lorry, then time unloading etc. The client wanted a decent height to the hedge instantly which would normally have been prohibitively expensive with large mature specimens from a garden centre or quality nursery. These as expected from the price I paid were second rate nursery stock which had been left too close together, mis shapen, weeds in some of the pots etc, so there was some work involved cleaning them up and secateur work to remove branches snapped in transit. So some work involved in making them presentable, and had to plant some at an angle to make them appear to be upright or 2 into one planting hole in some cases. Client was delighted and now the hedge looks fantastic with the new growth on it. And I made a healthy mark up on the plants which was well justified as it wasn't just a case of digging holes and bunging them in
All of my clients are free to get their own materials of any sort, however if they want me to supply it’s a service they are going to have to pay for simple as that, I’m running a business and my time and effort is money regardless of how much I pay for the materials or where I get them from.
I'm somewhere in between the above comments. I don't do a mark up as such, but when I get a trade or bulk buy discount, that's mine. My know and understand that, as most of the time they are still getting it cheaper than if they got it themselves.
As said above, from a good trade nursery, the discount can be quite significant.
nightmare yes my small local garage seem very reasonable on labour time spent on fixing my vehicles so don't mind if they make a bit of the mark up on the parts, within 10 mins walking distance of my yard, much more convenient for me than taking it to main dealerships 20 miles away with their insane robber baron prices
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