Can an agent price decoration? Only if you can explain how you price it

Every shop says their pricing is too complicated to automate. Almost every shop is wrong, but for an interesting reason: it is not complicated, it is undocumented.

Tell a shop owner that quoting can be automated and the answer is almost always the same. Our pricing is too complicated. There are too many variables. Every job is different.

Then ask them to quote a job in front of you and they do it in ninety seconds, from memory, consistently. That is not complicated. That is a rule set that has never been written down.

The inputs a decoration price actually depends on

• The method: embroidery, screen print, DTF or transfer, vinyl, sublimation, and so on
• Quantity, with the breaks where your price genuinely changes
• Colours for print, stitch count for embroidery, both of which drive the real cost
• Number and size of placements, because the second placement is not free
• The garment, because the same decoration behaves differently and prices differently on different fabrics
• Setup: screens, digitising, test prints, which is the line that kills small orders
• Rush, which is a real cost and not a favour

That is seven inputs. Not two hundred. Seven inputs with rules attached is something software can apply perfectly and consistently, which is more than most shops manage by hand on a busy Friday.

What the agent does with them

• Applies your rule set to produce a price, the same way every time
• Shows the arithmetic, so anybody can check it rather than trusting it
• Flags anything outside the bounds you set instead of guessing
• Refuses to quote a combination you cannot actually produce
• Records the quote, so the reorder in six months starts from what you actually charged

Writing the rules down, which is the actual work

This takes an afternoon and it is the whole project. Sit down and answer these, in writing:

• What are your quantity breaks, per method?
• What does setup cost, per method, and at what quantity does it stop mattering?
• What is the upcharge for a second placement, and a third?
• What is your minimum order value, per method, and is it calculated or inherited?
• What is the rush premium, and what counts as rush?
• Which combinations do you simply not do?

Most shops discover two things doing this. First, the rules exist and are consistent. Second, one or two of them have not been updated since blanks and freight last moved, which means some jobs have been priced below cost for a while.

What stays with a person

• Setting the rules and the margins. That is the business, not the arithmetic.
• Anything genuinely new: a method, a garment or a client type you have not priced before.
• Negotiation. A rule produces the price; a person decides whether to hold it.
• The judgement call on whether a job is worth taking at all, which no rule captures.

What it changes

Quoting stops being a bottleneck that waits on one person. That matters more than the speed, because in most shops the person who quotes is also the person who sells, and every hour they spend building quotes is an hour they are not winning the next job. It also makes your pricing consistent, which is worth something on its own: clients notice when the same job costs two different amounts.