\u201cPick a window you\u2019re leaving.\u201d
\n\u201cDo you like hospital food?\u201d
\n\u201cAre you calling my pint a puff?\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately we\u2019ve not all had a proper kicking\u00a0in our time, but this year a damn good\u00a0thrashing is available to all, as day to day\u00a0living in the UK becomes a rather large boot in the\u00a0financials.<\/p>\n
Every time we get a domestic fuel bill we look\u00a0again at the address expecting to see:\u00a0FAO The Head Stoker,\u00a0Engine Room,\u00a0The Titanic.<\/p>\n
Our car tax and insurance is\u00a0due, and for that price we gaze\u00a0longingly out of the window expecting to see a\u00a0Bugatti Veyron \u2014 instead our driveway is sporting\u00a0the new Hyundai Pimple, resplendent in dog doo\u00a0brown. It has all the speed of a Sunday morning\u00a0fart, but still costs eighty notes to fill the tank.\u00a0And it goes without saying that your grocery bill\u00a0will be as high as Mrs Walton\u2019s on the week that\u00a0both Grandpa and Jim Bob came down with\u00a0worms.<\/p>\n
Your eldest daughter is taking up the\u00a0trombone, your handsome son in spite\u00a0of not knowing where Manchester is,\u00a0requires another football strip, and\u00a0it\u2019s the law that you must have a\u00a0foreign holiday. So you give two\u00a0grand to the owner of El Dungos\u00a0Hotel for two weeks on a building\u00a0site, and the pleasure of watching\u00a0Mario gawping at your wife\u2019s fun\u00a0bags\u2026\u2026.take your Barclaycard bill\u00a0and a bottle of Grappa into the\u00a0bathroom\u2026..and cry.<\/p>\n
Everything else is going up like a fifty quid\u00a0firework, so it\u2019s time for us to sit down and look at\u00a0our break evens and selling prices.\u00a0In production industries like ours, perhaps one\u00a0of the hardest factors in the equation is\u00a0calculating the time taken and so cost to do a job.<\/p>\n
Prior to the fragmentation of the garment industry,\u00a0large factories so understood the importance off\u00a0this that they would often have at least one full\u00a0time accountant, constantly sniffing his way up\u00a0and down the production line.\u00a0Usually in a long black leather trench coat, with\u00a0small round spectacles, a stick and a slight limp,<\/p>\n
Herr Timeundmotion would analyse every minute,\u00a0every stitch, every cost and every mistake. In doing\u00a0so he exactly calculated the selling price required,\u00a0and kept Lord Textiles in tweeds and Bentleys.\u00a0But for most of us, busy making the tea with\u00a0your left hand, printing with your right, phones on\u00a0each ear and a sweeping brush lashed to your\u00a0todger, this level of financial analysis is just not\u00a0affordable. So what do we do?<\/p>\n
Now this whole subject is not going to be easy\u00a0for me. As my old maths teacher Dai Phillips said:\u00a0\u201cStephenson, you are to basic arithmetic what\u00a0Bernard Manning was to the triple jump.\u201d Sports\u00a0fans among you may remember that Dai also\u00a0represented Wales in the 1968 Mexico Olympics,\u00a0in the board rubber throwing events \u2014 this all\u00a0brings back bad memories. For those of you who\u00a0do find maths enjoyable though and can do this\u00a0stuff, by all means clear off and spot a train.<\/p>\n
I sat down with my accountant, and posed him\u00a0the problem \u2014 we need to explain in pub speak\u00a0how to work out a selling price. An hour and a\u00a0half passed, and what sounded like \u201cVariable,\u00a0fixed, profit fixed, break even, fixed overhead\u00a0cost divided by labour cost\u2026 bongo bongo\u00a0bongo\u2026\u201d but I pulled him back to this:\u00a0\u201cYou need thirty grand a year to\u00a0avoid scurvy and rickets (before you pay\u00a0any tax or national insurance).\u00a0That\u2019s 577 quid a week.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve got \u00a34,333 a month in fixed costs,\u00a0like rent, rates and insurance.\u00a0That\u2019s a grand a week. You\u2019ve had an\u00a0educated stab at how\u00a0much your variable cost per T-shirt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the credit crunch tightens its grip on printers everywhere, Paul Stephenson explains in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pub speak\u00e2\u20ac\u009d how to get your selling prices right<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-articles-misc"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n