Hey, I'm John. Welcome in.
I spent 15+ years in the sign industry, installs, sales, production, pretty much every hat a shop hands you. My brother still runs the 40-year shop where I learned most of it. These days I build software for shops (PrinterFlo), and I kept noticing the same thing: there are great places online to talk about printers, vinyl, and router bits, but almost nowhere to talk about the BUSINESS of running a shop.
What to actually charge. How to stop being your customers' bank. Whether that software is worth it. What to pay an installer. How you got your first fleet account. That's this place.
What Shop Talk is:
- Shop owners and shop people talking honestly about the business side
- Real numbers, real stories, real screwups — the stuff that actually helps
- Free, readable by anyone, no account needed to lurk
What it isn't:
- An ad board. No drive-by promotion, and that rule applies to me and PrinterFlo too. This forum isn't a sales funnel; it's the community I wished existed when I was in the field.
Two things before you post:
1. Your first post gets a quick look from a moderator before it goes live (that's how we keep the spam bots out). After that, you post freely.
2. Go say hi in the pinned "Introduce yourself" thread, who you are, what your shop does, how long you've been at it.
Glad you're here. Now, what do you charge for a 4×8 coroplast? Because apparently nobody agrees. 😄
John