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Ray Stafford
Both brands have more than 600 UK stores - about the same number each as Morrisons, and slightly more each than Asda.
If you add in the other discounters like Iceland and Farmfoods, there are way more discount stores than any single supermarket except Tesco, who are probably a few hundred ahead, but only because of the proliferation of little tesco express stores.
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L
lame plumber
My perception on this is to do the following:
work out what all your fixed costs are and write em down, insurance, fuel, van costs be they hp,leasing or interest on a loan, capital repayments, tool purchases/replacements, stock build up for van - so you dont have to look a plonker and always pop off to the merchants ( customers don't worry so much about arts costs but do get peeved at you disappearing over the horizon!) There are so many things people tend to forget, ie cost of ppe each year, van servicing, bits n bobs they ignore etc etc.
Then sit down and look at how many hours a day you actually get to be working, not travelling to and from, but on the job. Take off time for lunch n tea if you take them, and take it off even if you dont!! Then youll start to see you only achieve 4 or 5 hours actually working, especially in my part of the world, low customer base/mile. Then take off week ends, holiday, sickness (allow for it, you will be ill) and you suddenly see the number of days available per year your working and the number of hours available per day. After that pick your salary, add on the fixed costs and divide that by the number of hours you see available to you. If you want £30k a year, I'd be very surprised if your hourly rate required is less than £52-55 pounds per hour!! If your figures are less I'd say you havent been honest with your costs and hours available.
There is out there a working formula on one of the sites for gas forms to help you do this, if you havent worked youer way through this sort of calculation once in a while your heading for a fall one day.
work out what all your fixed costs are and write em down, insurance, fuel, van costs be they hp,leasing or interest on a loan, capital repayments, tool purchases/replacements, stock build up for van - so you dont have to look a plonker and always pop off to the merchants ( customers don't worry so much about arts costs but do get peeved at you disappearing over the horizon!) There are so many things people tend to forget, ie cost of ppe each year, van servicing, bits n bobs they ignore etc etc.
Then sit down and look at how many hours a day you actually get to be working, not travelling to and from, but on the job. Take off time for lunch n tea if you take them, and take it off even if you dont!! Then youll start to see you only achieve 4 or 5 hours actually working, especially in my part of the world, low customer base/mile. Then take off week ends, holiday, sickness (allow for it, you will be ill) and you suddenly see the number of days available per year your working and the number of hours available per day. After that pick your salary, add on the fixed costs and divide that by the number of hours you see available to you. If you want £30k a year, I'd be very surprised if your hourly rate required is less than £52-55 pounds per hour!! If your figures are less I'd say you havent been honest with your costs and hours available.
There is out there a working formula on one of the sites for gas forms to help you do this, if you havent worked youer way through this sort of calculation once in a while your heading for a fall one day.
Their was something in the news few weeks back about how they are now damaging the big boys .
Morrisons and tescos have knocked back prices due to threat of these two
Morrisons and tescos have knocked back prices due to threat of these two
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Ray Stafford
Nevertheless, more than 75% of people shop in a mid market shop, and less than 10% at a discounter. In fact, more people shop in Waitrose than shop in Aldi, and more shop at M&S food than shop in Lidl. So why not aim for the Waitrose and M&S clientele?
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Ermintrude
Value? Did a job today . Gas escape in street during purge and relight house was capped as massive drop but no smell . The national grid gave our number as close. . £45 plus vat to come have a look , try and isolate and re establish. Went crawled under floor for 1 1/4 hours came out capped about 30m of compression fittings . Boiler on, ncs the shoddy install and £108 inc vat. Quoted £450plus to re pipe . About a bundle of 22 and two men for two hours . Customer was happy to pay to have job done properly. And by what is perceived as "good" engineers
Simple answer to that is the cust thinks if it has water coming out of the tap and gets hot then why pay extra. Aldi and lidl plumbers rule roost down here you try charge 1800 for boiler change and you be undercut left right center.
Notorious low paid area
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lame plumber
there's always a mixture of rich and poor, you just need to target those you want to work for, I aim for a smaller market and it seems to work, it also means you pick up work from lower income folks who hear your a good tradesman. ie quick callout today to repair a split 15mm pipe on a recommendation , there less than 15 mins, £100, no complaints and very happy custard, plus picked up her boiler and rayburn for a service next month.
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Ray Stafford
Guardian report on pay by region.
Plymouth and Portsmouth are much the same. The best I could find for 2013 was that average full time salary in Portsmouth beat Plymouth by just £600 per year. Bristol has us both beat.
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lame plumber
well my bit of the SW is bloody awful, so much so that some parts of the town dont pay stamp duty on house sale upto £150k. So I have to fight an uphill battle to reach Pompey levels to start with
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Ray Stafford
Even in Pompey Jon, as you know there is a big difference between landport and Southsea, or buckland and milton. I could literally throw a stone from my house - north and I would hit grotty council flats, south and I might break the window of a £million pound mansion.
L
lame plumber
same here, we just have Damien and a few others to live off, plus all those coming down fm London, but the bulk of folk are Jo average struggling to survive in harsh times.
J
julesverne
If you have a really good van the depreciation on it alone will be a lot more than £3k per year..
£15k a year is pretty standard for a domestic plumbing/electrical business that employs staff and has 2 vans, to be honest it's quite realistic once you factor everything in properly. £8k depreciation on 2x vans each year, £800 insurance for the 2 vans, £600 for Checkatrade, £600 or so to provide clothing and PPE for 3 employees each year, £600 ish for employers and public liability, £600 a year just to trade as a sparky. We are already up to £11,200 before we look at Van servicing & MOTS, diesel etc. I don't think in my context £15k of running costs a year is silly tbh.
To any of you who think £250 a day is unobtainable, from the map that Ray linked to on the Guardian website (on this thread) I live in one of the poorest areas in the UK according to that. Like he said, it's about choosing your target market and focussing your advertising and business on that.
I regularly get estate agents etc phoning me up, in general I don't work for them. Likewise the emergency insurance companies that call you on 8pm on a Saturday night. They keep calling and keep baulking at my weekend rates.. It doesn't bother me because each customer I get is paying me £10k ish for a luxury bathroom. I would have to do 5 budget bathrooms to earn the same profit I do on one luxury bathroom.
There are stacks of good plumbers/gas fitters on here. To my mind, anyone who takes the time to come on here and network should be charging top money as it shows they are professional. Many of our competition aren't so let them charge the cheap prices.
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Ah you employed a great architect then, all the windows on the south for maximum solar gain.
With my employers hat on, yes I do, certainly round my way. That figure may be affordable for larger companies but certainly not for smaller businesses. With 30% on top that is over £145 a day, assuming the guy never takes a day of sick. Add on roughly £50 per day in terms of running costs now. There is no way I am going to be out doing quotes into the late hours to earn £45 per day I am afraid. My rule is that the business needs to earn 2.5x what the employee does each day which makes £14 per hour unaffordable for my business model.
I do think that the wage argument is probably one for another thread though otherwise this is going to go off topic pretty quickly!
I didn't know it as I am new to the job centre plus website but we got 10 applications in the first day for plumbers. A lot of them were guys with 30 years + experience. There were some really good applications in there to be honest. We were advertising at £20,500 to £25,400 I think it was. £10-£12 per hour I believe. It seems that is the sweet spot around Lincoln. Now I am sure things are different in other counties but not here it seems.
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The problem with these reports is that the few represent the majority meaning a barrister cranks up ten labourers average.
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