We don't want to make light of the current cost-of-living crisis, and we fully appreciate that bespoke framing is not high on the list of priorities for many, but we have also been drastically affected by increases in costs from every angle of our business, including our overheads and cost of materials.
Over the last year, our rent and rates have increased by 22%. Our insurance has increased by 17%. Energy costs - well let's just not go there! Mountboard, frame moulding, glass and sundries have also all increased significantly.
However, we are doing whatever we can to try to keep the rises in our framing prices to a minimum. We continue to get the best price in the industry for our ever-popular UltraVue low reflection glass, and have established discounts on the higher UV filtering versions including the museum grade variant. We have maintained preferential prices with two of our three suppliers for frame moulding and mountboard, and keep a good discount in place with our sundries supplier.
We will also be shortly implementing a new algorithm within our pricing software. Our prices are based on the cost of the materials and the time it takes to make the frame, and by analysing our timings for given tasks, our new formula will be a better representation of our costs. Framing jobs requiring extra work, such as football shirts, medals, float framing, etc., will increase a little to address this, whilst the price we charge for simple framing jobs will in some cases reduce.
We maintain out commitment to the quality of our end product, and so downgrading our materials to cheaper versions is not an option, but we hope that you can be reassured that we are doing everything we can to reduce the impact of the current economic instability whilst providing the best product and service we can.