Framing is stupid expensive. But the cost per linear foot of the framing material is also stupid expensive. As is the matting. And of course it’s easy to end up with 3 mats and 2 frames around what’s rather ordinary art.
Not really. Matboard is pretty dirt cheap. The place I usually buy matboard (dickblick.com) has acid-free sheets (32" x 40") for about $10 a sheet. Frames are a bigger expense, but the place I get frames (framedestination.com) will sell you a 2’x2’ frame for about $50 to $100 depending on the style. A custom built frame will be somewhat more. You’ll also need foam board, points, and hanging hardware, but that’s all pretty cheap, probably around $5 total for a 2’x2’ frame.
A mat cutter is somewhat expensive, but it’s a one-time expense. I bought a pretty nice one for about $400 some years ago, but it’s paid for itself many times over by now. A point driver is handy too; that’s another ~$100 as a one time expense.
It takes me, an amateur, maybe 30 minutes to frame a print. $1500 for two framing jobs is an enormous markup on parts and labor, unless maybe you’re getting a solid gold frame or something.
Those 100-load jugs have a push-button dispenser, measuring cap, and a second vacuum breaker lid. So I suspect the packaging is a big part of what’s driving up the cost. Maybe if they were 200-load it would be more cost-effective. Also, going from 64 to 100 loads isn’t really that big of an increase in volume for much more complicated packaging that in itself likely costs several dollars (Google AI suggests $6-9 per 100-load bottle versus $1-1.50 for the 64-load, but take that with a grain of salt).
Conversely, smaller packing suffers from similar factors. These are my grocery store’s current milk prices:
$2.69 gallon ($0.02/oz)
$1.89 half-gallon ($0.03/oz) ok, this is understandable
$2.49 quart ($0.08/oz) holy crap!
$1.69 pint ($0.11/oz) damn that’s still barely less than a half-gallon
The gallon and half-gallon milk use your typical plastic milk jug with an integrated handle and a stick-on label. The quart and pint use a clear circular bottle with a white printed wrap around the whole thing (presumably because milk in a clear bottle isn’t “white enough”). That’s much more expensive packaging/printing, and also more packaging per unit volume of product. However, if you wanted a 3-gallon jug of milk then I suspect you’d need something a lot more hefty, and it might suffer the same problem as the laundry detergent.
Another strange one is Haribo gummy bears. The 8oz package is $2.69 ($0.34/oz), but the 14oz package (which looks to be the exact same bag just stuffed more full of product) is $5.49 ($0.39/oz). So not only is the larger one not-quite-double the size, the price per ounce is worse for seemingly no reason.
For a while a few years back, my local grocery store had prices on 250ml milk cartons such that buying four of those was less than buy a 1L carton. As a single person who doesn’t drink that much milk, it was a 2-fer no brainer. Cost less for the same amount of milk, but also lasted longer, since I only had to open one smaller container at a time, the rest stayed sealed until I was ready to use them. Choose the expiry dates well, and I was usually set for a month.
Generic aspirin 325 mg coated
100-$5.99
300-$7.49
Clearly the grocery industry has learned that they have trained consumers so well that “bigger package equals cheaper per-item price” that now they can rip those consumers off by pricing package sizes the opposite way.
Eventually consumers will get wise to that scam, and begin buying the smaller but now cheaper-per-item packages.
Then it’ll be time for the stores to reverse the pricing … again.
Modern consumer commerce is so … honorable.
My migraine medicine costs me about 26 dollars if I use insurance. It costs about 11 dollars if I don’t use insurance and pay for it out of pocket.
The store had A-1 steak sauce; $4.19 for 5oz or $4.89 for 10oz. I intentionally bought the smaller one because I didn’t use all of the 5oz in the last bottle, instead tossing it because it was well past the printed date, like 2+ years past the date.
Your example is another case of while the per unit price is much less expensive I won’t use that much & therefore the $1.50 savings is better than a cheaper per pill price for a lifetime’s supply that I toss the majority of in a couple of years.
That’s an excellent point. There are some non-perishable things we all use regularly in hefty quantity and a bulk purchase can make sense if storage space is an issue.
OTOH, there are things we use a smidgen of intermittently. Which remaining stuff may not age well.
When I have a headache I go to the 7-11 and buy the little tube of acetaminophen or aspirin that looks like a Chapstick container and has 10 pills. Eat 2 promptly, and save the rest. The first time I decide I don’t need the next dose on time, I pitch the container. I’ve never once needed a 6th dose. And the pills in that teeny container would be a year out of date before I next need some. A 100 or 300 tablet bulk pack would be nuts.
I hit a new one last night. My sister and I were looking at space heaters for our Dad’s condo. The one we liked was reduced price on Amazon for $49, with free delivery on Thursday.
We wanted two, so I added them to my cart and went to check out. The only delivery option (free or otherwise) was now Saturday.
I deleted one of them, and it went back to offering Thursday. Also, I now noticed that it was giving me a $10 discount, so it was only $39. (I added the second back in to verify that it did not give the discount there.)
So I ordered one. I then ordered a second one. No more Thursday delivery, but Friday was available. And, more relevant to this thread, the $10 discount was applied. So by placing two separate orders, I saved $20 and they are arriving one to two days sooner, compared to ordering both together.
My guess is that there’s only one in stock at any particular warehouse, and if you place an order for two then they’re trying to combine them into a single shipment, which takes some extra time. Granted Amazon is more than happy to split up orders into multiple shipments, but I don’t recall them doing it for identical SKU’s. There could be promotional limitations, 3rd party sellers, or co-mingled inventory factors too.
That’s my guess too, for the shipping. I was more surprised at the $10 discount part when ordered separately but not together.
Same here. I buy mine at Hobby Lobby for more or less the same (maybe $11 or $12 a sheet).
I can dry mount, mat, and frame a darkroom print in a half hour, using a frame that cost $20.
If I want to get fancy and do multiple mats, then the time goes up. I realize that I’m only dealing with 8x10 prints, but the process is the same. The stores are going to have professional grade mat cutters and skilled workers that will get the job done in a quarter of the time it takes someone like me with a consumer-grade mat cutter.
If I really wanted to get fancy, I could buy top-drawer framing material and make my own–It’s not worth it for me if I can buy decent frames so cheap.
That is extreme markup!
Yeah I don’t have an explanation for that one. I think I ran into something along those lines a couple months ago, where the discount actually got lower if you ordered more. Maybe it’s a “spread the love” kind of promotion, I dunno.
Large companies with massive logistics chains can be tough to parse from an end-user perspective. There’s a big online store I occasionally order from, and their national warehouse just happens to be 10-15 miles away from me in Cincinnati’s northern suburbs. Whenever I order something with their free or discounted shipping, it goes to Columbus first before coming back here, which still takes a couple days. That sounds very inefficient, but discounted shipping requires not only minimal handling on the part of the carrier, but also minimal (and non-prioritized) picking in the warehouse too. So presumably they have a regular, perhaps only once or twice a week, semi tractor trailer that goes to a UPS distribution center in Columbus that’s both larger and better connected to the overall nationwide distribution network than the nearby Cincinnati (Sharonville) UPS hub.
If I opted for next-day or second-day delivery then I presume it would go via a more direct distribution chain. The difference is that it would require prioritized picking in the warehouse to meet the more frequent pickup times, and the carrier would utilize smaller trucks on shorter routes to smaller hubs that require more scanning/sorting/handling, and thus more $$$ to take the shortest/fastest route.
Years ago there was a DIY frame store; great in both concept & practice. They had everything you needed to frame (large tables, good mat cutters, glue, clamps to hold while drying {wood frames}, etc.) & basically charged you for materials, not labor. Even if I wanted to do frame at home, I don’t have a good, large, ergonomically comfortable space to work; the floor is not like a large empty table.
UPS routes stuff to the large local hub, about 10 miles away, then sends it to the local delivery hub, about 25 miles away, where it’s put on a truck to come to my house. If for any reason they don’t deliver & I need to pick it up (signature required) then I have to go to the faraway hub rather than the closer one.
A lot of stuff needing to be framed is a standard size and you can use ready made frames.
I’ve done stuff for shows or a gallery in standard frames as it’s both less expensive & quicker but anything I’m framing for my walls is in a custom frame; using frame color & mats to pull out color / accentuate something in the photo.
Yeah, I used the floor for framing for a while; it is awkward and difficult. I was also bothered by the fact that the material you put in the mat cutter would sag down a little since the cutter bed is 3/4 inch above the floor, which affected the accuracy of the cuts. Eventually I built a big 6’ x 4’ table with the mat cutter built into it, so the cutter top and the table top are at the same level.
Went to Lowe’s last week to get some cabinet handles for my daughter. The individual handles were $7.98 each, so $31.92 for the four handles she needed. They only had three so I got the box of 25 for $31.98. Six cents difference for 21 more handles.
