Isis bought two electronic mount cutters that would cost more than $100,000 to replace. Over the last few years, their insurance has tripled. “I don’t know that you’ll find many picture framers driving a Rolls-Royce,” Mr. Brooks said. “Now what that tells you is a lot of what we do is pretty much for the fun of it.”
Upselling is part of the business: Antonio Yepes, 40, who runs Thou Art Framing in northwest London, deliberately shows customers a thicker mount at first, rather than the cheapest on offer. He said he knows a man who developed pricing software for picture framers who says that if more than 75 percent of people say yes to your price, you’re not charging enough.
Frontispiece Ltd. is based in east London and has framed a photo for King Charles, and one of Madonna’s bras. “It’s never gonna be about the money with us because we ain’t expensive,” said Julie Clark, 61, who works there. She and the owner Reginald Beer think that nearby businesses charge three times as much as they do. “That’s why we’re poor and they’re rich,” Ms. Clark quipped. Mr. Beer, who is 79, takes home $1,267 a month, which he halves with his wife; Clark earns “over $760 a week,” according to Mr. Beer.
Mr. Yepes said that his full-time staff members earn between $31,000 and $38,000 a year. He thinks that after all his deductions he might profit around $38 on a $114 frame. His wife tells him to raise his prices, but he worries about being compared unfavorably with other framers. (While customers might not know how much it costs to make a frame, diligent ones will know how much rival businesses are charging.) If Mr. Yepes’ materials start costing more he might increase his prices but not his markups.
At Thou Art Framing, a good-quality, 15-by-19-inch black wooden frame with the kind of 2 mm glass you would fine in any department store would cost $164 ($202 with UV anti-reflective glass). Mr. Yepes shows me on his customer database that Rowan Atkinson, the actor best known for his character, Mr. Bean, has visited on various occasions, spending $386 here and $443 there.