N8, that is the general gist of the article. The thought I had while writing was not whether a craftsman driven service or being a production company has a singular advnatage over the other, it was more about making sure you are priced right.
100 jobs at $3,500 is a $350K gross. If one goes the craftsman route (solo or with a helper) and instead does "5 to the tee" they may have to charge over $40,000 for that same job to make the same net. More likely the craftsman would work his tail off to convince the homeowner was worth the $9K he charged. And at that price, craftsmanship will put him out of business.
I've been that craftsman, and you can't ever charge enough money to remain a craftsman. I painted this house on my road, where I sunk 385 Man-hours into. And most guys would ask, where the heck did all the labor go? It's simple, if you are not impressed with just scraping - then you start sanding - then you realize sanding isn't the best - then you start grinding. And pretty soon you are making clapboard siding like you are planing the wood. It will take 3-4X the amount of man-hours to perform, and looks the same from 40 feet away. Throw in Wrought iron restoration, front porch restoration - total paint removal from floor boards, and throw two days with two men grinding down 27 layers of paint on a farmers porch tongue and groove ceiling and the hours just melt away. And like Ken suggested, I fought hard to justify my $10,500 price tag just 5 years ago. So what were the results? A puny $24 per hour per man after paying out materials.
Yeah, I actually had a crew once - and I was fixated on quality. And the results were, I lost the crew, lost the customers, lost my momentum in business that I still struggle with today. To this day I still don't know where to draw the line in painting. I watched a painting crew paint the house next door - it was the most slapshod crap work I've seen, and yet the final result looks pretty good. Sometimes I thought something I sunk a ton of labor into looked worse than what I started with.
For those reasons, I stepped away from the market, even when I had a prospective customer contact me several weeks ago begging me to come take a look because he knew I was about quality - when I started going over the numbers and gave him an address of a home with 7 years - he started backpeddling and then became my biggest critic. Even though my work at 7 years is in better shape than my competition's at year #2. That's it I am done!
This is why when guys talk about quality, it really irks me sometimes. Because my 'quality' is another man's bottom of the barrel. There are no absolutes, some guys deliver quality work for a $2,000 price tag - some guys deliver what they consider quality for a $20,000 price tag. In the end it's what value you deliver for the price range that determines that vague concept of quality.
For me, in house painting, if it starts peeling a little bit in it's 3rd year - then that's a quality job for the 'going' price in this market. If I had to go back, I'd never choose an alternative model. I'd market the heck out of it call it 'quality' 24/7. But in the end as long as a job has gone 2-3 years without major peeling - you've satisfied most folks. Give 'em a 2 or 3 warranty, and skimp out on the prep work as much as possible, and save your hours for future repairs. Because no matter how much labor you put into prep, there is always something going to peel in a year or two. So why dump all your budget up front, and then end up doing it for a loss later on?