One of the most common ways pricing goes wrong in custom woodwork is when you take on unfamiliar work or projects that stretch the boundaries of your experience. Many of the projects submitted to the annual FDMC Pricing Survey fall into that category.

When faced with an inviting and seemingly profitable new project, how many times have you said to yourself, “How difficult could that be?” That should be the first red flag that you need to pay extra attention to pricing the job. Our friend Murphy always reminds us that what can go wrong frequently does.

The FDMC Pricing Survey is an opportunity to explore the issues involved with pricing unfamiliar or especially challenging work without the danger of losing your shirt because of a mistake. Seemingly simple projects hide special challenges. Use the Pricing Survey to train your estimating crew to tackle those cases.

This year’s survey is sponsored by Lockdowel and TradeSoft.

How it works
For more than 25 years, the Pricing Survey has been studying pricing in custom work by trying to provide an apples-to-apples comparison on how bespoke woodworking projects are priced. 

We collect bidding specifications from real shops for real projects and share that information to anyone in our audience who wants to try their hand at bidding the work.

We collect all of those bids, requesting not only the final total price but also information about estimates for materials, construction hours, finishing, and installation. 

That way, there is lots of additional information to explore to determine why different estimates vary so widely.

This isn’t a game of can you get the “correct” answer or the “right” number. This is an exploration of the process and pitfalls of pricing, so that you can educate yourself and your pricing team to bid work more intelligently, with a more assured profit margin, and fewer nasty surprises.

Case in point
This year’s survey includes a project that is a classic example of how custom work can present challenges that hamper profitability, efficiency, and challenge your pricing skills. 

A company that makes exterior doors “all day long, five or six days a week” was asked to tackle a custom double-door project. You can already hear the statement, “How difficult could this be?”

As it turns out, pretty difficult at every turn. These doors — destined to go into a church — were larger than anything they had done before, specified to be made out of a species of wood they rarely used, and in a design that offered challenges in material handling, processing, clamping, and just about every process in the plant.

How do you price that kind of work? Participate in the pricing survey and see how you can take on the challenge.

How to participate
It’s easy to participate in the Pricing Survey. Bid packages should be ready by mid-August. You can go to www.woodworkingnetwork.com/pricing-survey to obtain a bid package for the 2025 survey and learn all about it. You can also see stories about past year’s surveys and projects there.

You can download the bid package directly or you can request a hard copy to be mailed to you free of charge. 

The bid package comes with complete instructions for bidding. All the projects have descriptions of specifications, dimensioned drawings, and photos or renderings of the finished work. There’s also information about any special requirements or challenging circumstances that might affect the price.

All shops participating in the survey remain anonymous to encourage realistic bidding without fear of repercussions from too high or low of an estimate. All results are sorted and published in the November issue of FDMC and online at woodworkingnetwork.com.

What about your project?
At this writing, there are still a couple of openings for projects in the survey. Do you have an especially challenging project that taxed your estimating skills? How about sharing it with the Pricing Survey to see how other shops would price it? Phone Will Sampson at 203-512-5661 or email [email protected].