It's easy to find ads offering 50% (and sometimes more) off custom frame prices. They run year-round, which ought to tell you something. But what's that 50% really taken from?
In most cases it's off of Phoolium (a colorless, odorless gas designed to fool the unwary).
There are NO standard prices on custom frames, so any framer can set any price he wants. Can you guess where the Phoolium merchants set theirs?
If you guessed high enough so that 50% off is from a price they rarely if ever charge, you guessed right.
It's true that custom framing can be expensive, but at most places it's needlessly so. That's because an estimated 95% of all custom framers (including the big national chains) carry no moulding stocks. When they sell a frame they order just enough material to make that frame.
We're different. We buy more than 60 best-selling frame patterns in bulk ... sometimes almost a mile of moulding at a time ... and the saving is enormous. We keep some of it, but we pass a lot of that saving on to you.
It's not unusual for our everyday price to be half a craft store's 50% off price!
Of course if you don't like any of our stock patterns, we too also usually buy just enough for your frame, but nine out of ten customers love our stock patterns, and with our volume connections we can usually save you money even on the patterns we don't stock.
And if, for some reason, you don't like our patterns, (or us) we'll gladly give you the names of some other legitimate custom framers who will also beat the coupon-merchants prices.
And that's the real story.