|
I would hassten a guess that some of the reasons that these relationships often fizzle out are as follows.
1. The designer has to make his entire living from the design work. Whether that is a %, hourly, or a flat fee, it has got to be enough for him to stay in business. That will add to the client's cost of the job which effects your competitiveness (although this can be offset by a particularly effective designer) or it will cut into your profit margin.
2. You lose some control over the job simply because someone else designed it. Materials, techniques, and other things may not match up well with how you want to do things. That will effect your bottom line
3. The designer becomes a third wheel in the client contractor relationship. Either of you may contradict each other or somehow give the client reasons to cast doubt on either you or the designer. At worst, the designer may try to manage you and/or the job further interfering in the management of the job. That can effect your bottom line in very big ways.
4. Prospective customers almost always want one person in front of them who is the point person from design to completion. Knowing that they will start with an outside designer and then dealing with you again later vs. one stop shopping with your competitor is going to put you at a disadvantage.
5. An independent designer sometimes has other allegiances that you might not know about and may share info about how you operate to people you would rather keep in the dark.
6. Efficiency is essential to competitiveness and profit. There are many ways that your efficiency is broken in this relationship as mentioned above.
7. Marketing conflicts. Jobs that you build are part of the designer's portfolio. When he is working for your competitor as a designer, your work is being shown to help sell jobs for competing contractors.
I can go on for days. There are certainly good things that can happen as well. You can get much higher end work than you might be able to market yourself. The designer might have a better knack for upselling quality and features. You may get fed a steady flow of darn good jobs that you might not get otherwise. I think that the bigger your company is in terms of well managed man power and equipment, the more you can benefit.
I do belive that smaller companies would gain much more by hiring an in house designer who has enough other skills to be very productive during nondesign time. You can monitor designs as they develop so that they reflect what you want to do, the materials you want to sell, so that you are managing the job before it is even presented as a design. You can offer design services for far less money as the design work is somewhat of a marketing advantage and since the designer's wages are subsidized by other productive tasks. The designer can remain as the primary contact between the company and the client and be active in the management of the construction of the job. This relieves you of having to do all of these tasks for every job. The bottom line is that the customers cost to get the job done remains competitive, you are in full control of the job all of the way through, you gain an assistant in the upper management of the company who is more polished and articulate than most of your foremen.
Certainly a good LA or designer can do a lot for you. But, you have got to be already there because they are not going to put their reputation on the line to try to help a company lift itself up. Competitive pricing is not what they value. Tried and true with lots of man power to get in and move the job through efficiently is what they are after.
|