Peter printed the price grids. Tom took the business paperless.
Bayview Blinds has been a family business in Melbourne’s south east for years, quoting the way plenty of good trade businesses still do: printed pricing grids, a pen, and the kitchen table. Then Tom joined his dad, and brought a different set of habits with him.
Bayview Blinds
Dingley Village, Melbourne · Roller blinds, curtains, venetians, romans, awnings and Ziptrak
bayviewblinds.net.au →A business that ran on paper
Bayview Blinds is family owned and operated out of Dingley Village, supplying and installing roller blinds, curtains, venetians, romans, outdoor awnings and Ziptrak across Melbourne’s south east. Peter built it, and it works, and there is a reason it works: he knows his pricing cold.
That knowledge lived on paper. Every supplier’s pricing grid printed out, product by product, and every quote worked through by hand against those sheets. It is a system, and plenty of good businesses in this trade still run it. It is also slow, it does not scale past the person holding the pen, and it means a customer who wants a price today gets one tomorrow.
Tom joins, from a different trade
Tom came into the business from an electrical background, which turns out to matter. Electrical work does not tolerate approximation. You measure, you follow the standard, you document what you did. Walking into a business where the pricing lived in a ring binder and his dad’s head, the gap was obvious.
Nothing about Peter’s pricing was wrong. That was never the issue. The issue was that it existed in a format only one person could use, and only at the speed one person could work.
The job was never to replace what Peter knew. It was to get it out of the binder and into something the whole business could use.
Most of the range, in one session
Roller blinds and curtains make up the bulk of what Bayview sells, and both were built into Rollify in the first session. Every fabric, every price break, every install rate, structured the way Peter prices them rather than the way a supplier list prices them.
That is faster than most onboardings, and it is worth being clear about why. A focused range moves quickly. A business carrying four or five product categories takes weeks, not an afternoon. Bayview’s core is two products they know deeply, so there was less to untangle and no guesswork about how it should price.
The rest of the range has been going in since, in stages, as the business keeps growing. That is the normal shape of it: get the products that pay the bills working first, then extend.
What quoting looks like now
The printed grids are not needed. Bayview quotes on the spot, in front of the customer, priced off the same numbers Peter would have worked out by hand and arriving at the same answer in a fraction of the time.
The quieter win is that the pricing no longer sits with one person. It is in a system the whole business can work from, which is what lets a family business grow past the founder without losing what made it good.
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First session Roller blinds and curtains, the bulk of the range, built in |
Quoting now On the spot, no printed grids |
Common questions
How do I move from paper pricing grids to software?
The printed grids are actually a good starting point, because the pricing is already worked out. Onboarding is one-on-one: we go through your products with you and build them in so the system prices a job the way you price a job. A focused range can be done in a single session.
Can I start with a few products and add more later?
Yes, and it is usually the better way. Get the products that make up most of your work quoting properly first, then extend the range as you go. Bayview started with roller blinds and curtains and has been adding since.
Is quoting software worth it for a small family business?
The case is strongest where the pricing knowledge sits with one person. That is fine until they are on a job, on holiday, or the business wants to grow. Getting it into a system means anyone can quote accurately, not just the person who built the price list.
About Bayview Blinds
Bayview Blinds is a family owned and operated window furnishings business based in Dingley Village, supplying and installing roller blinds, curtains, timber and aluminium venetians, vertical and roman blinds, outdoor awnings and Ziptrak across Melbourne’s south east. Run by Peter and Tom, with quality work at a fair price as the whole proposition. See the range at blinds and awnings in Melbourne’s south east.
See how Rollify can do the same for your business
Bring one of your supplier price lists to a 30-minute demo and we will build a live quote from it while you watch. No setup fee, no obligation.
Book a free demo →