Leerform: Doug Young on Getting the Price Right
This innovative design & fabrication studio invests in researching healthier biodegradable, eco-sourced materials such as mycelium and hemp as alternatives to plastic and paper.
As a start-up testing new materials and fabrication methods, management was struggling to price new projects. Turnaround times on client proposals were being dragged out. The company needed a methodical way to track inventory, calculate manufacturing costs and price their services.
Skopos next devised a custom job cost estimator that would allow management to quickly and accurately price out the cost of any project. By pricing their services more deliberately, Leerform has been able to expand their offerings and move into additional spaces around Brooklyn.
While Leerform is particularly excited about the future of biomaterial packaging, they must prioritize capital to sustain the primary business’s growth. This limits their bandwidth to expand on research of new sustainable materials that reduce carbon emissions from the supply chain— something we at Skopos would be thrilled to support.
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Humanizing Finance since 2016
Doug Young, one of the co-founders of Leerform Fabrication and Design, approached Skopos for additional financial assistance after completing the Chart of Accounts course with Evergreen Exchange. While his client list was steadily growing, Doug still struggled to price new projects, and turnaround times on client proposals were being dragged out. He needed a methodical way to price his services, keep track of inventory, and calculate the manufacturing costs. Doug’s busy schedule also meant he had minimal time to commit to meetings, so he sought out long-term strategic work with Skopos.
Before we could diagnose the business challenges to focus on, Skopos provided ongoing advisory services on Doug’s timeline, establishing a series of meetings every quarter to review the Company’s financials, answer accounting questions, uncover strategic insights, and run through scenarios together. These quarterly reviews revealed a fast-growing company that needed different pricing and cost controls to maintain profitability.
We began by re-organizing and cleaning up Leerform’s books, creating a financial system that would allow Doug to hire and train a new bookkeeper when the time came. With his books in good shape, Skopos next devised a custom job cost estimator that would allow Doug to quickly and accurately price out the cost of any project. As a startup in the pandemic, when material and logistical costs were wildly fluctuating, cash flow was especially tricky to navigate and financial performance was difficult to monitor and manage. It was crucial to ensure no cost was missing from the outset.
To make the estimator, Skopos took into consideration all the time and costs that go into a project. We analyzed and dissected Leerform’s entire production and order management cycle to validate the detailed costs of labor and materials. Then we reviewed existing costing templates, drafted a model, and pushed it through multiple rounds of review with Leerform before working in a live revision period to ensure it functioned well with real-world examples.
Leerform remains in a state of hyper-growth and relies on the job cost estimator for all projects, a tool that Doug calls “invaluable” to the company. By pricing their services more deliberately, Leerform has been able to expand their offerings and move into additional spaces around Brooklyn. As the Company continues to evolve and grow—Doug is particularly excited about the future of biomaterial packaging—it can rest assured that Skopos is always ready to assist with a new challenge.
