In addition to selling handmade craft items through online market places like Etsy, I often, as I imagine most blogging crafters also do, get a lot of speculative email enquiries. The difference I find with being approached in this way, is that when a potential customer is browsing through an online shop, they can already see the prices there next to the item. But when someone makes a direct enquiry, they genuinely have very little idea how much a commissioned item is potentially going to cost, and they are, in my experience, usually a little shocked. Even though the asking price may well not be particularly high. Herein lies my personal pricing dilemma, one which I suspect other crafters may well recognise.
I find myself cringing, when replying back with a price. Then I ask myself, why is it making me cringe so much? There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to pricing craft items, and most crafters will already know this basic formula for working costings out,
materials + labour + overheads = minimum sale price
what about this next formula?
materials + labour + overheads + % profit = minimum sale price
I quite often feel like 'profit' can be a bit of a dirty word.
Looking at this another way, this time in terms of a comparison to drawing a salary. A small softie, eg a cotton reel pincushion, lets say I charge £12 ($18.34). It takes just less than 2 hours to make from start to finish, so divide £12 by 2, and that's £6 ($9.17) an hour. In the UK, from October, the minimum wage will be £5.93 ($9.06) an hour. Am I, despite being Degree educated and having 12 years worth of industry experience, really only worth 7p (11¢) more?
But can I realistically charge more than £12? In all honesty in the current global financial climate, no I don't think I could. The end product is after all, despite being handmade, just a pincushion. Which leads me to ask, do I automatically devalue it myself by making it into something practical? If the same item was marketed as an art object instead eg, vintage cotton reel soft sculpture, how much impact, if any, would this subtle re-branding have on its commercial value?
The answer lies partly in breaking down the business model behind each product any crafter makes. Looking at the figures I've quoted above, a cotton reel pincushion would not be classed as a commercially viable product. They take too long to make (or I probably need to speed up) when compared to the income generated. I make them because I like to make them and they look cute.
I am certain I can't be alone in feeling like this, and hope this post will open up a bit of a discussion about pricing as I would dearly love to hear your experiences...
But can I realistically charge more than £12? In all honesty in the current global financial climate, no I don't think I could. The end product is after all, despite being handmade, just a pincushion. Which leads me to ask, do I automatically devalue it myself by making it into something practical? If the same item was marketed as an art object instead eg, vintage cotton reel soft sculpture, how much impact, if any, would this subtle re-branding have on its commercial value?
The answer lies partly in breaking down the business model behind each product any crafter makes. Looking at the figures I've quoted above, a cotton reel pincushion would not be classed as a commercially viable product. They take too long to make (or I probably need to speed up) when compared to the income generated. I make them because I like to make them and they look cute.
I am certain I can't be alone in feeling like this, and hope this post will open up a bit of a discussion about pricing as I would dearly love to hear your experiences...
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