Pricing Your Hand Crafted Work
Figuring out what to charge for your craft work is not an easy process.
Your final price will be a mixture of:
- Cost of materials
- Time spent making your craft
- What the market will bear
- What others are charging for similar items
- Where you are selling your craft
Some caveats:
You will never get paid for all of your labor
There will always be someone who will sell cheaper than you
Every venue has its own price points
Every shop, store, show and gallery will have a clientele that will
pay well for at least one of your items and feel another is too high.
If you mark your craft item too low, people will think there’s
something wrong with it.
Suggestions
Do your research, and make up a spreadsheet. List the cost
of materials for that item, the amount of time you spent on
that item and the average cost of similar items at shows,
shops and galleries (and online as well). This is your matrix
and will help you determine what to charge. Don’t try
and be the cheapest, nor the most expensive. Aim for the middle.
You can add a “uniqueness credit” into the mix
if what you do has some element that makes it unlike any other
of its ilk. Make your combination of materials, style, or
overall approach difficult to duplicate by anyone else. See
James Dillehay's The Basic
Guide to Pricing Your Craftwork.
Price Points: What are they and what can they do for you?
Each ten dollar mark is considered a price point. Keeping
the price below the next dollar amount, even by a few pennies,
can be the difference between a sale and no sale. See James Dillehay's The
Basic Guide to Pricing Your Craftwork.
For example, $10 seems much more than $9.99, even though only a penny
separates the two. Because with $9.99, people think it is under ten
dollars, which is considered more in line with "spare change".
But suddenly when the price is $10 or $10.95, it seems so much more,
and they begin thinking of what else that $10 could buy. But what if
you want $12.99 for each item you sell? Try selling it at $9.99 plus
shipping & handling of $3.00 You get below the price point, but
you still get the amount you want to. To increase your sales, try doing
two-for’s. 2 for $24.95 gives you $12.47 each, but sounds like
a decent deal plus you sell 2 instead of one.
Price points are purely psychological, but it has been proven time
and again that price points used correctly can mean more sales and a
bigger profit for you.
Pricing at Craft Shows
When pricing for craft shows, the rule of price points and ending your
sales just under the next price point often works against you. At a
busy craft fair, the buyer has less time to think and even less time
to wait while you make change. There will always be those who will insist
on taking the time to count out the exact change from their coin purses,
eating up even more valuable time. To move products better, try combining
items for a better price (3 for $15, 2 for $10, etc.) and even think
about including sales tax in single item purchases. The faster you can
process a sale, the more you can get sold.
| |
|
|
