The Tricky Business of Pricing Beadwoven Items
Published On: 11-25-2011 10:28pm
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Category: The Nitty Gritty
I don't always remember to time myself and this project ended up being broken out over several days due to my busy schedule. I would estimate it took me about 6 hours to complete give or take. I'm often told I don't price my items high enough but I'm treading a delicate balance of what the market will bear (which is less than it might be given the current recession), the cost of the materials, and a living wage for my efforts. I often joke that I pay myself a crappy wage. It's a sad truth. It's also a real problem right now because I haven't managed to have a "day job" in long enough that my unemployment has run out. Fortunately, I have enough stock built up that I'll be able to continue producing new items for awhile. Unfortunately, I'm starting to run out of my cash reserves to pay my rent and bills. I would dearly love to make a living making and selling jewelry and accessories. This is much easier said and done and, frankly, the market is pretty heavily saturated with jewelry makers already. I have no illusions that I will continue to need a "day job" for awhile yet.
I have to strike another delicate balance between items that are relatively easy and inexpensive to create and the more time consuming bead weaving work I like to do. Oh and I need to manage to do this w/out my items becoming cookie-cutter copies of each other. I don't mind the challenge most days but sometimes it's stressful when an experiment goes wrong and you're working with a limited budget of time and money. This is part of why there's a wide variety of items offered in my shop.
So, here I am having completed this "Steampunk Medal" that I'm pretty pleased with. I still have a few things I need to do before I can post it to Artfire: I need to do a proper photo shoot of it, I need to document it in my book of completed designs, and I need to figure out what price to put on it. And here, dear readers, is the crux of the issue I'm addressing today and that everyone who makes and sells handmade items has to face: what can I sell this for?
I start by considering the relative costs of materials. I say relative because it is not fair to consider the full costs of materials unless you used all of it in the making of the project. On the other hand if one wanted to make the pin above one would have had to purchase, at some point, the following items:
1 1/4" pin back - gold colored: I didn't buy this in bulk so we'll say .20 (cents)
Japanese Delica size 11 seed beads - Opaque Black: $3.45 (for a small tube - 9 grams)
Japanese Delica size 11 seed beads - Matte Black: $4.00 (for a small tube - 9 grams)
Japanese Delica size 11 seed beads - Opaque Dark Red: $3.87 (for a small tube - 9 grams)
Japanese Delica size 11 seed beads - Metallic Bronze: $5.25 (for a small tube - 9 grams)
Fireline Smoke Gray Braided Bead Thread, 6lb/Size D: $7.99 (for a 50 yard spool. I think I used around 6 yards).
Dark Gray Split Ring: .05
2 crimp beads: $1 (because you have to buy a bag of these)
Beading Needles size 11: $1 (again - you have to buy a package)
Thread Heaven (thread conditioner): $4
With that I'm leaving out the thread burner, split ring pliers, and bead mat that I used for this project as well - nor the craft light or magnifying glass I use to keep from going more blind than I already am. I also didn't include the special snips I use for the Fireline because regular scissors don't work so well. While these are all handy you *could* complete the project without them with good results. For many years I used a Bic lighter to finish ends. I am very happy to have a thread burner now and love it lots.
The cost of materials (not including sales tax because not every state has it): $30.81
Labor (6 hours X $10/hr): 60.00
Total Cost: $90.81
I don't think the market will bear that cost. I also think it's not fair to charge the entire cost of materials because the fact is that I didn't use more than a fraction of a bottle of the seed beads with the exception of the Opaque Black - which was used for both the medal and ribbon parts. At that I think I used no more than 1/4-1/3 of a bottle. Same thing with the thread. I use beading needles over and over again. The Thread Magic also has lasted a long time and been used on many projects. I don't figure needles, snips, threads into a specific per item cost - though I will round up to cover the costs of eventual replacement.
Still, I should probably price that medal piece at $65-$70 to cover my labor and materials. Given the current state of the economy, though, I'm likely to price it more in the neighborhood of $50-$55 - and that will include tax. Even at that it's going to be a bit of a hard sell - and that's the real pity of it. Much as I love bead weaving it is very labor intensive and our society tends to place a low value on that labor. I currently regularly pay myself less than minimum wage for the average piece I sell. It was bad enough to do that when I had a "day job", now that this *is* my day job, it really hurts.
In my shop I have a couple bracelets made with beaded beads. At a local arts festival, earlier this year, a young shopper stated "that must have taken a long time" after I explained that each bead was made up of many beads. To which her mother replied "I'm sure she got faster at it after awhile..." to which I smiled and replied, "Yeah, I got it down to 20min a bead." This translates to 2-2.5 hours of bead making labor for each bracelet. If that was all I was doing all day, every day, I *could* probably get even faster at it but then I'd have to get that carpal tunnel surgery at some point...
Note that nowhere here to I talk about paying myself (or anyone else for that matter) to take the photos, edit the photos, document the items, and post them to Artfire.
You know the really sad part? According to some conventional wisdom, I should be selling the item for 2-3 times what the cost is to make it (including labor). That would make it $120-$180 plus materials if I were paying myself the $10 wage. I live in WA State so you'd have to add sales tax to that. I'm probably mostly preaching to the choir for most of my readers but next time you go to an arts & crafts fair keep in mind that the folks selling there do not have the mighty purchasing power of large store chains nor are they able to live in the US on the wage those same large chains pay brown people to make the wares they sell.
