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Kathryn Harrison
22-07-2013, 10:50 AM
Does anyone here use the Chris Perry pricing spreadsheet? I'm just trying to start figuring out prices for a few of the things I make to list them on etsy and I got this to make it easier but the prices I get back are scary espeically if you give yourself a decent hourly rate and profit! I understand the reason for those prices but I just don't feel most of my stuff is worth that... Should it be a case of dropping stuff that you can't sell at that price and only listing fancier stuff that can justify the labour costs or is ok to have a few items you don't make much on? Or maybe wait to start selling till the quality and complexity of my stuff can justify the prices?

Since this isn't needed to pay the bills (aside from the jewellery related ones) I guess I could just go for high prices and see what happens but I know I'd end up offering mates rates all the time since I can't see strangers finding me to buy the stuff in the first place! :)

Anyway I'm basically looking for people's opinions.

Kat

ps_bond
22-07-2013, 10:53 AM
Tangentially - why do you feel your work isn't worth the prices being fed back? What are you comparing them against?

Kathryn Harrison
22-07-2013, 02:16 PM
Tangentially - why do you feel your work isn't worth the prices being fed back? What are you comparing them against?

I'm quite lucky where I live in that I can look in lots of shops that sell handmade silver jewellery and the prices in these retail outlets are lower than what I'm getting out of the spreadsheet for simpler things to make. My more complicated designs may be compare but they come out even higher. I'm talking £100 for the simplest necklace I'm currently making at £5.00 an hour with 20% profit while necklaces seem to vary between £90-£150 in most of these places. I am new to this as well I've only been making stuff for 2 years so I'm not exactly experienced.

ps_bond
22-07-2013, 02:49 PM
£5/hour is not exactly a lot... Can you show a worked example?

medusa
22-07-2013, 03:24 PM
I think pricing spreadsheets work fine if you are a competent and experienced jeweller. If you are self taught or learning as you go they are pretty meaningless. I priced my stuff up at a comparable price to similar hand made items and whilst my labour rate was initially around 70p/hour, it is happily now up to around £7 an hour. I'm hoping to get to the point where I'm getting about £10-15 per hour which I think is sufficient.

ps_bond
22-07-2013, 03:40 PM
I think pricing spreadsheets work fine if you are a competent and experienced jeweller. If you are self taught or learning as you go they are pretty meaningless.

Out of interest - why? I may be taking a simplistic approach on modifying the hourly rate to compensate for learning/working slower than an experienced jeweller. Overheads are pretty similar, materials costs are roughly the same.

Kathryn Harrison
22-07-2013, 04:21 PM
£5/hour is not exactly a lot... Can you show a worked example?

I've just used this spreadsheet I'll see if I can output the numbers for you when I get home. It does include things like the cost of replacing stuff postage etc... but I've put in really low figures in those.

Kathryn Harrison
23-07-2013, 10:42 AM
Not sure how this will look since I copied it off the spreadsheet:

labour per hour d1 £5.00

Your raw material cost for this item are £19.00

Your indirect costs per creative hour are…………… f1 £2.62 (this was got from saying that I have around £2000 worth of equipment could this be the bad bit?)

Total time spent 3.00 hours (or this bit I need to get faster at clean up! buy chain for the extender and not include a weight)

This is your ABSOLUTE MINIMUM WHOLESALE price……………………… h1 £41.85

Profit 20.00%

Wholesale £50.22

If a retailer now buys your item they will typically want to make 100% profit £100.44

Since that is a high figure for a relatively easy piece although with a necklace and chain extender and weight. I'm considering dropping the profit or retail markup or anything to make it seem more in line with the end product. Or sell the chain separately? Seems a shame to do the latter since I can't imagine buying a pendant without the chain.

ps_bond
23-07-2013, 11:10 AM
Since that is a high figure for a relatively easy piece although with a necklace and chain extender and weight. I'm considering dropping the profit or retail markup or anything to make it seem more in line with the end product. Or sell the chain separately? Seems a shame to do the latter since I can't imagine buying a pendant without the chain.

I don't see a problem with the way the numbers are used; 20% profit is not unreasonable. It's almost identical to how I calculate costs - (labour * hourly rate + materials) * 1.2 for wholesale.

Do your raw material costs factor in consumables at all? And postage to get the items to you?
I admit I'm slack on indirect costs, I just factor it into the hourly rate.
There's nothing in there for assay costs (which should include postage again)...?

I've sold the occasional pendant without a chain, but not offered it as such.

medusa
23-07-2013, 12:04 PM
Out of interest - why? I may be taking a simplistic approach on modifying the hourly rate to compensate for learning/working slower than an experienced jeweller. Overheads are pretty similar, materials costs are roughly the same.

Because they are all predicated on an hourly labour charge. Which means that if you are like me (or were like me, I'm better and faster now :) ) then your hourly rate is going to be in the pence per hour and not £ per hour. So basically if everything takes 20 times longer because of lack of experience, then the reality is that you are selling for the cost of materials plus a bit extra.

It's really difficult to decide, as a beginner, what your price per hour should be. As an example, using the most basic formulas I've seen which are similar to the one Kathryn showed, my collars, if I was charging even just £1 per hour, would have been selling for well over £250. Yes, I was that rubbish then! Which made me think that I'd charge cost of materials (including hallmarking consumables etc) plus 100% which came out at about £100. Which was way below what anyone else was charging for similar items (though there wasn't much to compare it to). So I took the kind of prices that people were paying for similar items in terms of them being custom made and with similar amounts of work in them and used those as a guide price.

The pricing must be fairly ok because I get regular orders (even though my etsy, website and social media sites all say I'm not taking on new work and have to turn some commissions down).

ps_bond
23-07-2013, 12:17 PM
Because they are all predicated on an hourly labour charge. Which means that if you are like me (or were like me, I'm better and faster now :) ) then your hourly rate is going to be in the pence per hour and not £ per hour. So basically if everything takes 20 times longer because of lack of experience, then the reality is that you are selling for the cost of materials plus a bit extra.


Ah, I see.

If a piece should take 1 hour, but you spend 3 on it, that's 1 hour at full rate and 2 training (for which you can't really charge... Well, as a general rule.)

ShinyLauren
23-07-2013, 12:43 PM
I really need to try this out and actually write down the time I spend on each piece.

I still just pluck a figure out of the air!

Kathryn Harrison
24-07-2013, 07:06 AM
I really need to try this out and actually write down the time I spend on each piece.

I still just pluck a figure out of the air!

I've just started doing this, I was pleasantly surprised how quick some things are and shocked at how slow others are. Can you charge less for an hour if it was polishing in front of the tv?

Lucie
19-08-2013, 11:51 AM
Hi Kathryn,

Did you have any luck pricing your jewellery in the end? I was looking to reduce my retail prices and unfortunately, according to the spreadsheet, I should be charging even more :(

Patstone
23-08-2013, 05:31 AM
I bought the spreadsheet recently to see if it would help me, because like Lauren I still pluck figures out of the air and thought it may be a bit more em "structured", but when I worked it out it was ridiculously high. Most of my sales are through local craft fairs, (as I am only a hobby jeweller) and the organisers have told me that people in the past wont pay the prices of the silver jewellery on the stands and they have stopped letting them have stalls for that reason, and several have asked me for my webpage before saying yes or no. There are a lot of beaders on stalls though, cheaper products I suppose. Like I keep on saying you have to price according to what your customers can afford. Holidaymakers come down and snap up jewellery whatever the price, but come November, they will be gone and its left to the locals to support us, and as the locals come throughout the summer too, you cant expect to put up the prices just for the grockles. We normally sell plain band silver rings 5mm wide x 1mm thick for around £15 ( took probably 15 minutes to make and another 30 to polish, silver cost about £5), hence £15 finished price. Mor complicated and time consuming things cost a lot more, my daughter has just finished making a bracelet with fish on as a lady wanted to give it to her niece for a 18th birthday as she is the last of the line with the surname of fish, its beautiful and she is charging £120 for it.

trialuser
23-08-2013, 02:36 PM
....We normally sell plain band silver rings 5mm wide x 1mm thick for around £15 ( took probably 15 minutes to make and another 30 to polish, silver cost about £5), hence £15 finished price. .....

Fliping eck!
I am not an expert, far from it, but I reckon you could easily double you hourly 'pay' rate just by adapting your polishing workflow. :)

Gemsetterchris
23-08-2013, 05:08 PM
Whoa :eek: Everyone works at different speed due to experience, you can't charge for lack of speed.
Sometimes you don't charge extra on materials, just the Labour or profit margin...All the fancy "logisticall" mathematics only works on a mass basis.
Your going to sell at "your" price for "your" work, if you can't then tough.
Sometimes you need to be a millionaire before you can have fun making jewellery otherwise It's a big big struggle with a lot of wannabes..truth hurts don't it :o

Gemsetterchris
23-08-2013, 05:36 PM
Whoa :eek: Everyone works at different speed due to experience, you can't charge for lack of speed.
Sometimes you don't charge extra on materials, just the Labour or profit margin...All the fancy "logisticall" mathematics only works on a mass basis.
Your going to sell at "your" price for "your" work, if you can't then tough.
Sometimes you need to be a millionaire before you can have fun making jewellery otherwise It's a big big struggle with a lot of wannabes..truth hurts don't it :o

medusa
23-08-2013, 05:51 PM
I think the gist of the thread is that most of us aren't even charging for our painfully slow labour.

The more I ponder it, the more I think charging on a like for like basis is the way to go. The biggest problem then if you are producing really niche stuff that no one else is making.

Gemsetterchris
23-08-2013, 05:53 PM
I would say, to coverup any "time issues" , you need to be "unique" enough to disguise this.
I can't see any other way unless you can do a perfect job which puts similar work in the shade.
Making a piece of jewellery to sell is a piece of cake, that's why there are millions doing it but getting nowhere.
The painful bit is, the stuff that does get somewhere is no better than yours & It's just not fair is it :(
Thing is, It's who you know, plus no financial problems to worry about that works best.
You can do it though :)
Just sayin, be unique & wantable.

medusa
23-08-2013, 09:51 PM
well for those that don't have the complete niche market then yeah, the labour costs are minimal. I do happen to be niche and even so I used to charge a tiny amount for labour. I set my prices on what the few others charge and as I've got better, so my hourly labour rate has increased. I'm not sure if I'll ever make enough from my niche sales to live off, but so far, I think it will be achievable when i can commit the time as long as i don't expect to ever go on holiday or buy new clothes :)

Patstone
24-08-2013, 05:34 AM
You are right Chris, a lot of it is who you know. I bet there arent many people who come up from the hobbyist stage that werent fortunate enough to do an apprenticeship with one of the top jewellers who make it big, and as they keep on banging on, "you have to know your market". Years ago we bought a few tools from a girl that used to sell her rings in a London market, not sure which one, but she was selling a plain silver band with perhaps a pierced square in it for £50 plus, and she asked us if we would try and sell what she had left. We put them on our table at craft fairs which is open to the three "P"'s,, Pick up, Put down, and Piss off. They are too expensive to sell down in this part of the world, even though they are very well finished and different designs. If the price was halved they may sell, but she is expecting us to sell at her price. We have put them out on our table for two years and not sold any.

Gemsetterchris
24-08-2013, 07:58 AM
I would put those rings in a position on your table where they are alone but prominently displayed as if they are somehow "special"..suprising how the human brain perceives something as a unique must have item when It's an otherwise ignored piece.
Excuse the earlier double post, it was my beer evening :beer::D