Markup / What to charge for Jewellery

[max_mischief]

Hello all, before posting this I did a few searches and couldn't find anything relating to this, although I expect there will be a topic on it somewhere so apologies if I have missed it.

I have a query relating to how much to charge for a piece of work/jewellery when it hasn't yet been made. If a product is likely to be a one off, unique to some extent per person, how can you tell them how much it's going to be, unless using an average price?

Now I mention average based on some rough assumption of doing - raw cost of products that are mandatory for the design, with the extras(averaged out) so then it could potentially be sold as £.. base rate plus £.. per .... Does that seem logical?

Obviously then, there is question about making a profit, charging too high may lead to no sales, too low and there is potential for people to copy work/undercut and make things so cheap it isn't worth doing, so how exactly can you calculate a products sale price?

Any advice, links etc will be useful, and anyone who has been through a similar thought process, I would be happy listening to your logic.

Thanks

[enigma]

I work things out on materials, time to make it ( which will be a guesstimate but based on work done previously ) then a mark up on top of that to cover overheads/expansion etc.
Its the mark up that can be most difficult to decide on really as whilst you do want to be able to cover overheads and earn money to buy new tools/equipment etc on top of paying yourself a wage ( the wage is in the time taken) you also don't want to price yourself out of too much work.
I know some work on strict percentages but I tend to vary mine with each item depending how much I think it is worth/how much people are prepared to pay.
Its also worth considering whether a commissioned item will be popular with others and thus a good addition to your website- if it is I may charge less, if not I may charge more.
There is also the material you are working with to consider- people will tend to accept a higher mark up on gold than silver for example and you need to consider the risk factor of messing up if you are working with more expensive materials.
Then there is also the question of how enjoyable it will be to make……
Sorry, not technical at all here but works for me :)

[Dennis]

There are loads of pages on this and the best way to find them is to use single search eords, top right.
Here are a few:

http://www.cooksongold.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5188&highlight=charging

http://www.cooksongold.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6019&highlight=wholesale

http://www.cooksongold.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5171&highlight=retail

http://www.cooksongold.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4142&highlight=retail


Dennis.