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Thread: How do you price your work

  1. #21
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Location
    East Sussex
    Posts
    61

    Default Pricing

    I completely agree with everything Nic said, at a recent local jewellers meeting they attacked my pricing for being too cheap. They said that my pricing cheapens their work but maybe what they do is overpriced. My argument covered several areas, many mentioned by Nic but most importantly to me.
    1. I want people to wear my work and not be so expensive that it sits on the shelf.
    2. By making small wearable pieces that sell it keeps me in silver to make the bigger more extravagant jewellery.
    3. Time and motion although boring can be a good indicator for pricing.
    4. Finding a style and making a 'name' is when prices rise. Before that you have to do the hard graft, who ever said being creative was easy.
    5. My pricing reflects the materials and time spent but I also consider costings for making 100 pieces.
    6. Prices should be the same wherever it is sold, they disagreed with this too.
    At the moment for me it is all about accessibility and that will always be part of my ethos.
    Paula

  2. #22
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Posts
    21

    Default

    Jason John, those future rings sound great!

  3. #23
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    Doune, By Stirling, Scotland
    Posts
    27

    Default

    I also agree with Nic and Atelier Ava, and I would say that it's pretty much impossible to charge a flat hourly rate on bespoke peices unless you are completely confident that you can make that peice as fast as a "manufacturing" jeweller. By that I don't mean being churned out by machine, but being made by people who have the experience and skill to turn the peice around in a specific timescale. Even then sometimes not all hours are chargeable, or at least not at the same rate for example time spent making tools needed specifically for the job but not directly on making it can't be charged at your "making" rate. You cannot possibly charge a client time spent "working out" how to do something you've not done before, or taking three weeks to produce a piece that an experienced manufacturer would do in three days. It may seem unfair but it's reality unfortunately - a bit like being an apprentice! You earn while you learn and gain experience, but not a lot until you've got it all off pat. Like atelier says, once you build up a name then you can charge more, but keep plugging away and you'll get there.

  4. #24
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    82

    Default

    We as a company don't charge for creative time, the pieces we wear ourselves are made during the creative design and development stage of the process, the saleable items are priced up with the labour costs on a "this takes x amount of time to do" basis, not counting things like polishing in the tumbler etc.
    Goodbye

  5. #25
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    Doune, By Stirling, Scotland
    Posts
    27

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by CyberPaddy66 View Post
    We as a company don't charge for creative time, the pieces we wear ourselves are made during the creative design and development stage of the process, the saleable items are priced up with the labour costs on a "this takes x amount of time to do" basis, not counting things like polishing in the tumbler etc.
    Quite right, AND it means you get a load of nice things to wear, yippee! No seriously, if at all possible a "dry run" like this is invaluable, although you need to work into your pricing the fact that over time you will get faster and faster at making the same or similar pieces. Sometimes it's easier to set a daily rate you need and set yourself a target of how many pieces you need to turn out in a day to make that, can be illuminating - though it all goes out the window when you have bespoke pieces thrown in, then it's probably wiser to set yourself a weekly rate.

    I still have all of my degree show work in a shoebox for exactly that pricing mistake - I naiively thought I could charge for all my hours spent making them. Oh hindsight is a wonderful thing! I was soooo slow then but thought I was the bees knees, hehe. The finishing on most of it is guff anyhoo, must bring myself to start melting...

  6. #26
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    Doune, By Stirling, Scotland
    Posts
    27

    Smile

    No point in even trying to compete with mass produced CAD designed stuff, you've gotta sell the fact it's all hand made, using traditional methods yada yada. Most people are still bowled over by genuinely hand made pieces. We're catering to a very niche market so it'll never be plain sailing, you got to sell yourself and your passion for what you do.
    RIGHT, I've got to go and paint my door surrounds, so I can sell this house and set up my workshop. It's not gonna happen sitting here as I've been jigging back and fro from this all day. That's me hooked already! Nice to meet everyone, it's great to see all that passion for making, I'm off to do something constructive now...

  7. #27
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Posts
    397

    Default

    Oddly enough, the majority of my orders are infact bespoke orders which are much more expensive that the off-the-peg pieces on my website of which I hardly sell anything!

    My pricing does not appear to be at fault as I have seen similar both very much more expensive and also very much more cheap... mine come out around middle priced.

    I gave up trying to compete with anyone, my prices are my prices... I don't see why any of us should be competing with anyone else EVER. We can't compete with children in China being forced to turn out 99p stuff and we can't compete with machine made and nor should we as our work is much, much more special than that, every piece is a work of art and works of art shouldn't come at a 99p price tag.

    It's strange how people will pay a fortune for a painting or a hand thrown vase and yet expect artisan jewellers to compete with the likes of H. Samuel etc...
    Last edited by The Bijou Dragon; 25-08-2009 at 08:18 PM.

  8. #28
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    East Lancashire
    Posts
    322

    Default

    As an exercise, I recently set up a spreadsheet with some common pricing formulas and entered the details for some recent pieces I'd done to see how it compared. I also noted the absolute minimum cost it would be to me to make and sell it (P&P, fees, packaging, materials etc.) as a benchmark. I have my own quick and dirty method for pricing and I always compare it to similar pieces too - they should be relative.

    Most of my actual prices were a little below standard formula figures, but they feel fair to me for the work and materials involved. I work my time out by how long I think it should take, not how long it did - as I work in short sessions between other work, so I don't often get a straight run on a piece.

    I sell at the same price in all venues as I figure out that each one has its own inherent costs and they work out pretty similar on a per item basis.

    I saw a good analogy on another forum - if someone asked you to make another couple of pieces the same - if your heart sinks at that work for the money, your price is too low - if you're happy to do it, then your price is good.

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