230% markup - can this be right?

[Carl Martin]

One of my favourite quotes for business - which seems to apply to all areas...
"Turnover is Vanity, Profit is Sanity but Cash is King"
It basically means that Cashflow is the most important area in any business.

It's no good having high margins ~ if no ones buying.
No use turning over lots of product ~ if it costs more to make than sell.

It's all about balance, how much cash do you need from the back end...
how much are your basic cash needs?
Everything else is just bonus

Nic x

Absolutely agree 100 % , well said Nic.

[Milomade]

Sorry I've been off the radar since Friday - just been busy organising stuff for my first craft fair and trying to finish off some pendants and not succeeding - for some reason yesterday my solder just didn't want to flow and I completely frazzled two pieces out of frustration and perserverance! Hopefully things will be better today.

Anyway - meeting on Friday went well. I didn't use the spreadsheet thing as I dind't have time to go through it and do all the calculations, but I did take a note of all that it was including and on my train journey got my calculator out and did some maths and came up with wholesale prices that I'm happy with, that will cover my cost of materials and overheads and my time. I've decided on an hourly rate I'm happy with too. I then did my retail prices and nade a note of those.

The lady was really happy with my stuff and wants to stock my bracelets, pendants, earrings and spoon/fork rings. She thought my prices were fine and once sh'ed figured out her prices with her markup she was happy with the final totals too and said there wouldn't be an issue selling at those prices in Edinburgh.

The whole process has made me feel a lot more confident in my abilities and also made me realised I was totally undervaluing and underpricing my work.

I had a bit of a crisis of faith, but now I'm back on track and really looking forward to my craft fairs - I'm working on my display today and it's looking good so far.

Thanks so much to everyone for helping me out with all this nonsense and I apologise for all the probing questions. You guys have been a great help as usual and I really appreciate you taking the time to be patient with me and offer your honest opinions.

[Jayne]

really glad that it all went so well
J x

[Di Sandland]

Good for you, Evie. That's another step on the learning curve taken