Should newbie include work hours in jewelry price?

[pearlescence]

Pricing is probably the hardest part of a jewellery business. I think my prices are just about right (of course I would think that!) but I see lots of cheaper pearls on ebay etc, both loose and finished jewellery, and also massively more expensive with either big brand names like Mikimoto or Europearl, where I know the pearls are no better in quality than mine but the price might be ten times mine or more.
same goes for 'designer' stuff. Some designer stuff is jaw droppingly priced.
It's a balance between valuing yourself and your work and actually pricing to sell.
You can value yourself super high and not sell anything or too cheap and sell it all , lots of turnover but no profit.

[Patstone]

I agree with you totally but the proof comes with the selling. There is one stand in the craft show that buys all the components and just puts them together, one in every colour, his stand looks very colourful but its gold plated tat. We have mid grey satin tablecloth with biggish flat stones in the middle to show off special items, the rest is on black stands and some items like rings are just loose on the table and the stand looks classy. We have spotlights rigged up too which shows off the things better. We have one tomorrow, I will try and get a photo of the stand to see how we can improve it, any ideas would be welcome.

[pearlescence]

How are fairs, fayres, etc going so far this year? I've booked into only a couple and am not excited at all (in fact I had booked one for two weeks ago and forgot about it completely until yesterday....(!) Are people spending? or is the decline still going?

[Patstone]

We do a craft fair every month apart from Jan and Feb, same place and the last one was on the Sunday of the early Bank Holiday and it went well, between the two of us (my daughter and I both make silver jewellery as a hobby) we sold about £200 which isnt bad for a small seaside town. We do other ones as well but they havent started yet, not really the weather to be stuck in a tent amid a mudbath. I should think the one tomorrow would be quite good as its predicted sun, but the wind is too cold to sit on the beach. One thing I will say, it has definately made a difference having a card machine.

[caroleallen]

It's a very difficult time to sell jewellery at craft fairs. I'm giving most of them up next year and certainly don't plan to travel to the S East any more. The shows are quite expensive (£500 plus) and the old rule of expecting to take 5 times the table cost has gone out the window, particularly if I also add in the travelling, hotels, meals out etc. I'll still be doing a couple of local ones at Christmas, but that's it.

I think your prices are way too low Pat. If you concentrate your efforts on making more expensive items you'll find that people will be prepared to pay more. People don't value items that don't cost much.

[Exsecratio]

May I offer my humble opinion?

People don't value items that don't cost much.

very true, My dear old Grandfather had a market stall many many years ago that sold vegetables, he had runner beans on it that were fresh picked at the usual price and some that were not quite so perfect at half price. The normal priced ones all sold but the half price didn't. My Gran told him to increase the price of the cheap beans to a little above what was normal price the next day and not to mention the fact they were "seconds"

They all sold....

It's human nature to expect the best to cost...when it doesn't, most of us (including me) will be asking ourselves "What's wrong with it" and "why are they so cheap" or even "that's too cheap to be any good".

best wishes

Dave

[medusa]

Thank you, trouble is that if I can't sell stuff I won't be able to carry on making as I am retired, even now I have had people remark that the items are too pricey. Some of the early stuff on the website was when we were still learning the basics and isn't very well finished, but most of it has sold now, but its there really to show what we can do.

I think you are maybe selling in the wrong place. if you are adjacent to mass produced crap selling at low prices it is not going to be easy to sell anyway and your stuff will look pricey next to that. Plus people saying stuff is pricy are usually people who buy in Claire's Accessories. Next time someone tells you it's too expensive, remind them that they are hand made by you out of precious metals and not some child in an Asian sweatshop who hasn't seen daylight for a week.

I think your prices are way too low Pat. If you concentrate your efforts on making more expensive items you'll find that people will be prepared to pay more. People don't value items that don't cost much.

This: A friend of mine who does repro enamel was not selling so she kept lowering her prices to the point that her profit (including labour) on each pendant or whatever was around £5. Eventually after lots of badgering she tripled the prices and they now sell much better. Dave's granny knew exactly why this works. If your stuff is priced at sweatshop labour prices, then that's what people will think it is.

Maybe you could try selling on Etsy or Folksy?

[caroleallen]

I'd also suggest that you concentrate on a small range of exquisite and unusual pieces that complement each other, rather than a large range of one-off pieces. (you may say that's good coming from me who has the biggest range in the world!)

[Patstone]

Wow, thats quite a voice you got there. All seem to think we are selling too low, the craftfair that we go to is well regulated as far as other jewellers. Nobody does the handmade, designer stuff, so we are one of a kind, but yesterday we had coachloads of people come into the hall, and most of them were in the pensioner age range, (not being nasty as I am also a pensioner), they were picking things up and commenting how nice they were and putting them down again and leaving, and all the stands were the same not just ours. One chap who always seems to sell a lot is a painter (if you can call him that), he sploshes coloured paint on canvas and sells them for £300 plus, and they are literally just paint flicked on, just like when I was painting the outside of our house once and I flunk the paintbrush to get the meths out and the paintbrush had blue in from before and not washed out properly, whoops, guess whose white walls had blue splashes on them.

[caroleallen]

Ah yes, pensioners! People who come on coaches never buy as they're just having a day out. I'm always amazed too at how people who sell daubs seem to do so well.

I've also gone down the route of making my jewellery as cheap as possible and it really doesn't work in the long run. A few years ago people had money in their pockets and would often treat themselves. Now they keep their money in their pockets unless it's something they really need like a present for someone else. The only time craft fairs really work now is at Christmas. Sorry to be so gloomy.