Pricing Spreadsheet from etsy

[Kathryn Harrison]

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]

Tangentially - why do you feel your work isn't worth the prices being fed back? What are you comparing them against?

[Kathryn Harrison]

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]

£5/hour is not exactly a lot... Can you show a worked example?

[medusa]

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]

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]

£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]

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.

[Gemsetterchris]

Whoa 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

[Gemsetterchris]

Whoa 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