Pricing

I am going to have a booth for the first time at an arts and crafts fair. I am not sure how to price things. I don't want to over price but I don't want to sell too cheaply. Most of my pieces measure 9x19 . Some are flowers some Victorian. Is there any formula I should follow? Linda Sippel

Reply to
Linda Sippel
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No. There's no formula. You had to learn how to cut glass and how to solder. Now you'll have to learn how to price.

Do NOT confuse costing with pricing. Costing is science. Pricing is art. First you determine your cost by recording your time, adding your materials costs, then adding overhead.

Materials cost + Labour + Overhead = Total Cost.

Basically your selling price will be cost plus whatever profit you can get. Choosing that price is as complex as creating an original design. It'll depend on the product, where you're selling, what time of year, and likelihood of appeal. Sailboats will command a good price in Annapolis but not in Amarillo. Horses top dollar in San Antonio but not necessarily in Seattle. You might have difficulty selling a piece for $100. at a craft show but easily sell it for $500. in a quality gallery. Everything sells at Christmas.

It'll take you much longer to learn to accurately price your work then it did to learn how to do that work. There's no simple formula that's acceptably accurate, but a "guide" you can use for approximation is $20/sf for materials plus $4.00 per piece of glass for labour. Pricing per square foot is so totally inaccurate it's just plain stupid for other than a very rough guesstimate. The "guide" above also isn't totally accurate but it'll get you pretty close. Use it as a guide only. Learn to accurately measure materials costs and keep accurate records of your work times. After a while, you'll be able to use those records to develop a reasonably accurate formula that specifically customized for you.

Obviously you're just getting started, so I'll suggest you NOT worry about underpricing your work. Worry instead about selling enough of it to keep busy. Many business were created by starting on cost plus $1 - some even run at a loss to start. Launching a business can be compared to pushing a car. The hard part is to get it started. Once it starts to roll, it's not hard to keep it rolling. Once it picks up some speed, it'll usually keep rolling on it's own. Start your business by getting it rolling. Worry about better prices later when it's picked up enough speed that you're full time busy. First just get busy - as busy as you possibly can. THEN start increasing your prices.

Reply to
Dennis Brady

It's always good to see what the others are doing. If things aren't selling after a reasonable amount of time, you may need to reconsider?

Reply to
jk

Yet one follows....guess you just made it up on the fly, eh?

As you just illustrated....there's no simple formula that's acceptably accurate. Unless you want to go broke.

Absolute total nonsense on your part. As usual.

One would not even be "close", they likely wouldn't be in the same hemisphere with the reality of doing business.

Take a 4'-0" square bathroom window for example. Simple design with a bevel cluster and two clear textures. We have 16 ft sq, a cluster which costs $30, and maybe 30 total pieces in the design. Plus lead and zinc framing and solder and putty, no IG, or delivery, or installation.

Using your "guide", we'd be charging $320 for materials and another $120 for labor. A whopping $440 for building a window that costs about $250 in materials (not allowing for scrap or matching the texture patterns). We haven't factored in any time for design, customer consultation, gasoline for trips to the retailer for the materials, bad scores, the overheads of utilities , rent, insurance, telephone, yellow pages, bank fees, wear and tear on the equipment, bandaids, coffee, delivery of the window to the job site, and whatever else.

And we haven't valued our time. I dunno about anybody else, but it'd take me 8-10 hours to build this window to the point it is ready to putty. Add a couple of hours for putty and clean-up, and we are working for $10 an hour. Personally, I'd rather stand at the local Walmart as a door-greeter for the same money.

On the other hand, my technique of pricing this same window at a minimum of $80/sq ft plus bevels, I'd sell this same window for about $1300.. $80 x 16 ft + Bevels= $1300, +/- That $900 or so difference seems pretty significant to me.

I "round up" ovals, archtops, octagons, and circles into the next "divisible by 2" measurement for height and widths into a square/rectangle and divide by 144 for square footage. I've learned that the scrap created by circles and ovals is higher, so I convert every design into an imaginary rectangle/square. I take the design, count the pieces and divide them into the square footage, and then modify the base rate according to the design and glass colors/textures (or metals) needed.

For example: A radius top bath window, 38 3/8" by 61 3/4 tall would be calculated this way. Round up the 38.375 inches to 40" and round the 61.75 up to 64. ( I know, I know. That isn't 'zact math. Live with it.)

40"x64"=2560 or 2560/144=18 sq ft. (Yeah, I round that up, too.)

Then I take the piece count in the window and divide it by the 18 sq. ft. If, for example, the design were real simple, and had only 30 pieces, giving me less than 2 pcs per sq ft, I'd probably leave the basic rate at $80., plus upcharges for colors/bevels. On the other hand, suppose I were making a FLW prairie design window that had several hundred pieces, I'd certainly modify my basic square foot rate based on the complexity of the design and the additional metalsand colors required, maybe to as much as a 3x increase.

Of course, all this would go out the window if I could bead solder at 1 ft per second like Dennis claimed a while back.

Reply to
Moonraker

Visit us in Victoria. "Turbo Soldering" is one the many things we'll demo. Talk is cheap. Come see for yourself.

I'm also teaching a class called "Price Precise" to teach how to remove the guesswork from pricing.

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Reply to
Dennis Brady

Yes, talk is cheap. And I don't have to come to Victoria to know that. All I need to do is read your posts.

Based, I presume, on your guidelines posted yesterday to charge $20/ft and $4/piece? If that's your idea of precision....thanks anyway. I'll use my old prehistoric ways and stay in business..

Reply to
Moonraker

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