Turning for commerce

I think people do respect fine woodturning. Friends are surprised and comment on my talent. But unless they have a lot of disposable income, the prices are often high compared to what they would expect and are willing to pay. They will pay $800 a year to the insurance man for their two vehicles because the law demands it. Likewise the lawyer, doctor, etc.

...And you can add to the list: Or has a spouse with a job, retirement income, savings and house paid for from previous career, and on and on..... And you can add to the list all artists in every medium that I have spoken to about the subject. Since I "make my living" from turning, I'm very interested in the subject.

Why is it that our society doesn't respect craftspeople as much as it does lawyers, doctors, insurance people, etc.

Just my $.002

CD boulder CO

I must admit I'm slightly puzzled by the high cost of turnings. I've seen some wonderful hollow forms with superb workmanship for under $150, but I've also seen many comparable pieces for four or five times that figure, or even more.

Recently, in Bloomington, IN, I saw a rather simple spalted birch bowl for nearly $155. Had it been perfectly finished and a bit more attractive in design, it might have commanded that price. Sadly the finish, which appeared to be a spray-on lacquer, was badly contaminated with dust. It was anything but smooth or attractive. The bowl wasn't worth $30, IMO. Nearby was an awesome bowl of some sort of burl with a natural edge. It was marked $850. From the dust I surmised it had been sitting there for quite some time.

I, an amateur of limited turning experience, can turn a 10" bowl to completion in about two or three nights of a few hours each session. While mine certainly aren't the finely crafted pieces that draw big money, they really aren't all that bad. And my experience with finishes is quite extensive, so that area isn't deficient. So my question: why does it seem that turnings, especially bowls and hollow forms, are all priced so high? It doesn't appear that the time involved is that great. And no doubt many turners asking those prices have been turning only a few years themselves. Are turners pricing themselves out of the market? Obviously I'm not referring to something from, say, Dale Nish.

Max

So let's call it 6 hours, depending what you use for "few". Now assume that you'd like to make a living on that - remember, before you start saying "well, I can live like a king on $20/hour" that there's a whole pile of money you don't see when _somone_else_ pays you $20 an hour, which you have to pay when you decide that $120 is plenty for that bowl. By the time you've bought heath insurance and paid self-employment taxes you're already down quite a bit, and then there's wood, lathes, power, finish, sandpaper, selling expenses, shop space, etc - pretty soon you find that you are are working for wal-mart wages (or less) and you've probably decided that you can't really afford health insurance anyway.

When you consider _all_ the time that you put into a piece, and figure out a pay scale which actually covers _all_ your costs, and provides a decent wage to live on, you'll find that $120 looks pretty tiny, from that perspective.

Think about that one, Max. If you were turning for a living, how much would you have to charge for your bowls if you spent 6 hours making just one?

Peter Teubel Milford, MA

Max,

Where in Bloomington did you see this bowl? Was it at a consignment shop or a local crafts outlet? I ask because I am in B-ton.

Thanks,

-Kevin

Both of these responses make excellent points. But the laws of supply and demand seldom takes such considerations into account. My lawn service is a man with one employee. He recently purchased a new zero-turn mower for roughly $8K and maintains many other expensive pieces of equipment, not to mention his truck and trailer. And he, too, must pay taxes, employee wages, FICA, health insurance, etc. But he still cannot charge more than $30 to $40 to mow my lawn in this locale. To remain competitive he must charge what the market will bear. I suspect he believes he works for Wal-Mart wages at times.

So why do some woodturners believe themselves exempt from the laws of supply and demand? Please allow me to play devil's advocate, if you will.

Max

would you have to charge for your bowls if you spent 6 hours

The decision I'd have to make would be whether the fair market rates for my turnings would allow me to turn for a living. In addition, I'd more than likely have to make the effort to be able to turn a 10" bowl in less time to enable myself to sell my turnings for competitive prices.

Max

Both descriptions apply, it would seem. The shop is in the mall (?) on Kirkwood on the south side of the square.

Max

Max

Sure Max (just hold your index fingers up beside your head for horns),

Becasue they'd rather not turn for commerce if they can't make a decent living at it, and have other options for work to make ends meet, plus a tiny shred of self-respect? This does not really address the bowl of poor quality with the high pricetag you started on (well perhaps it does, actually).

I do not, at present, turn for commerce. I have hopes that I might, but I am not willing to turn for 50 cents per hour, and $5 is not so great either. If I'm not doing it for money, I can have fun with it. If I can work out still having fun and doing it for money, great. If it has to be a grinding bore in order to make money at it, it's not worth throwing away something I have fun doing, in order to have a low paying grind of a job - I can have fun turning with some other job that might not be so much fun to pay the bills.

So, I believe that when I get to trying to sell stuff, I'm going to be making an effort to work on stuff that I can actually hope to get a living wage out of, and if it does not sell, chopping the price in half is not going to be the answer. Making something different might be, finding a different place to sell might be, and retiring from commerce centered turning might be; screwing myself to compete on price just isn't it.

If you're turning a "commodity" (especially one that turners in Asia can crank out), you fall into that sort of supply and demand thing - this is obviously one reason some serious turners actively seek "art" status, with the hope of a following that is never going to confuse their salad bowl with the cheap commodity salad bowls sold at some large discount store. But I think it's already been mentioned in this thread that few artists of any medium actually make a decent living off of art - that's the exception, not the rule.

Because turnings do not follow the supply/demand curve. Nobody _needs_ a $300 knickknack, they just _want_ it, and as the boys on Madison Ave. remind us, it is the sizzle that sells, not just protein available elsewhere.

Think of some of the comments you have seen in this thread and elsewhere about "hollow forms," where the pleasing external shape is in no way dependent on the interior being hollow, or the walls being thin - it's just fashionable. Add an established "name" to the equation, and Katie bar the door....

If you want to make a living, you cannot allow 'fair market rate' to dictate the price you ask for your products. You have to figure out how much it costs YOU to make the product and to sell it. If it does not sell for that price, you do not have a commercially viable product for YOUR market.

There are exceptions, such as loss-leaders, but you cannot afford too many products that are not designed to afford you an acceptable income. For example, I make much more profit from $10 bottle stoppers than I do from a c.$200 OOAK piece. I make very few OOAK's and they often sit in my studio for several years before they sell. BUT, they do serve a purpose. They become a focus of attention, they start conversations with customers, and they tell a lot about the art of woodturning and give more perceived worth to the less expensive items. And of course, they do sell eventually, and it means that when someone comes in with a credit card burning a hole in their wallet, I have something to sell them.

There are other ways to compete other than on price. Indeed, as I said before, the lowest acceptable price must be set by your costs and income expectations. By adding unique design, select wood grains, packaging and other marketing tactics, you can increase this baseline price by adding something unique to your product so that a comparison cannot be made to other turned products on price alone.

The hardest lesson to learn is that selling is not about you and your work, but about your customer and what you and your product can do for them.

Howdy everyone. I haven't posted for a while here, except to announce updates to my webpage and tout my DVD coming up, but this has been a very interesting discussion, and I have somewhat to contribute. Max, I have discovered that fair market rate doesn't really apply in most of my situations of selling turnings. In the most absolute sense it does, but the key to to make things that are not available elsewhere on the market. For example, most of my spindle turning is for people who cannot get what they want anywhere else. There really is no market rate for that. It is more like, "How much is it worth to you?" If it is worth what I tell them I will charge, then I get the job. If not, they keep looking. Of course, I manage to screw up from time to time and pay for the privilege of working, but that rarely happens anymore.

For bowls and other "art" pieces, it comes down to quality, perception and time spent. The quality has to be there for people to pay the big bucks. Sure there are some unperceptive people out there with money, but the supply is not as great as we might wish sometimes. Perception. Wood sells better when there is a story - any story, but if you can make it relevant to the buyer, that helps to sell it. As a person builds a reputation, the name written on the bottom of the bowl increases its value, even in a regional setting. If we keep selling in a certain area and develop as we go, we will also develop a following of people who like our work.

Marketing ourselves is very important. There are some fantastic turners out there who are not really people people, if you know what I mean. You can have a barn full of stuff to sell, and it can all be beautiful, but if you do not like or know how to market or sell, and are unwilling to pay someone to do it for you, it is going to stay in that barn. Running a business means that you spend a lot of time not making the product or performing the service that the business provides. There has to be a balance, but there is a lot more to it and cranking stuff out on the lathe.

Time is of the essence. All other things being roughly equal, the only way to to improve profitability is to make the stuff faster. Back in the old days of the mid 90s, I made nothing but pens. I had a tiny shop, so I specialized. I was also one of the first five people on the internet to sell wooden pens. We all knew who each other were, and checked up on one another from time to time. I did time studies on myself on a regular basis, and I got to the point where I could make 10 pens an hour, and I sold them on the interenet as fast as I could make them. Those pens sold for $25.00 each. I did not turn 8 hours a day. I had to make my own boxes, do the rest of the business, etc. Now there are about a skillion people on the internet making pens, and half of them are selling them below what it costs them to make them. Guess what I don't make anymore?

Right now I can turn a 12" salad bowl in about an hour. Total time invested including harvesting the wood, roughing the blank, etc, usually represents about 2 hours. That bowl will sell for $120.00. If the wood is figured, or it is a natural edged art piece, I can make the price significantly higher. I also have somewhat of an unusual advantage over some in that I burn wood for heat in one of my outbuildings. So, harvested wood that degrades beyond use, scraps, etc, all get used to keep me and mine warm during the winter. That work would have to be done anyway, so there is a side benefit.

Anyway, this is a longwinded way of saying that in my experience, distinguishing myself from the pack, going to markets where there is a different scale, and using everything to its best advantage have allowed me to make my turning profitable. I am not a millionare by any stretch, and will never be. My wife has a good job and that helps tremendously, but lots of people are able to say that, whether they are turners or not. My woodturning and other woodworking allows me to do something I love, get paid for it, and actually make a little bit of money as profit. I think that if you look at most famous woodworkers, turners, or whatever (And I do not claim to be in that group) you will find that not many, if any, are what one would call wealthy by our current standards. However, if wealth is counted as being able to do something you love and live on it, then that to me is wealth.

Luann Udell is an artist who writes a great blog, much of it is about her experience making money from her art. I think it is well worth a look.

That's pretty much what I said, stated differently. Ultimately the market determines the commercial viability of your product. Whether you call that the "fair market rate" or the commercial viability of your product is irrelevant. It's simply a matter of perspective, viewed from the market's viewpoint or from that of the artist.

In other words, create a market of your own. Sadly such markets tend to be, um, limited in scope. That said, some turners have done well with self-made markets.

Which returns to my original premise: the market determines what sells and for what price. Many manufacturers of durable goods build their products to a price, generally determined through exhaustive market research, that the market will find acceptable or even attractive. Artists and artisans, OTOH, tend to create from their imaginations, execute from their skills, and attempt to sell. Which is probably why the term "starving artist" is so commonly bantered about.

Max

While you won't find such "rates" in the BUC book, there still is a market rate for such things. In health care we refer to them as reasonable and customary charges. As an extreme example, if a customer needs a balustrade for his ancient stairway, he may be willing to pay a lot for it. So he approaches you, and you say: "I can replicate one of those for $2000." He says, "thanks, but I'll ask someone else." Market ceilings, while not finite or predetermined, do exist. Obviously among the very wealthy such ceilings tend to seem almost limitless, but they still exist.

This falls under the general classification of marketing. A story, your reputation, developing a client base: all marketing. And creative or astute marketing can conceivably raise the limit on the fair market rate of a turner's products.

Guess I should have read on before typing the above paragraph. :-)

Ah yes, the age-old time constraint between being an artist and a salesman all in one body.

I really should read on before typing. :-))

This was one of my original contentions: will the fair market rate allow me to turn and sell my products. Your pen example makes my point. Obviously OOAK turnings fall under a somewhat different set of rules, but the basic principle is the same, I think.

Your post is probably the most thorough in answering my original query. Thanks, Bill.

Max

No disrespect intended, but that is really irrelevant. If the market will bear a $75 bowl of average quality and finish, it is not reasonable to ask $150 for it simply because the store retains 50%. Nor is accepting $37.50 if the turner has more than that 'invested' in his piece. What is significant is that the turner may not be able to market his turnings through such a store, unless he's willing to take a loss against what he believes his work to be worth. The market won't pay more just because the store wants its cut, and the market ultimately controls the price of such items.

I once asked a renowned painter what his paintings were worth. His response: "Only what someone is willing to pay for them."

Max

I'll agree that your scenario applies to those with high or unlimited discretionary income, but for the majority of the market population I'd have to question the premise of your first sentence. No doubt we'd all like to have a market for our turnings composed strictly of millionaires, but that's not entirely reasonable or practical for the majority of us. I believe the average middle-class buyer of objets d'art, even the affluent ones, have a price ceiling for their purchases. Even $300, OOAK knickknacks of dubious necessity have competition from other $300, OOAK knickknacks. And where competition exists, so does a relative fair market value.

About 15 years ago I read an article in WINE SPECTATOR about an auction in San Francisco offering a full case of 1961 Petrus. When the top bidder failed to meet the reserve set by the owner, the owner was perplexed. The top bidder went on record as saying, "A case of '61 went only last week at Sotheby's for $10K less than I bid. I simply wouldn't go any higher."

Max