Pricing your items

Craftsmen ask us all the time about assessing and pricing their products for online sales. There are a bunch of considerations that you need to take into account: processes, materials and techniques all affect the ultimate price of whatever product you’re selling.

Itevia hopes to shed some light on this not always easy process in the hopes that you can better price and ultimately, better sell your own handicrafts.

At their most basic, an assessment of costs needs to include a serious consideration of the following:

·      Material Costs

·      Production Hours Necessary

·      Packaging

·      Shipping Costs

Don’t devalue your own work by assessing it at market rate. You should remember that mass-produced goods are always cheaper because they are made by machines or manufactured in distant countries by people who are paid almost nothing. And lowering your own rates also lowers the rates of other skilled craftsmen.

Don’t worry if some potential customer claims your price is “too expensive.” Most likely this person doesn’t know how to appreciate the actual value of handicrafts and just doesn’t make a desirable customer.

Assess a fair price for your work, without hesitating and even if you think you couldn’t afford it yourself at the moment. There will always be someone who actually can appreciate the unique qualities and who’d be willing to purchase what you’re selling. We’ll talk about how to connect with more of these “fair” people in our next post.

It’s also not advisable to assess a minimum rate to your work. Don’t forget that your experience and skills have a greater value and as long as your experience continues to grow so should the price of an hour of your work and the output you’re producing.

Handcrafts are often considered “luxury items” in part due to their quality, and the love and dedication that every craftsman has put into them. In the same way that one person cannot afford to purchase something by Gucci or some other “prestige brand,” very often your average person can’t afford your own luxury products.

As to material costs, we recommend that you always include the cost of any necessary tools with which you make your handicrafts, and including cameras or other devices with which you promote or record them.

Keep a running tab of any time that you invest in taking photos or promoting them and include it when accounting for your final price.

Even when you’re creating handicraft as a hobby, don’t devalue what you’re doing. You’re always affecting other craftsmen and the families who depend on them. In devaluing these kinds of goods, you can promote the misunderstanding that a fair price is simply overpriced. Any ordinary, mass-produced item simply can’t be compared with what you’re producing.  

Ultimately, it’s important to educate all of your potential clients. The next time you go to any regional fair and someone tries to devalue your products, don’t concede on prices. Explain what we just shared with you and remember the value of your own creative work.  You need to be the first person to acknowledge the value of what you’re doing.

Why buy handcraft?

In this post, we’d like to share with you just some of the advantages and best reasons that people buy handcrafted items from the internet, or from their local crafts market. As we hinted in a previous post, modern life seems to have underrated nearly anything handmade, but every one of these creations represents not only an aesthetic value, but a cultural value.

Through our own experience with both buyers and craftmen, we’ve witnessed that buyers gain a number of benefits through the acquisition of handcrafts as opposed to mass produced products. Itevia is very pleaed to present just a few of the value-added benefits associated with hand-made.

-       The “act of giving” just got a lot more special.

Handcrafted items are unique! Give one as present and you’re giving something with extra meaning. Forget the lines at the mall. You’re giving something more significant, made with care, love and dedication, and something that, because it’s unique no one else will ever give.

-       Reconnect with Humanity!

The endless expansion of big, faceless companies and globalized trade have homogenized decorating, and the look and feel of nearly everything we encounter. We’re summoned to be consumers - but not creators of our own cultures. Having lost contact with the human and local provenance of everything we possess, isn’t it time to take a little bit more control?  Handcrafted gifts and objects have the feeling of people, instead of cold machines.

-       Better for the Environment

Mass-scale factory production is one of the main causes of global warming and air, water and soil pollution. Every product you create or purchase from an independent artist or craftman is a blow against the forces of impersonalized mass production.

-       A Personal Touch!

Giving a present always says “I care about you,” – and says it better. A handmade present carries that much more sentiment than an item purchased at a mega-store. If you look around, you’ll also find something much closer to reflecting either your personality, or the personality of the recipient. You might even find something that reflects both of your personalities! 

-       Support Local, Globally!

Families all over the world are supported through the production of handcrafts. Buying from them supports their communities, instead far off factory towns that extract capital, exploit workers and concentrate the fruits of their labor in the hands of a few investors.

Buying handcrafts not only benefits the creators, but purchasers get something unique that they understand benefits entire communities and older traditions. 

We’d love to hear your own reasons for buying the artisanal and handcrafted items that you care about. Let us know your best reasons and the things your most interested in buying. 

Handcraft: Work, Art and Tradition

In our world of fast food, mass production and an increasingly insensitive “virtual reality,” those of us dedicated to the making and championing of handcrafts often wonder if they're not in mortal danger. Is it even possible to compete against the world of “everything fast” and “everything in mass quantities”? As a craftsman, is it possible to sell in a sufficient quantity in a globalized, mass-production environment?

We live, very often, in cultures that seem to worship passive entertainment and virtual experience. Those among us still making a living from the tangible results of our own individual efforts are few and far between. There are gaps between the way we live and the way that we exercise the physical and innate creative abilities that, some argue, are what make us fully human.

If you've worked for a long time creating with your hands, whether in painting, carpentry, weaving, jewelry, carving, or any similar art, you've become aware of the distinct satisfaction these activities evoke. They're utterly different from the instantaneous and empty stimuli that occupy most of the people around us.

This way of working - creating or crafting – while still adapting to new technologies and forms of consumption, is what Itevia dedicates itself to. We do  so without leaving behind the essence of the handmade, and, most importantly, while striving to educate the larger world in the value of the unique and the individual and that which is truly well-crafted. 

“When we create, we continue the best of our tradition.”

The simple creation of handcraft, allows us to preserve the ancient techniques and their meanings, and in so doing, we not only keep them from oblivion, but we add to our overall knowledge.

“Handcraft is a delight for the senses and a tool for everyday discovery.”

The most distinctive characteristic of any good handcraft is that, besides being beautiful, they can also be used as tools for the completion of day-to-day basic tasks. While the west has confined art to an “aesthetics’ corner,” the handcrafted actually forces art back into the sphere of everyday life. 

“The creation of handcraft feeds on and mirrors ancient tradition and culture.”

We’re not only crafting objects, we’re providing new voices to the memories of ancient cultures where traditions and cosmogony were materialized in the creation of everyday things. Many traditional societies continue passing, generation after generation, their arts as a form of “collective wisdom.” This allows many of them to maintain their own identities and attributes.

“Handcraft is a love for land, roots and traditions.”

Fundamental to the work of the craftsman is a love the work, for the land from which it originated and for the traditions that imbue such love in the handcraft itself. Love is a superior state in which the feelings toward ancient cultures are preserved and their identity and longevity are ensured.

As craftsmen, we need to believe that it is possible to excel and to bring our creations to new markets. If we're capable of adapting to new technologies and of taking part in expanding communities to make each of our voices heard.

We can see, in our own time, opportunities to educate these same communities about the value of handcraft, not merely as aesthetic objects, but as markers of cultural identity and as unique and useful items that make our lives easier and… yes, more beautiful.

As a community, we want to hear from you… What else do you think makes handcraft so vital?

What do you think is the best way to sell your own unique, artful and handcrafted items on the Internet?