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.