what is the formula for selling handmade crafts?
It takes me two hours to complete my project, and feel it’s too much to charge even at minium wage.
Suggested Reading:
How to make extra money selling crafts at fairs and festivalsThis booklet contains helpful advice and tips gleaned from experience selling crafts at fairs and festivals.
Related Posts
1. Calculate how much you spent on the materials for each project and how much time it took to create it. Take both into account when you determine a fair “wage” for your effort. You may also want to factor in the fee for renting the booth and travel costs to ensure you come out ahead.
2. Tour other crafts fairs to see what fellow crafters are charging for similar items. Although you can also visit craft stores to compare, remember that they have to pay more overhead and therefore need to charge more.
3. Determine how original the items are. If you’re selling handmade cards and know that there will be four other tables offering them, too, you may need to keep your prices down to be competitive with the other crafters. If you’re the only one who’s made wood birdhouses, however, you can afford to mark them up a little.
4. Price your seasonal items reasonably if you’d rather not pack them up and store them until the next holiday crafts show. If the show is drawing to a close and you’ve still got a lot of inventory, consider offering a “buy one, get one free” sale to move the merchandise.
I’ve never done it myself before –selling handmade crafts– but there’s a great website you can sell your products on:
http://www.etsy.com
I really don’t think that there is a formula for selling craft, it’s all a matter of appreciation for hand made items the time that it took to make them the taste the purpouse and last but not least the price that is charged for them.
If you add the cost of material used and add a little extra it should be plenty , you are the only one that can set a price on the things that you make , but you must keep in mind that the economy is not at its best at the moment and even if Christmas is coming up , people are reluctant to spend money that they don’t have, so if you are to set a price be reasonable the time employed in making craft is also a leisure time for the person that makes it and shouldn’t be considered as piece work , if you over charge it will never fly!
I have always made things to give away and I like you find to price what I make very difficult . A lot of people go to the Fair or the Flea Market to sell their crafts ,but this gives me a feeling of under appreciation for the things that I worked so hard to make and to go into a cold and dusty place is not a very good feeling if you know what I mean!
So I was thinking that it probably be a good idea to into a Boutique and place the items on consignment , or even a Church Bazaar or a Charity where you could also give portion of the sale to a good cause if you wish, but this is only if you are doing your crafts as a Hobby not as an income .
Look at the first answer and write down all the prices that result: Time/labor cost, materials cost, competitor cost, etc. If it doesn’t work out, then don’t make and sell them. You may be competing with Chinese labor and never be able to match price.
On the other hand, you might try a modified form of mass production if your goal is to make money. Instead of making each one all the way through before starting on the next, can you cut out all the parts for several? Can you paint the same details or slight variations together before or after assembly? If the product requires a different adjustment for a tool, like a new foot and stitch spacing on a sewing machine, for the small parts and the big parts, can you sew all the small parts then change once?
And can you just speed up operations so it takes you an hour instead of two hours?
Honey,
If you feel that it is too much to charge then charge what you want. Or you can do what I do and give it as a gift because no one could buy any of my crafts in such a great condition.
What is it? How much would it cost to buy it premade? Who are you giving it to?
The formula is to double or triple the cost of goods to make the item then add an hourly wage based upon how long you spent making it.
Unfortunately now a days it is usually cheaper to buy something rather than to make it.
Best of luck,
The reality is that some crafts take a long time to make and we can’t charge too much for them – hence we don’t make much of a profit. So the question is… are they worth making and selling?
There are many ways to make money from your crafts – or rather from the knowledge you have acquired all those years from making them. Why not teach other people? Or write a book a how-to book?
I was in the same boat as you. I loved crafting but there were some thing I would make that didn’t make much of a profit. So I approach it another way. I got many ideas on how to sell my crafts from the website I found below. Hope it helps you too.