For me, the hardest part of opening a jewelry shop on Etsy was figuring out prices. You don't have to go it on your own if you don't want to. There are several crafting-industry formulas for pricing work, but I like this one:
Cost price (materials + labor) x 2 = wholesale price
Wholesale price x 2 = retail price
It's simple. Well, it SEEMS like it's simple. Calculating the cost of your materials is easy enough. But there's that little part called "labor." How the hell do you figure out labor? What do you pay yourself per hour? I used to be a salaried professional, but it worked out to more than $30/hour. People love handmade art, but they don't love it at $30+ an hour. However, you don't want to only give yourself $10/hour -- you probably could do better at Mickey D's. (I'm basing this on the "I'd be a manager in a few weeks" McDonald's theory, not the "I'd be the disgruntled employee stuck in burger assembly forever" McDonald's theory.)
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| One of my pieces that took a loooong time. |
And let's talk about hours. I'm fairly new to metalsmithing. I've only been doing it for two years. In many ways, I'm still learning. Certain pieces I can crank out quickly. But if you see something fairly detailed in my shop, it took me MANY hours (days) to make it. Add in my obsessive-compulsive need to file, file, file the metal, and we're talking an outrageous labor tally for a little ol' necklace.
So where does that leave you? Guessing, that's where. I slapped some prices on my jewelry, half using the formula and half winging it. I was happy with it -- and ignoring the fact I was operating at a financial loss -- until I was questioned by some friends who have been metalsmiths much longer than I have. I told them my prices and they were incredulous. They told me I was selling myself way short. "Not everyone is a metalsmith," they reminded me. Then they made some pricing suggestions.
These suggestions were CRAZY. Some of them doubled my original price! I liked my pieces, I thought they were good -- but even I couldn't afford some of them at these prices. So where does that leave my friends who like my work? And that brings you to two dirty little truths of being an artisan: You can't afford your own stuff, and you can't necessarily sell to your friends. Especially if you used to be a journalist, because that means a lot of your friends are poor. Or laid off. Or both.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what my metalsmith friends had said. In the end, I had to remind myself I'm trying to move beyond this being a hobby. I wanted to open a business and try to make a living off my work. I thought of Zales. People don't waltz into Zales expecting to get a quality piece of jewelry for $35. Now, I don't make what Zales makes. But they don't make handcrafted, one-of-a-kind jewelry like I do. There's value in that.
We'll see what happens. It's way too early to know what kind of success I'll have -- my store has only been open for four days. The sales I have made remind me that I have a skill and people will pay for that skill if it's done well. As my skills evolve, "done well" will have different meanings. So pricing my jewelry will be an ever-evolving process. That means it's possible that it'll always be hard for me to do. But I can live with that, because it means I'll still be in business selling jewelry.
Here's my site: www.slathered.etsy.com
(P.S. I realize this doesn't even get into wholesale vs. retail prices. I'll get into that some other time -- that's a whole other pricing debate that I can't mentally handle right now.)
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