A price that covers your materials, your time and the show fee, and still leaves room to run a sale.
Most makers underprice, and the usual reason is that the price only counts materials. A price that works has four parts.
The four parts
- Materials. Everything in the piece, including the packaging it leaves in.
- Your time. Pick an hourly rate you would accept from an employer and multiply by the hours the piece takes, including finishing and photographing it.
- Overhead. Booth fees, gas, the canopy, the card reader, the website. Spread across what you expect to sell in a season, it adds a real amount to every item.
- Room to move. A sale, a bundle deal, or a wholesale order all take a slice. If the everyday price has no slack, every discount comes out of your time.
Two checks
- If the price makes you uncomfortable, say it out loud a few times. Customers at a show rarely blink at a fair price for handmade work; the maker usually blinks first.
- Compare against the same thing sold by other makers, not against mass-produced versions. That is a different product.
The Pricing tool in your dashboard walks these four parts for one item and shows what each show needs to sell to pay for itself.