Lex makes quirky clothes with delicious names like ‘Nightshade dress” and “Fairytale coat”.
In the article she works out how long it takes for her to make a dress - 218 minutes - and the cost of material - $18. She sells the piece for $75. That’s cheap. Very cheap (do the maths, she gets less than $18 per hour)
But some of her ‘customers’ have been telling her that her stuff is too expensive. (In fact one said “I could make that for $5” to which my reply would be “go ahead”.)
When you make hand-made stuff and you hear people say it is ‘expensive’ you naturally want to drop the price. But that’s just a short cut to financial ruin.
When you do hand-made you are running a lifestyle business - not a big business - but it should still pay you fairly for the work you do. The main cost is your time, and there's only a limited supply of that. So drop your prices and you’ll be paid next to nothing for your time. You can't afford that.
So what do you do instead?
When people say something is expensive what they are really saying is that it costs more than they would like to pay for it. And that’s very much an individual point of view. After all, expensive for one person is another persons ‘cheap’.
So if people are saying your stuff is expensive you are selling to the wrong people. These people don’t care about your hard work and they don’t value what you do. Knocking a few dollars off isn’t the answer; they want a product mass-made in China, not hand-made at yours.
Instead you should go looking for the customers who love hand-made quirky, individual pieces. These are the people who will happily pay for the privilege of owning your craft.
The tough call comes if you can’t find any customers who will pay you properly for your hard-work. Hmm, there’s no easy way of saying this......but if that’s the case you need to go back to the drawing board and rethink your business.
You can’t force people to love your product and pay for your hours of labour, but you also can’t put those hours in for nothing.
So what do you do instead?
When people say something is expensive what they are really saying is that it costs more than they would like to pay for it. And that’s very much an individual point of view. After all, expensive for one person is another persons ‘cheap’.
So if people are saying your stuff is expensive you are selling to the wrong people. These people don’t care about your hard work and they don’t value what you do. Knocking a few dollars off isn’t the answer; they want a product mass-made in China, not hand-made at yours.
Instead you should go looking for the customers who love hand-made quirky, individual pieces. These are the people who will happily pay for the privilege of owning your craft.
The tough call comes if you can’t find any customers who will pay you properly for your hard-work. Hmm, there’s no easy way of saying this......but if that’s the case you need to go back to the drawing board and rethink your business.
You can’t force people to love your product and pay for your hours of labour, but you also can’t put those hours in for nothing.
You owe it to yourself to get paid properly for the work you do.
So price with pride, love your work and get picky with your customers.
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