3 steps to price your felted work – Part 1

You probably know me as a wet felting teacher, because I haven’t sold my work for a long time. But, for years, I mainly felted and offered my pieces in markets, on Etsy and in shops specializing in handmade items.

Lately, I’ve been considering going back to creating work to sell. And this has made me look at my pricing strategy again.

How to price your art or your handmade work is something that’s widely discussed not only among felt makers, but artists in general. It stirs up emotions and can sometimes even become controversial. The internet is full of different ideas, but there doesn't seem to be much consensus.

Now, it’s not that I think I have the perfect solution for this. And I have yet to test my pricing ideas. But many years have passed, and I’ve gained a lot more experience, spoken to many people and read a lot on the subject. So, fortunately, I now see this topic in a different light.

Since I know that many of my students and people who read my blog are also selling or planning to sell their work, I thought my take on this subject could be useful for you. Even if it’s just to make you think of some aspects of it that you may have never considered.

Heads up: some of these ideas may feel triggering to you. I suggest you try to read this blog post with an open mind, and let it be something to think about instead of just refusing it from the start.

WHAT’S THE RIGHT PRICE?

Before we get into the formula, let’s look at something I think not many people reflect on, but I actually believe it’s where we need to start.

Ask yourself these questions: Do I want to sporadically sell a piece I’ve made with lots of love and would like to share with the world? Or do I really plan to live off my felting work; or, at least, do it parttime as a source of income?

The way you answer these questions will help you define your approach to pricing. If you answered yes to the first one, you’re probably not as stressed about what you’ll ask for your pieces. Nonetheless, I still suggest you do a short exercise that can ensure you don’t regret saying goodbye to your work.

Close your eyes and imagine how you’ll feel after someone has bought your piece for a certain amount. Is it comfortable? Does it make you feel happy? Or does it feel like a loss, like you should have kept it instead? Let it sink in. If you don’t feel completely good about it, raise your price.

Now let’s say you want your wet felting to be a source of income. If that’s the case, you need to start thinking like a business owner. That means you need to make a profit. And you need to get comfortable with that.

THE FORMULA FOR PRICING

So, what’s the right formula for pricing? What’s the formula that allows you to make a profit?

Let me tell you a story. Here’s how I used to price my work:

Materials + Labor + Overhead + Profit = Price

Well, that sounds about right, doesn’t it? But this formula had a lot of problems. First of all, I wasn’t paying myself enough. In order to keep the price “reasonable”, I was calculating a ridiculous amount for the labor costs. Then, I had no clue about what to include as overhead. I had seen this formula somewhere, and I didn’t go deep enough to add a realistic amount. And I did the same with the profit portion.

The result of this was that for many years I was working as a translator to bring in the income I needed to be able to cover the costs of selling my felted work. Yes, what a reality check!

Plus, when shop owners became interested in selling my work, new issues were added to these. They were offering my pieces for 2x more than me, so I was actually competing against them. And – the worst part – it was easier for them to sell my felt for 2x more than it was for me to sell for a much lower price.

The result of this was that I got overwhelmed with so much work, I felt frustrated and resentful. I felt like no one was valuing the huge effort I put into my art. So, I quit. I stopped it altogether, got a new job and didn’t touch felt for a long time.

The lesson in this is: decide whether or not you want to do it professionally before you do anything else. The worst thing you can do is to stay somewhere in the middle.

If you want to apply the formula I mentioned, there’s something else you need to add to it:

Materials + Labor + Overhead + Profit = Wholesale Price

Wholesale Price x 2 = Retail Price

And you sell to your end customer at the retail price as well. This allows you to work with shops and galleries too. But make sure you’re paying yourself correctly, you know your overhead costs and you plan for profit.

Why do you need to add profit? Because it costs money to run a business. If you’re just making enough to pay for the materials and labor, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby, since you’ll need to put your own money into the system to make it work.

As an alternative to this formula, I can also recommend Nicola Brown’s calculations. Nicola has a brilliant YouTube video, in which she goes into this topic in depth. You can find it here. Even though it’s slightly different from this one, I think in the end you’ll get to the same results.

In a nutshell, this is what Nicola’s formula looks like:

[(Materials + Overhead) x 2] + Labor + Extras (packaging, …) = Wholesale Price (without VAT)

Wholesale Price x 2.5 = Retail Price

I recommend you go watch Nicola’s whole explanation. It’s very detailed and comes from someone who – unlike me – is actively selling her work. And pay close attention to these nuggets in her video:

• Some of the pieces you love making won’t be commercially viable, because they take too long to make.
• Your end price should be the same as the retail price the shops are selling your work for, so that you don’t compete with them.
• Shops and galleries will make more money than you. Get over it!
• If you make an item that would become too expensive to sell, then just sell it yourself. Don’t offer it to shops and galleries.
• Make less pieces of higher quality and get paid to do them.
• You do yourself and other artists a disservice if you underprice your work.

Nicola’s bangles’ example is quite eye opening. And do watch the Q&A as well. Here’s the link to her video again.

So, to sum it up, you need to account for profit. This is a business, so you need to be rational and get your emotions out of this. I know it’s hard. But that’s the only way it will work out for you.

Now, in my opinion, there’s more to pricing than knowing what the right formula is. There are actually two more pieces to the pricing puzzle. But this is already a pretty long post. So, to avoid overwhelming you, I’ll come back to this topic next week.

Meanwhile, I hope you give yourself the time to think about this. And feel free to drop me a line if you’d like to share your opinion with me. I’ll love to know what you think.