Outrageous Prices For Handmade Stuff!

[Bunnylady53]

I’m all for people setting up businesses & making stuff to sell but some of the pricing is crazy! Just seen some Ferrero Rocher “trees” for £24! You can get the amount of chocolates needed for around £6 I would say. Anyone else seen silly prices?

[Fatted]

Yes, but you are also paying for the person's time/labour/skill and they do actually want to make a profit on it because they are a business after all.

If you don't want to pay, make your own.

[Bunnylady53]

But there’s making a profit & then there’s taking the mick! These trees were basically chocolates on a stick with some fancy tissue paper

[BertrandRussell]

You can buy cakes for cheaper than the ones I make- and you are welcome to do so- or to make one yourself. But when you buy one of mine you are paying for quality ingredients, my time, my skill, my wages , the time it took me to learn the skills, a personal approach (you get exactly what you want) and delivery. As I said, you can spend much less- but you get much less!

[DuchessSybilVimes]

Yep. People selling on FB seem to just set whatever price they feel they want, with no regard to the value of the item or what you could pay for the same elsewhere. I assume with handmade stuff they are calculating their time at too high a rate. It's the rip off second hand stuff that irritates me though - someone was selling a used, basic babybjorn carrier for 45 quid on mine the other week. I got mine for a fiver plus postage on eBay.

I know people will say things are worth what people are willing to pay, I always worry though about someone getting ripped off, assuming it's a fair price when it's not.

[ScreamingValenta]

They won't make a profit if they charge silly prices because no one will buy them. I'd need to see the 'trees' before I could judge how much skill and time went into them. Say they took 30 minutes to make and the materials cost £6 - are they worth an 'hourly wage' of £36? That's the sort of thing I would ask. If I could make my own in the same time, they wouldn't be, because I don't earn £36 an hour!

[DuchessSybilVimes]

I assume though BertrandRussell the stuff you make is good? Because you seem like a sane, rational human who wouldn't stick a fivers worth of chocs on a stick and try to flog it for £25! I have no issue paying more money for a quality product. But shite on a stick covered in glitter? No ta!

[Todaythiscouldbe]

Local to me there is a lady who sells sweets/chocolate 'stories' a bit along the lines of Daddy, I wanted to buy you a trip to 'mars' on an 'aero'plane, but because I have 'buttons' ......etc. About £3 worth of chocolate stuck to cardboard with badly cut out words.....she charges £15-20! People seem to love them though,I must ne be missing something 🤷🏼‍♀️

[BertrandRussell]

“Because you seem like a sane, rational human who wouldn't stick a fivers worth of chocs on a stick and try to flog it for £25!”
If I thought I could get away with it I would! . Hang on, I’ll go and google, then give you a quote.

[NotTheQueensBirthday]

There are definitely people around who put a very high value on their time which then makes the end product expensive. At the end of the day something is only worth what others are prepared to pay for it, which may or may not be in line with what you seem your time to be worth.

[DuchessSybilVimes]

Eagerly awaiting your exciting new product, Bert

[EmpressJewel]

My personal criteria for whether something is a rip off is whether I could reasonably replicate the said item within a reasonable time frame.

If I can, (bearing in mind I have basic/negligible skills) then its a rip off....

[freshasthebrightbluesky]

They're worth however much people are willing to pay for it.

You could take a few iPhone snaps of your kids for next to nothing but lots of photographers charge £50+ for a photo shoot. What's the difference? Time, skill, training, insurance, materials, travel, p&p, equipment etc.

[ScreamingValenta]

Unless skill has been used, I wouldn't want to pay more than the cost of ingredients plus NMW equivalent for the time it would take to make the item.

(I'm not talking about crafts which involve a skill that has to be learnt and perfected - I understand that, in those cases, you are also paying for the time that has gone before, while the person was developing their talent).

[TheInvestigator]

I'm an ethical jeweller. I charge £40 per hour for my pieces. So when I make a piece, I charge the pro-rata rate, I charge the material coat plus 10% to cover fluctuations plus extra for profit. That's my wholesale price. To get the retail price, I times that figure by 2.6.

That's how business works. It's not just the cost of the materials plus a few quid for profit.

I'm not using my real working hours or real figures... this is just an example.

I work around 40 hours a week, and you might then go.. "so you're earning £1600 a week, you're ripping people off". But I don't. I spend around 15 hours a week doing work which doesn't involve making anything. Those 15 hours can't be billed to anyone. I need to answer emails, produce new catalogues, sometimes source new suppliers, sort through orders, update the website, create ad campaigns, write product descriptions, create boards for new design ideas, research jewellery styles, do my books etc etc. So I'm working but I'm not getting paid. I am only paid for the time I spend making products, which is around 25 hours a week. So that's £1000 a week.
But out of that, I need to pay my insurance, my website host, my email host, my advertising cost... everything. Then I can take me earnings out.

If you don't want to pay handmade prices then don't buy the pieces. Continue buying cheap, mass produced junk.

[BertrandRussell]

Gosh. They’re awful arwn’r they? But I reckon there’s at least a tenner’s worth of ingredients in the ones I looked at- the ones on a stick and standing up in a glass. I’d probably take about 30 minutes to make one once I got the hang of it- so £10 for ingredients and maybe another tenner depending on my mood for time and profit. So £20/25 is reasonable. Sorry!

[ScreamingValenta]

You could take a few iPhone snaps of your kids for next to nothing but lots of photographers charge £50+ for a photo shoot. What's the difference?

I rarely see any photo-shoot pictures that couldn't have been done by the average person on the street, given room for some trial and error and standard photo-editing software . I think the value of a photo-shoot lies in the experience, not the result - people feel special while they're having it done - which is why they'll see it as worthwhile to pay.

[Valkarie]

If it's not something you want at a price you want it then don't pay, especially if they are a bit rubbish. But on the flip side, I enjoy crafts and if I tried selling anything I would make nothing like minimum wage as it takes a long time. People won't pay as much for something hand made as something in a shop in my experience and often expect it for free. Doubly so for baking. I used to bring cakes,etc to work it got royally fed up of people expecting it and saying where's mine if I dared to just bring in my own lunch. When I moved jobs I didn't tell anyone I like baking!

[alt168]

I think the Ferrero Rocher on a stick/chocolate bars stuck to cardboard type products often look a lot more popular than they actually are because of friends/family posting fake reviews/orders. I have a FB friend who gets glowing reviews for very amateur cakes. Very easy to see from her profile that they're all from people who know her.

[Threesoups]

There are a lot of shitly crafted items for sale at inflated prices. I doubt many people buy them though.

[ScreamingValenta]

People won't pay as much for something hand made as something in a shop

That's a shame. Personally, I'd pay more for something I liked that was hand made with skill, such as jewellery or pottery, for its value in being unusual, or, especially if it was unique.

[freshasthebrightbluesky]

I rarely see any photo-shoot pictures that couldn't have been done by the average person on the street, given room for some trial and error and standard photo-editing software

The portraits I have seen taken by the average person are nowhere near as good as the ones taken by a professional (I don't mean the "I have a dSLR camera so therefore I'll charge you a fortune" type, btw; I mean actual professionals who do it full time and earn a living from it). Most average people don't stop to think about the lighting, pose or background in their photos. They just snap and go.

[ScreamingValenta]

Most average people don't stop to think about the lighting, pose or background in their photos. They just snap and go.

Yes, that's why I said they'd need room for trial and error.

[PinkSquidgyPig]

What is your hourly rate for your work?
If you don't want the item at that price, don't buy it.
It takes me 4-5 hours to make a skirt. The fabric costs £22, the zip, a button and thread costs are £3.25, electricity and wear and tear on sewing machine plus percentage of the price of 2 types of scissors, pins, tape measure,
How much does the skirt cost? What is me hourly rate based on the cot of the skirt?
If I charge minimum wage then it costs around £65 to make the skirt. Do you think I should earn less than minimum wage?

That's why I don't make skirts for a living ...

[Badbilly]

I take my trousers to a lady who shortens them for me (I'm a short arse). I take them to her, I have either had them pinned up previously or she does it. I pick them up the next day, or recently it has been 2 days because it is wedding and prom season, so she is very busy. She charges £10 for this service, and I bet it only takes her a few minutes. However, I willingly pay that, as it is a skill I do not possess.

So, if you work out the hourly rate, if she charges £10 for, say, 10 minutes work, that's £60 per hour- but it doesn't work like that, as she hasn't got an endless stream of similar short arsed blokes beating a path to her door-so she charges for the overall service, not the time.

She can probably spend far more time altering a wedding dress, or a prom dress, but actually charge less per hour on a pro-rata basis, and it is just a matter of swings and roundabouts.

[YesQueen]

Shop local to me has opened recently and I was chatting to her. She sells cakes, cupcakes/brownies/cake jars etc and said she had people complaining about her cupcakes being too expensive. They're £2 of huge gorgeous cake topped with buttercream plus sweets/branded chocs etc