So what is it worth

[narrowboater]

Having viewed the thread from gus3049 about to burn or not, the question is what is it worth.

If I turn a pen, what will people pay. I pay 50p for the wood and about £ 2.50 for the kit. It takes me, (I am a beginner) about 30 minutes, ok it depends on the quality, but I don't reckon it is too bad, what can I sell it for and where. I am not asking to keep me and the wife in champers, but neither do I want to undersell either myself or you out there who rely on selling their goods to live.

A friend of mine lives in California and sells 6inch bowls for about £30!!

My wife makes embroidered cards and bead jewelry, can she sell them, can she h**l. Am I alone in thinking that people in this country are not prepared to pay what it costs to make stuff. OK I know that really good stuff will sell, but the question is. Is there a market for the sort of stuff that many of us turn out.

OK rant over, hope you had a good Xmas, and I wish you all a good new year, and thanks for the advice that appears on these pages.

Regards
Rod

 

[gus3049]

Having viewed the thread from gus3049 about to burn or not, the question is what is it worth.

If I turn a pen, what will people pay. I pay 50p for the wood and about £ 2.50 for the kit. It takes me, (I am a beginner) about 30 minutes, ok it depends on the quality, but I don't reckon it is too bad, what can I sell it for and where. I am not asking to keep me and the wife in champers, but neither do I want to undersell either myself or you out there who rely on selling their goods to live.

A friend of mine lives in California and sells 6inch bowls for about £30!!

My wife makes embroidered cards and bead jewelry, can she sell them, can she h**l. Am I alone in thinking that people in this country are not prepared to pay what it costs to make stuff. OK I know that really good stuff will sell, but the question is. Is there a market for the sort of stuff that many of us turn out.

OK rant over, hope you had a good Xmas, and I wish you all a good new year, and thanks for the advice that appears on these pages.

Regards
Rod

Hi Rod,

Thanks for the reply to my post.

How can we get anyone to pay what its worth? Exceptional stuff will always sell but we can't all be that good. As you say, we just want to earn our crust. The one advantage of pens or cards is that they are light and so won't cost a fortune in postage. Have you tried Etsy?? Even to the States it might be worth it. The problem, as always of course, is that there are loads of people doing it there too and some of them really are very good.

There are loads of sites around that advertise the turners work and include prices. I guess we have to be guided by the average. I'm not sure we will ever get what we think its worth in the time, materials and sweat spent.

All we can do is keep plugging away and try to produce that masterpiece that will make the world notice us and keep us in that champers for the rest of our lives as everyone will fight to have one of our gems!

 

[stevebuk]

mostly it depend where you want your market to be, if you want a premium price for your stuff, make premium priced items, i sell quite a few pens and assorted stuff ranging from £7.99 up to £39.99 but dont rely upon it for a living. We recently had a craft fair at my workplace and upon talking to the organizer he said the most common crafts are the card and jewellery markets, so there is a lot of competition.
No matter who you are or what you produce, it is only worth what someone will pay for it..

 

[Melinda_dd]

Hi, I turn pens too.

I recently did a craft fair near my home town of colchester (the fair was at stanway)..... made 1 sale all day!
It was terrible, the fair was disorganised, out of the way, and not advertised. I would say in total 35 people came through the doors all day. I was not a happy bunny as it was my first one.
Even if I had of dropped my prices to rock bottom, I still wouldn't have sold anything. (I had a keyring for £3.00 and that didn't sell)

However talking to the stall holder next to me, she said she thinks it's more about location of the fair... she had done one the week before in Dunmow and said it was really good... it was in the high street of the town though so people where there anyway and didn't have to go looking for the fair.

But in saying that... I was slightly passified to think that the 1 person who did buy, parted with their cash for one of my pens... most of the other stall holders didn't make a single sale.

 

[Jonzjob]

We did quite a few craft fairs and the like before we moved over here. One of the best was in an out of the way place in Gloucestershire in a place called Whiteway Colony, not far from Stroud. When I saw it I thought that it was going to be a total waste of time, but it was well publicised and I sold most of what I took. Other craft fairs that looked really good didn't cover the cost of the table. The bottom line, as Steve said, what you are selling is worth what people will pay for it.

One of the biggest surprises I've had was showing a couple of photos of 3 pens and a pot-pourrie that I had made a couple of months back on an Anglo-France forum I am on. So far from that I have sold over 30 pens and several pot-pourries. My sole idea was to show what I had made for some Christmas presents for friends. Our nieghbours have also bought about 10 pens too with more to go!

To get back to craft fairs and the like, you can just never tell what will happen when you set up your stall? Although I do wish that I had known about pens when I was doing the craft fairs! It seems sometimes as if some people don't only want the stuff for nothing, but they want their money back as well?

What ever else you do, don't give up. There are people who appreciate what we do and they make it worth while, well, as long as you don't have to make your living by it anyway!

 

[dickm]

Have you tried Etsy?? Even to the States it might be worth it. The problem, as always of course, is that there are loads of people doing it there too and some of them really are very good.

My daughter in the States makes jewellry on a business footing (she's hyperactive and has a full time high pressure job too!). She uses Etsy, and it does bring in some business, but not vast. Her best sales seem to be from very specifically targetted campaigns. So, she did a whole lot of Christmassy things which she displayed at work and got some $500 sales largely through word of mouth from that network. She also does triathlons (I told you she is hyperactive!) and has designed specific triathlon-themed stuff which she takes with her to display from the car when she is competing and seem to sell well. But craft and other fairs have generally been a disaster.

Like everywhere, she reckons the real big money is via the top galleries, but there are two problems, first getting accepted and if accepted, the gallery's cut, which can be over 50%. She's been accepted by one of the smaller galleries in Toledo (Ohio), but still hasn't got in to the main Toledo Museum which is the big one.

 

[shroom]

In my previous life I managed quite a few craft fairs , some where reasonable venues and others dreadful, however.... even if sales were slow I always felt very encouraged by positive comments about the work on display which went some way to encourage further turning..........T