Who said bespoke woodwork doesn't pay?

[pren]

Hi.

I was just looking on ebay for these ornimental/decorative letters that a friend was after. She's seen them in a shop for £10 each!

This ebay shop seems to be on to something of a goldmine, churning out painted MDF products for surprisingly high prices!

£8.95 for one of those 200mm high letters! If I bought a £10 (or more expensive MR-MDF) sheet of 1220mm x 660mm x 18mm MDF, I could probably get 30-36 of those letters from it using my scroll saw and router, followed up with some sealer, primer and spray paint.

£8.95 x 36?

anyone....? ccasion5:


And here's me, working away like some monkey, dead-end job, rubbish pay ... [/ramble]


:lol: :lol:

 

[Gill]

:shock: :shock: :shock:

How they've got the nerve to charge those prices is beyond me. As you say, Pren, they're so easy to knock out with a scroll saw and a roundover bit in a table mounted router. Why make such deal about them being made of wood cut on a CNC machine? If they're going to be painted, they may as well be moulded plaster.

I'm not impressed.

Gill

 

[pren]

Precisely!

It's not even the letters that bother me the most. £125 for this toybox! Its only 350Hx650wx400D!

Its MDF! ](*,)

It's nicely painted and engraved, but its still only MDF!! I don't have anything against MDF, it's a decent, functional material. Just price it up a bit more realistically! I know these places have to make a profit but .... sheesh!


Sorry - having a bit of rant-day today! :roll: :lol:

 

[MIGNAL]

What is stopping you from making something similar and making just as much dosh from this lucrative practice? Try it.

 

[krismusic]

I reckon if you did try it, you would find that it is not all gravy. Machining,assembly, painting, packing.and posting, not to mention messing around with ebay. Plus paying overheads and a realistic hourly rate for your good self.

 

[MikeG.]

Hi,

I wouldn't knock these prices! Surely it is in skilled woodworker's interests to keep the price of those skills as high as possible?

The answer is to find something that sells, then make and sell it for as much as you can.........and be grateful that some little Indian lad isn't working 14 hours a day for 5 rupees to undermine you!

Mike

 

[Tusses]

imagine its a radiator you want adding, or a new 13A twin socket in the kitchen ! £50 just to call them out, before they start work ! :?

 

[CNC Paul]

I agree with Krismusic, with the addition of Tax, Vat, PAYE, Health & Safety and the accountant... then you get where is your metal container for your paint, dust pollution output, disposal of waste, need I go on



Paul

 

[Scrit]

Well that £125 presumably includes 17.5% VAT, so they're actually charging £106.40 (+ VAT) a better way to view the price as many of the costs are not VATted (e.g. wages, rent, rates, etc.). That's probably bottom end retail these days for a product like this manufactured in short quantities, so if they can get the money good luck to them!

I do think that hobby woodworkers tend to be unaware of the cost of running a business - having to pay rent, rates, insurance, electric/gas and phone on even a small unit (round here an old 1000ft unit would cost around £800 to £1000 a month to keep running - and this area is cheap) before you have to buy-in supplies, pay wages, field phone calls, run advertising campaigns, etc. I also think they're unaware of the rate at which production woodworkers have to churn stuff out to make it pay. I've just done a fully-laminated 4-till point of sale unit complete with slatwall, end cupboard, etc - it took 8 man days. I need to get that down to 6 days to make it pay properly next time. If you think you can do it, why not try it. You might become disenchanted rather quickly

Scrit

 

[andycktm]

It's the same in all walk's of life.
Xbox 360 game £40, £5 to retailer.
Box of cornflakes £1-49 , 20p to retailer.
New car £15,000 £7,000 to retailer.
That's economy's for you .

 

[Gill]

Bearing in mind that you can buy unfinished letters from places such as this for less than a couple of quid, this ill-informed hobbyist continues to believe that a mark up of roughly £7 is an awful lot to pay, even if it does buy a rounded edge and a couple of coats of paint.

Gill

 

[marcus]

Bearing in mind that you can buy unfinished letters from places such as this for less than a couple of quid, this ill-informed hobbyist continues to believe that a mark up of roughly £7 is an awful lot to pay, even if it does buy a rounded edge and a couple of coats of paint.

This is not comparing like with like at all. Churning out letter blanks is relatively cheap and easy. Edge rounding and finishing them consistently to a high standard is much less so, and takes a considerably bigger investment in such things as equipment, COSH, quality control, skill level, time and space. Where do you lay all those letters out to dry where they won't get contaminated with dust? Where and how do you store these hundreds of attractive, glossy but quite fragile letters where they won't get damaged or contaminated between being finished and leaving the premises? etc, etc.

Then having invested a not inconsiderable amount of time and money in buying equipment, renting the space, training yourself and/or others, prototyping, developing procedures and product range, you have to painstakingly invest as much again of your time and money in building a market and reputation for your product. All the time with the very real possibility that your work and financial investment will simply be lost.

I wish I could be so blase about "a couple of coats of paint!"

Assuming that the quality of the ebay product is what they say it is - and they look pretty well done in the picture - then the price seems reasonable to me.

Cheers

Marcus

 

[BradNaylor]

Ultimately, the retail value of any product is what you can get for it. There is no direct correllation between what it costs and what you can charge.

The toybox is actually a very good price. If a potential client walked into my workshop wanting me to make them one of these I would reckon on it taking me a full day including the lettering and painting. I would therefore have to charge around £250 - as Scrit points out, the costs involved in running a commercial workshop are high, and have to be recovered via the hourly or daily charge you make for your services.

£30 per hour or £250 per day including the cost of materials is what I need to charge in order to make a reasonable living. And I work fast!

The fact that it is 'only' made from MDF is irrelevent. If it was made from solid beech the material cost would only be about another £40. The labour element would soar, however. It would probably take two days to make and so I would charge £500! When buying a piece of bespoke furniture the client is paying for the labour of the cabinetmaker, not the wood.

I would suggest to anyone stuck in a boring job with weekends off, paid holidays, tax & NI taken care of, regular salary etc that the grass is not always greener.

Give it a try if you don't believe me!

Cheers
Dan

 

[bugbear]

Hi.

I was just looking on ebay for these ornimental/decorative letters that a friend was after. She's seen them in a shop for £10 each!

This ebay shop seems to be on to something of a goldmine, churning out painted MDF products for surprisingly high prices!

£8.95 for one of those 200mm high letters! If I bought a £10 (or more expensive MR-MDF) sheet of 1220mm x 660mm x 18mm MDF, I could probably get 30-36 of those letters from it using my scroll saw and router, followed up with some sealer, primer and spray paint.

£8.95 x 36?

anyone....?

How long would you take?

BugBear

 

[Gill]

It's in my own interests to accept the majority verdict on this thread. I look at those letters and see components for a larger project, rather akin to segments for one of my scrolled projects. My segmentation projects normally comprise a minimum of twenty segments and often as many as forty. I think a representative number would be around thirty.

So if my segmented projects were to be designed, produced and retailed commercially, the price a purchaser should expect to pay would be in the region of £9 x 30 = £270. Of course, this price would not take into account any charges for my time and skill creating the pattern design in the first place. I've never timed how long it takes for me to create a pattern but I would be surprised if it's less than a day, so I should add £250 to my £270 and come away with a commercial retail price of £520.

I wonder who would buy at that price?

Gill

 

[Steve Maskery]

I wonder who would buy at that price?

Gill

You have hit the nail on the head. As Dan says, there is no link between what something costs and what it is worth. I'm not knocking your work, not at all,, but as you say, how many people would think it worth £500? But if your calculation is right, that is what it has cost. If you enjoy making them, and don't need to do so in order to eat, then you may be very happy to make them and sell them for whatever, and view it as a hobby which pays for itself. That's pretty much how I view my woodwork. But that is not the same thing as doing it as a business.

The converse is also true. If the market is right there is no reason why something which costs a little can be sold at a high price. For a while, at least. I'm not convinced that Andy's figures are accurate (where did you get your data, Andy?) but the principle is valid where you have something that a lot of people want.

One of the reasons is I don't do furniture-making as a job is that I don't want to spend my time doing kitchens (which do pay) and I don't know how to sell my fantastic bespoke furniture for £250 per day. Unlike Dan, I'm slow.

I've just made a beautiful cheval mirror, the finest thing I've ever made, I think. It's for us, not for a client, but I reckon if it were in a gallery it would have a 3.5K price tag on it. Sadly I don't know anyone who would pay that, or anything like that, for it. I know many people who would pay £500, but as it has £300 of raw materials in it and 2-3 weeks work, I'm not so keen on the deal.

But if we are talking values, don't get me started on footballers.

Steve

 

[Racers]

Hi, Steve

Pictures, we want pictures!!!

Pete

 

[Mr Ed]

I think most of us hobby woodworkers go round this loop from time to time; its all too easy to look at a product someone else is offering and think 'I could do that cheaper / better'. But, as others have already said, once you allow yourself a reasonable hourly rate, amortise some of the cost of your workshop, tools etc and think about marketing the product and administrating the sales, the picture begins to look different. The cost of materials that one first considers as significant is, as Dan says, not massively relevant in the end.

Most of us would never look at our washing machine and think 'I could make one of those' because its not our area of expertise. Because we are familiar with furniture and wooden products we feel comfortable with the processes to make them. I think this familiarity gives us a misplaced belief that having the skill to do it automatically makes you a potentially successful businessman, which it does not.

I take pride in filling my house with what I consider to be beautiful handmade furniture, wether it is economically viable or not is irrelevant as I do it for pleasure. Every time a friend sees something I have made that they like and I do the sums to arrive at what I would have to charge them for one, the numbers are ridiculous. Because of that, each time I set off round the loop of thinking 'I could do that cheaper / better' I arrive at the same place and step briskly away...

Cheers, Ed.

 

[MikeG.]

A £3500 mirror??........"best thing I have ever made"....
........we need to see this!!!!!!

Mike

 

[marcus]

I reckon if it were in a gallery it would have a 3.5K price tag on it. Sadly I don't know anyone who would pay that, or anything like that, for it.

Because you don't know them doesn't mean that they're not out there! The trouble with our craft is that the prices we need to charge sound scary. I find it helps to see these prices in a wider context though. To me it is astounding what people - lots of people - will happily pay for a wide screen home cinema set up. As much as your mirror is worth certainly.

I know from my own experience that there are people who have money, understand quality, and would like to spend it on making their home or office into a unique and beautiful place. Not that many, maybe, but some.

I'm not saying it is easy to sell quality work for what it's worth - it's very difficult. But it's not impossible, and I would like to keep optimistic that a woodworker who keeps overheads low, markets creatively, and makes beautiful things can - in time - shift the center of gravity in their business from bread and butter jobs to quality jobs. But then I'm a romantic and I don't have a family to support....

Cheers

Marcus