Recently into turning pens and have a computer store owner (a friend) who wants to sell them at the register as an impulse purchase by clients. She doesn’t want any commission and just wants to offer them to her customers. Now what is a fair price to ask ? I’am thinking of setting a price as to each pens uniqueness and exoticness of the pen blank material. Snakewood much higher than walnut.
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
Replies
Bruce,
Since your friend is doing you a favor, I would try to keep all of the pens priced the same - that makes it easier on the cashier. Find an average for the price of your blanks, add a little, and figure all of the pens at that cost. I would skip the snakewood - I have seen good snakewood blanks go as high as $6-$10 each. That will drive the price way up.
As far as what price, you should get as much as the market will bear. How much are your pen kits and blanks going to cost you? That will all need to be figured in before someone could give you an estimated asking price.
I would think that pens over $20 would not be a great impulse seller at a cash register. Best to use an inexpensive (not cheap/crappy) pen kit so you can keep your prices low.
Lee
Bruce,
I was interested in your post because I am often asked by various people to make things as presents for another. Because I do WW as a hobby, I usually charge nothing or just for the materials (if I can't get them for free). Items made from exotic and hard-to-find materials cause my "price" to go up.
The strange thing in your post is that your friend the store owner wants to sell the pens but for no profit to themselves. This makes me wonder at their motive for having them. Is it perhaps to enhance the somewhat mass-produced nature of the computing stuff with items that are individually crafted and have beauty as well as function? (I am guessing here).
I can imagine a situation where the store owner rewards good custom with the gift of one of your pens - with ordinary good customers getting the cherry ballpoints and exceptional customers the snakewood gold-nibbed fountains, as it were.
From your point of view, you are then able to make pens in a variety of styles (more or less time-consuming) out of a variety of woods and pen-kits (more or less expensive to acquire). You then have the variety you perhaps crave in your work...?
You can then charge the store owner an appropriate price for each without worrying if the average customer will buy the more exotic ones, as it is now the store owner who is deciding who to give what (more or less valuable) pen to as a reward/inducement to come again.
Since the situation has now become a commercial relationship, your price should be (materials X 120%) + $N/hour (N being determined by what your friend is willing to pay). At worse, you still get to make pens and a few dollars even if N =0.
Oh dear, I have rambled on. :-)
Lataxe
For some odd reason the lady likes me, Actually I taught her daughter how to play side(snare drum) in the Bagpipe Band I'am in. I'am the Drum Sgt. I'am pretty nitt picky about quality and sand down to 2000 before applying the finish and she liked what she saw. I guess she thinks selling them will be good for business as well as for me, how can I do better than that. My goal is a Powermatic planer with a Byrd helex head( A lot of pens).Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
BruceS,
The question in my mind is where is this going? ..that might/should have an impact on the price. Will she want to continue to sell them for no commission..if not, then price with that in mind. On the other hand, if this is a barter situation...you teach her daughter till she masters the flamadiddle for free....that's another price.
anyhow, out here, Peter told me he sells them for $25 to $35 each. They make a great gift.
Lataxe, it sounds like it's a personal relationship thing for sure, but in addition to that -- anything that makes one business stand out above another is a good thing. Having these exquisite pens displayed is unusual and classy, and could well cement the presence of that store in a customer's mind, making them more likely to choose to go there when needing a computer item.
In Bruce's favor: getting them displayed in the near future will make it likely that folks will remember them in November and December when it comes time to buy Christmas presents!forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
This lady seemingly appreciates the quality of your pens. .
Pens easily "walk off" so I would be careful about what I supply if they are available for a customer to pick up from a cup and use to sign their checks.
If you are selling slim line pens, with a cost of about $3.50 per kit plus a blank cost of hopefully near $1, with a plastic tube and finishing supplies you will have $5.50 -$6.00 In materials. If you are truly running a business for profit, you need to cover indirect costs, plus cost of goods sold (CGS) , plus profit. Most "artists" tend to overlook the profit part as well as costs like depreciation of equipment, tools, etc. At some point you will need a new sharpening stone and eventually replacement lathe tools. If you simply take all these costs from owner's profit, it's hard to thrive.
I usually follow a formula of 20-30% CGS, 50% indirect costs, 20-30% profit. So if you can make 3 pens per hour and you want to make $20/hr for your labor, that makes the CGS of about $12. If you sell the pen for $40, then you have $12 for CGS, $20 for indirect costs of operating the business, and $8 profit for the business - this is not the labor for making the pen.
That is how I would price them. Now the question becomes, will the market bear $40 for your pens? If not, what can you do faster, or more economically to lower the cost and STILL MAKE A PROFIT! Part of indirect costs is marketing/distribution/sales. Since your friend is just trying to help you and offer her customers a unique product, perhaps allow her to tell her clients she is paying the first $10 for them (of course she pay nothing).
If you are operating a hobby hoping to only add a little money back into the budget to spend on more wood & kits, everything changes. Just know your real costs.
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Thanks for all of the input, very helpful ! I'am not in it to make a killing, just produce a very respectable product for a fair price.. If demand exceeds my output, I'll play like the oil companies do. Not really ! And I do want to get a new planer. Her gesture wasn't because I taught Her daughter to play drums. I've taught many many students for free and enjoy it, mainly because the audiences who watch the Band love it and that makes my day. What goes around comes around.Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
Bruce,
"What goes around comes around".
Previously I've seen this American expression used to mean that your bad deeds come around to bite you; but of course it must apply to the good ones coming back to give you a cuddle.
Lke you perhaps, I make wooden things for pleasure. Of course there are costs involved but frankly I think of these as merely the price I pay for my pleasure. There is little or no thought of recovering these costs as my income and welfare are in a separate domain of my life.
The point is, I think, that there are more ways to conduct relationships with others in the real world than via commercial transactions. I don't decry capitalism, mind - it produces many goods (material and otherwise) as well as some ill effects.
Perhaps the ill-effects of profit-making wax when people come to treat this economic paradigm as a religion or ideology - a mode of conduct that they believe should be universal, applicable to all activities or relationships and inimical to "competing" modes of behaviour?
Anyway, I like to behave in a variety of ways, many of which take little or no notice of profit and loss. As long as there is a supporting personal economy underpinning everything else, why not behave in ways that might lose one a shekel or two? As you indicate, not all returns from our relationships with others have to take monetary form to be good.
Lataxe, probably recommending an unamerican activity.
The poster asked how to price these pens. I am assuming he is interested in a business transaction and not a charity donation.
Your "anti-capitalism/anti-American" comments prompt me to reply.
Although there are a lot of us in the same position as you (woodworking is a hobby), there are many of us attempting to raise a family on their craftsmanship skills. I am sensitive to this when I begin mass producing items for pleasure that cuts into the market of those in the business. It's not that we don't have a right to do so, but since you point out evils of the system, you should be aware of the mom & pop businesses that you impact when you sell items below cost.
I realize we're talking about pens, but the same principles apply to custom cabinets, bookcases, etc. The practice of selling items below cost is used all the time to drive people out of business, attract customers to buy other items that make up for the lost profit, and others.
Giving the owner a few pens below cost for her and her employees or her children is a great gesture of goodwill. Allowing her to give away your products to her customers (a business relationship) is in my opinion outside of the goodwill arena.
I don't treat business as my religion. But I am interested in supplementing my income with my woodworking skills. I can't do anything about the man next door who wants to produce pens and sell them below cost by supplementing the sale with his income from a "real job". If he produces 50 pens and gives them away to friends, colleagues, neighbors, it doesn't;t affect much those who are in the business. If he continues to produce them for pleasure and sells them for the cost of the materials only, he is then hurting those who are attempting to make a living serving the public.
It's a problematic situation in that the public has a right to purchase at the lowest price possible - it's the heart of capitalism. But selling at no profit is different than selling at a price below cost of manufacturing.GREG
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Greg,
I was careful not to be anti-capitalist... I am a great fan of many busineses and their wares, as evidenced by my handing them over my mickles and even as much as a muckle, for their goods. Many businesses do good in the world. I am suspicious only of that variety of capitalism that believes it has a right to survive, prosper and dominate, no matter what.
The logic of free-giving can lead to a situation where a business might be undermined by my giving away oodles of items that might have otherwise been bought from that busines by the lucky recipients of my freebies. I guess that you feel that could be taking the bread out of the mouths of the business owner's wife and children.
In practice I wouldn't see anything inherently wrong with that. In fact, in my best-of-all-possible worlds, everything would be freely made and given, with no capitalism making a few have-alls and a very much larger number of have-nots. In particular, there would be free health care, food and shelter. From this basic platform of safety, citizens could then develop themselves and their products in many ways, free of wage slavery or rabid exploitation by the economically powerful.
At our present hitorical juncture we probably couldn't achieve that today but I would bet that (if human society survives the convulsions of the present global culture, including the excesses of capitalism and sundry other isms) we will, as a species, move closer to such a model within the next 100 years. The means of production are becoming efficient enough to overwhelm the law of supply and demand, at least in terms of basic commodities needed for life.
But there is a lag because those who make large profits do not want to give up the mechanisms whereby they accrue ten zillion more value than the rest of us.
Meanwhile there might be wives and children deprived of their bread by dangerous radicals making and distributing furniture for nothing. But perhaps this is just part of the natural evolution of complex global economic practices; so any effected furniture business must adapt to the new environment, filled with philanthropic furniture makers having pensions, stocks, savings or other sources of income other than wages.
Even we lucky pensioners might eventually be swept up in this evolution, as all the sources of pension funds (mostly capitalist businesses) begin to wither........
In all events, I feel no compunction to aid businesses just because that's how the people involved currently make their living. Any society that seeks to preserve and protect its institutions at all costs will ossify and stagnate. I give you: the Soviet Union (as was and is no more).
Lataxe, who long ago accepted evolution of everything as inevitable and so put away all the isms and other hard-and-fast schemes.
Latax, you old sage are one of my favorite posters on this forum and would not presume to debate your wisdom or logic. Present case excepted. Many business owners have scratched each others backs, small to large. The big one that comes to mind is Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone ? and a couple of others in that group of weekend campers. I'am sure they didn't give away their products to each other but had a symbiotic relationship none the less. My little pen venture is not going to put a dent in in the economy of anybody, China included ;-) I just see an opportunity to scrape up a few coins to purchase some new equipment, namely a 15" surfacer(to you) my old lunchbox 12" delta planer is getting pretty tired.
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
Bruce, you might keeo in mind that for me, at least, you can get a lot more more money out of a larger pen with very little more investment in time and material cost. i.e. Slimline - $10, or a Cigar - $20. Keep your finish glossy with the Cya finish also.
I have noticed that in threads like this folks seldom mention income taxes.
If you make $100 profit and are paying in the 30% range, you will only make $70!
This is significant and should be a part of figuring costs and prices.
It depends on whether you include your income to produce the goods in CGS or in Profit. Most people who produce a product tend to consider that whatever is left over after all the bills are paid is my income. That's OK if you are not attempting to build a business. Personal income taxes of the owners should not effect business profit. I still need a 20-30% profit margin to grow the business (that is 20-30% "left over" after I am paid).GREG
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I can't disagree with your logic. I just wanted to point out that taxes should be a significant factor in pricing calculations.
Sasquatch.You are correct that taxes must be included in the analysis. I am curious as to what part of my logic you disagree with. BTW, it's actually not my logic.The point of my post is that many small business owners, especially those who create a product and who consider the product an extension of themselves (their creativity and craftsmanship) tend to underprice their work with respect to making a profit. These people don't have a full understanding of the true cost of doing business. The failure usually comes in two areas: not understanding indirect costs of creating and selling a product and strangely not understanding the difference between an expense and an income. For example, many people I meet neglect to include depreciation of their equipment as a cost because "the IRS allows them to write it off on their taxes". That is an indication that it is not a savings to the business. Their are other areas as well.Whether a person includes costs in categories established as "standard business" protocol or uses a method of their own, until they are accounted for, they are latent parasites consuming your income.GREG
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Please notice I said I can't disagree with your logic. In other words, I agree. It was just not clear to me that income taxes were being considered in figuring profit.
When I went into business framing, I thought getting $8 thousand to frame a small split level was not bad money. I considered tools, overhead, insurance, etc. It turned out that the guys working for me were making more money than I was. I took all the risk, made the investment, arranged the contract, and put in twice as many hours as them.
When I finally did my taxes, I found I had actually lost money. Good thing I was not dependent on this source of income.
I built a great house, too good of a house apparently - but lost money. After that, I worked by myself to keep up quality and actually made a little money. Nowadays, I just spend my time completely renovating my own home. I have all the tools, so I still get to feel I haven't wasted any money. If I sell the house later, I will build my next home myself. I have been designing and redesigning it for about ten years. I just hope I don't get too old to wield my tools before it happens.
In more complex situations, before tax net income is a much better measure since it isolates the operating results from tax carryforwards, book-tax depreciation differences, etc.Unless marginal tax rates are 100% on the first dollar earned then any net income is better than none at all and taxes don't really affect the decision making process. Then the decision becomes a 'competing use of time' matter. If you can make something else and make more money, then by all means do so.If you are pleased with the amount of income you have after taking into account all actual costs and economic depreciation (before income taxes) and the amount of time you spend in the endeavor then your analysis is complete.FWIW, economic (not tax) depreciation on woodworking machinery could easily be decades since estimated useful lives are very long for well maintained equipment. In a small shop making pens, it can and probably should be ignored as it would take decades to wear out most machinery in that sort of working environment.Please read this disclaimer which is an integral part of my post: Do not copy, print, or use my posts without my express written consent. My posts are not based on fact. My posts are merely my written opinions, fiction, or satire none of which are based on fact unless I expressly state in writing that a statement is a fact by use of the word "fact." No one was intended to be harmed in the making of this post.
Edited 6/11/2007 2:41 pm by ThePosterFormerlyKnownAs
That's way too complex for my life.
Add up your hard costs, ignore depreciation and income taxes, and figure in some profit - enough to make it worth your while and still be able to sell the pens. This won't work for everything, but works fine for a pen turner.
That's it.
Please read this disclaimer which is an integral part of my post: Do not copy, print, or use my posts without my express written consent. My posts are not based on fact. My posts are merely my written opinions, fiction, or satire none of which are based on fact unless I expressly state in writing that a statement is a fact by use of the word "fact." No one was intended to be harmed in the making of this post.
Edited 6/12/2007 7:37 am by ThePosterFormerlyKnownAs
Yep. With contract jobs sometimes it's difficult to foresee everything. But I have found myself in the same situation where an employee or sub ends up with all my profit.I want to know as much as possible in advance how much I will be making before I do the job. I certainly want to know before the once a year tax return.I apologize for misreading your earlier post.GREG
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How much time does it take you to make one pen, for the moment not including the time you spend sourcing and ordering supplies?
Please read this disclaimer which is an integral part of my post: Do not copy, print, or use my posts without my express written consent. My posts are not based on fact. My posts are merely my written opinions, fiction, or satire none of which are based on fact unless I expressly state in writing that a statement is a fact by use of the word "fact." No one was intended to be harmed in the making of this post.
Hello All,
If say the cost est. is 6.00, I would try 14.99. Make 10 and put'em by the cash register. If their gone in a week try 16.99, if they are all ther in a week, 9.99 and find a new way to get the planer. Only the customer will tell you what the correct price is for any given item. Cheers
Jim
Jim,I'm not sure if you are a business owner or not. Although it's true the public does establish if an item is value for money, it is all in how it's perceived. However, I have come across many people in business going broke or just barely surviving because they were unaware of their true cost of producing an item. Joe was a photographer. He attended a business seminar where he was walked through an analysis of the cost of his 8x10. Joe discovered he was losing $0.50 on every print he was selling so his profit was greatly hurt since this was his most sold item. When the instructor asked "Now that you know you have a problem, what are you going to do about it?", Joe had a classic answer: "Isn't it obvious? I have to sell a heck of a lot more 8x10's!"If an item's price is 30% profit and you lower the price 10%, you have to sell 3 times more of that item to make the same amount of money. In this case a 10% price reduction is a 33% profit reduction. So:
If that item is 30% profit, a 10% price cut is a 33% profit reduction (3X more sales to break-even).
If that item is 50% profit, a 10% price cut is a 20% profit reduction (5x more sales to break-even).
If that item is 20% profit, a 10% price cut is a 50% profit reduction (2x more sales to brake-even).I'm not saying never cut price, but know what your true cost is and the impact of setting a price on your bottom line.GREG
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I have made some beautiful pens out of cherry burl, birdseye maple, Bethlehem olivewood, snakewood, mapwood, several other burls with a busy grain; I am sure you probably have also. Often times the busy grain is shown off in pens. Since the blanks can easily start at $8 to $10 each; due to their striking appearance, people would most likely be willing to pay more for them. The amount of time to make a pen using a blank like one of those listed would not change much. If you go into a store like Office Depot; their pens sale from $30- $50 each or more, and are not as unique in design or attractive.
I would suggest go online and search for a attractive display case that does not take up a huge amount of space on your friends counter. It may only hold 10-15 pens. This would aid in security as well as presentation. Presentation is very important. It would also keep someone from grabbing a pen to fill out a check and forget to leave it. You have a good opportunity, take advantage of it. Give your friend a beautiful pen for herself to use also.
I agree with BruceS.
I sell my pens at 60$ for one unit with a wooden box that I make to and 50$ each for 20 or more. And it is successfull. I have the best result when I sell to corporatives for their employees for a 20 years of services for exemple.
Galopin
Other than for the thrill of seeing something you made for sale in an actual operating business I can't imagine this would be worth the trouble unless you could get at least 30 or 40 bucks apiece for them (while selling a minimum of ten a week).
Please read this disclaimer which is an integral part of my post: Do not copy, print, or use my posts without my express written consent. My posts are not based on fact. My posts are merely my written opinions, fiction, or satire none of which are based on fact unless I expressly state in writing that a statement is a fact by use of the word "fact." No one was intended to be harmed in the making of this post.
Back when I use to do craft shows, I sold pen/pecil sets. I priced them 15 a piece or 20 for a set. That included a nice case. I would by the blanks in lots of 25, and once the blanks were glued onto the barels, I could do 10 an hour. I never did the exotics. Tried it once, but people never translated the nicer wood to the extra cost. I sold the heck out of them. Only problem was it became an assemply line type thing, and I got extremely bored making them. Almost became a hatred to see the blanks on the work table. Have fun and good luck.
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Did you quit doing shows because you weren't making enough money? I can't understand how you could sell that second pen/pencil for $5.GREG
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"Did you quit doing shows because you weren't making enough money? I can't understand how you could sell that second pen/pencil for $5.
GREG <!---->••••••• Exo 35:30-35"
A pen and pencil set was $20 seperately they were 15 a piece. Never sold a single unit, people always bought the sets. So that's $10.00 a piece
Nope, made good money at it. That was not the reason at all. They sold well. I mean the parts were dirt cheap. I already had the wood. I mean two pieces of 1/2 x 2 1/2 material and you have a pen. The only other material was super glue, benlhlins (pardon the sp) finish (one botle lasted the entire venture and I probably still have half a botle in a box somehwere), and that was nothing. Oh I forgot to mention the pen blank shaft for the lathe, that was 20 bucks in the beginning of the effort, and the juice for the shop smith. I did make some out of cocobolo that were stunning but a real pain in the butt on the tools. After a few shows, I zeroed in on the materials people liked which turned out to be walnut and oak. The craft shows I did were not the kind where people would drop $75-100 bucks on a pen and that was ok. By the time I figured up the time I had in it, less materials, It was one of my best margin items. It takes nothing to make one. Beleive it or not, the biggest seller was christmas ornament angels I made with wood and corn husks. Nothing in them (scrap) and all profit (less labor).
Besides, I did it for fun! It was not my primary way of earning dough! My wife did quilted items and a few stainded glass items and I did the wood working. The kids came along and we just no longer had time for it and I was never meant to work in an assemply line type occupation. Also, we found what would sell well and had to make a lot of those items. That became too much like work and took all the fun out of it. Now my brother still does pens and turned purfume viles. They are very nice as well (selling items I mean). The wifes stainded glass skills have progressed tremendously and we are thinking of partnering now that the kids are within a few years of splitting, in some furniture/stainded glass creations as we approach retirement. I'm 44 and she's 45 (I'll never put it that way in front of her, I use the term our future great time together. Gets much less of a rile out of her) Take care.
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Edited 6/9/2007 2:26 pm by bones
Bones,Thanks for the info. I can understand how the production mode would take all the fun out of pen turning. From your reply about your wife, I can concur that you are a wise diplomat.Did you ever try acrylic blanks or the composites like Dymondwood?Were nearly all your pens slim-line? How were your results with more of an upscale pen like cigar pens, Wall St, El Grande, etc? I realize more people can by $25 pens than $45 pens. But I am wondering if the profit margin might make up for lower sales volumes on the less expensive items? What I am concerned with is the amount of profit not the gross sales volume.GREG
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"Bones,
Thanks for the info. I can understand how the production mode would take all the fun out of pen turning. From your reply about your wife, I can concur that you are a wise diplomat.
Did you ever try acrylic blanks or the composites like Dymondwood?"
That stuff was not around when I did mine. I do like the looks of the acrylics and they have some really wild stuff. The wildest I ever attempted was deer antler, with mixed results.
Were nearly all your pens slim-line? How were your results with more of an upscale pen like cigar pens, Wall St, El Grande, etc?
Never did the bigger ones. They look nicer, and my brother who hung with it, did move on to the bigger pens and they are more expensive and rightly so. They take more time to work, and the components were more expensive. He was a mucky muck and Toys R'us and sold to the other execs and made a good cut on each one. He acutally does better now with the custom turned purfume bottles. The best one I ever did was some purple heart that a guy wanted grip rings on. I told him that would be extra and hed said I don't care. I chared $15 extra. He paid in advance and shipping from VA to Seattle. The extra to put the grip rings on amounted to my pocket knife touching the barrel as it spun on the lathe, about 10 seconds worth of work. He wrote a nice note back how he loved the pen.
I realize more people can by $25 pens than $45 pens. But I am wondering if the profit margin might make up for lower sales volumes on the less expensive items? What I am concerned with is the amount of profit not the gross sales volume.
I think it matters more about knowing your customer. If you can get into an environment where that $50 pen is not outrageous then, you are in. Give it a shot and see how it does. If you want to do it for serious money, the thinking has to be different than if you just love doing it and want to make a few bucks to support the hobby. I cant' complain, my craft show days and making screen printing frames for a printing shop, bought a lot of my wood working equipment. Take care.
GREG <!---->••••••• Exo 35:30-35<!---->Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
I use all sorts of man-made materials, including diagonal ply, acrylics, etc. These do require some special consideration due to brittleness, glue joints, transparancy, etc. If anyone has problems please let me know and I am sure I can help. The best advice I can give for the acrylic type materials is PAINT YOUR BRASS TUBES white or black, it makes a tremendous difference...
Tom
[email protected]
I like to turn pens also, and envision that turning and other shop products being used for a little extra money when I retire in 4 years. Many of my pens have been given away as gifts to family and they much appreciate them. I have had little success so far in selling pens though. I guess I have just not found the right venue yet. Other items sell well but pens are a bit difficult. When I ask $20 for a nice figured wood slimline pen and $40 for a cigar pen with premium wood I get little takers. I figure that I need to add the kit price to the blank price; add a little for markup on the materials, and then figure what my time is worth. That is just breaking even. Getting paid for the time spent producing a product is not a profit, just payment for the time spent. So we must add an amount to this total to make a profit. Profit is where the cost of the new tooling, added equiptment, and expendable supplies comes from. If I cannot sell an item and make a profit, what's the point!! Fun is fun, and woodworking is fun to me, but if I am to consider this as a business a profit must be made. I will not sell an item below the price where I make a profit! Millions of small business owners give up and quit each year in the US and usually it is because they cannot sell their product or services for enough of a profit to make a living. Don't let yourself become one of the quitters. Make an excellent product, find the right venue to sell them at a profit, and enjoy turning your hobby in to a small business if that is what you desire.
Sorry I am so long winded but I also had to put my two cents worth into this discussion. Have fun making sawdust!
I thought this web page would be of interest considering the discussion of pricing.
Lee
http://www.blackcreekproducts.com/penspencils.html
Bruce,
There are a lot of ways of thinking about how to price items you made. You have received responses on many of them. I suggest selling the pens at $200,000 apiece. That way, you only have to sell five to make a million dollars.
Mel
Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,
I'm selling mine for a million $ apiece. Preorders only. Crazy? Maybe! But I only want to sell one of them! (I'm not greedy.)
Ray
Ray,
I like the way you think. The rest of these folks are wimps when it comes to pricing. No self confidence. Let's write a book called "Turning Pens into Big Bucks". Indeed, our company's logo could be statues of be two large male deer made out of thousands of turned pens. ((Get it? "turning pens into big bucks" -- nyuk, nyuk)) If our books are signed and numbered, we can sell them as collectable, and we'll get even more for them. You know, I wasn't always this self-confident. Everything turned around for me when I first saw Frank Klaus' video on how to make a dovetailed drawer. I was impressed. So I have spent the rest of my life channeling Frank Klaus. Now I have plenty of self confidence. We're gonna be RICH.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,
You are so right. Why not go for the big bucks, instead of settling for a little doe?
Well, enough punishment for now.
Ray
I charge $35 for most of my pens, $15 for a slimline, $25 for a slim pen & pencil set. At these prices I can keep up with what I sell.
Incidently, I have a LOT of wood, apricot, manzanita and olive that I cut in California if anyone is interested...
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The way I see it, the only difference between a $10 pen and a $25 pen is asking for $25.Would you rather sell 100 $25 pens or 250 $10 pens? Which gives you more profit? Which is more fun?You can never compete with the putters in garages that don't account for their time, don't report their income, and believe that the supplies they have on hand are free. Don't try. And don't become one.
The way I see it, the only difference between a $10 pen and a $25 pen is asking for $25.
Truth.Please read this disclaimer which is an integral part of my post: Do not copy, print, or use my posts without my express written consent. My posts are not based on fact. My posts are merely my written opinions, fiction, or satire none of which are based on fact unless I expressly state in writing that a statement is a fact by use of the word "fact." No one was intended to be harmed in the making of this post.
I am a retired Fire Captain, I began making pens about 5 years ago. I putter in my garage (located in the "el" of my 200 year old house that connects to the barn here in Maine. I am surrounded by pen wood I have collected since I started this "hobby", I have gathered material from pallets, trees, bowling balls and have probably spent about $6,000 in addition for materials/tools. I sell pens for an average of $35 but if I am using a $40 kit and a $10 blank, I may get $75 or so....
I report my income and pay the sales tax quarterly, even if it doesn't amount to much.
I may be one of the people you cautioned "Don't become one".
My pens are beautiful not because of ornate turning, but because I select materials that have character even when made into simple cylindars. Recently I have gotten to like some of the man-made materials including decora for the "classic" look.
If anyone would like pictures, I would be happy to send some off.
Tom
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MainfarmMan, Sorry, my response was not directed to you; I just clicked the nearest "reply" box.A couple of years ago, someone, (here, I think) posted a reply that went something like, "...soon people have a surplus of burfls, to be disposed of at any price. " The thread was about these sort of people really hurting the craftspeople who have a family to support on their skills and trade.
hammer,
"the only difference between a $10 pen and a $25 pen is asking for $25."
A long time ago, a potential customer said to me "XXXX says he can make me the same bed that you make, for a lot less money. Why does yours cost so much more?"
I told him, that XXXX only thought he was making the same bed as me, because he couldn't see the difference between his product and mine. Sometimes the difference is in the knowledge of scale, proportion, and materials, even the line of a curve in a pen barrel, that separates the mediocre from the superior. I recommend Sack's books, "Fine Points of Furniture" and "New Fine Points of Furniture" for examples of this difference. It's really eye opening.
Once I saw a sign above the door of a garage, "We have no problem with our competitors who charge less than us. They know what their product is worth."
Of course, sometimes the customer can't see the difference either. As my wife says, "Some people's only taste, is in their mouth." Or the difference isn't important enough to warrent them spending the extra money. Aesthetics are one of the first things to go out the window too, when times get tight.
Ray
You know this thread reminds me of the pen turning class I took a few years back. I took it with my wife as a fun couple thing.
Someone in the class (another husband and wife duo) indicated that they were interested and making and selling the pens for profit at craft shows, and asked what the instructor would charge. Her response was not to bother, and when asked why she asked who in the class intended to sell pens at craft shows... Half the class put up their hand.
The point everybody with a lathe seems to make pens at some point, which really drives the value down.
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