Customer Reviews

The Basic Guide to Pricing Your Craftwork: With Profitable Strategies for Recordkeeping, Cutting Material Costs, Time & Workplace Management, Plus Tax

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Mr. Dillehay's advice is aimed squarely at handcrafters, which means he's able to recommend courses of action that might be contrary to more general advice. For example, while it's common in many stores to price just under a dollar amount ($.99 or $.95 amounts), you don't want to do that with most handcrafted items. That sort of price can actually leave people thinking your goods are cheap and low-quality. Similarly, talking up the uniqueness of your methods or materials and raising your prices might increase your sales, even though common wisdom says that if sales are slow you should lower your prices.

Many beginning crafters are reluctant to put a decent price on their goods. They feel that they or their products aren't good enough, or that people won't be willing to pay that kind of price. They look at the price tag on the materials they used and think they shouldn't mark things up much beyond that. The problem is, there are many costs associated with crafting work that aren't taken into account by that, and you could find yourself losing money without even realizing it. Dillehay makes certain that you know how to take all of those invisible expenses into account when pricing your goods.

He goes on to talk about pricing for different markets. You might be able to price higher at a craft fair than through a store, for example. He even discusses wholesale pricing that allows you to sell to stores, catalogs, and other outlets while still making a profit. In fact, pretty much the only subject that seems conspicuously absent is any talk of selling online whatsoever.

Because so many factors affect the price of your goods, this book ends up doubling as a mini-guide on running a craft business (although you'll still want to delve more thoroughly into that as its own topic). It includes a variety of forms for inventories and so on.

Despite the absence of information regarding online pricing, methods and sales---which these days seems like a bit of a large oversight---there's so much valuable information in here that I highly recommend it to any crafter who'd like to make a profit on her wares.

It brings up some interesting points, but it's more of a one-time read. I wish I had just picked it up at the library.

I think this is a good book to start out with. There are a lot of ideas for getting organized and competing. The example sheets displayed in the book are helpful as well. The illustrations are useful but my plan is to use software for most of the record keeping.

"An excellent resource . . . a well organized book is nothing without solid information and the book delivers here." -- The Crafts Report