When a jewelry designer decides to sell their jewelry, one of the most anxiety provoking and confusing tasks at hand can be pricing it. How do you know how much to charge for your handmade piece? You have put your thoughts, feelings, skill and hardwork (and let’s face it, sometimes sweat and tears) into this piece and don’t want to let it go for less than it’s worth. On the other hand, though, people are thrifty and careful about where they spend their hard earned money. It isn’t fair to you if you charge too little, but if you charge too much, your customers will be scared off. How do you even know where to start?
Luckily, our owner, Susie Henderson has made this daunting task easier for us by sharing her personal jewelry pricing formula. After 20 years of selling her jewelry in retail stores, online and in many other settings, Susie has tweaked and perfected a formula that works for beginners and experts alike. We decided to make this
Jewelry Pricing Calculator that uses the formula and takes most of the work and stress out of pricing your jewelry. I have found that it also saves me a lot of time. Simply start at the top of the calculator and work your way down, entering the information it asks for. If you don’t understand what it’s asking for or have a question about a particular section, click the “?” button for help (or simply
contact us with your question!). After you have entered in all necessary information, click the “price” button and you’re done.
There are question mark icons at the top of each section for you to click on if you get stuck.
Important things to know before you get started: you will need to know the price of the jewelry components and beads that you used, so get those invoices and receipts handy. In a jam (who keeps all their receipts?) you can always estimate or look up a similar item online to see what it generally goes for. You will also need to know how long you spent making your piece. Again, estimate if necessary. For your convenience, there is a timer on the calculator. Keep this calculator bookmarked or open on your desktop near where you bead (or save it as an app on your smartphone), that way when you make your next piece you can use the timer and fill in the materials as you go. Just click the start button on the timer before you start a piece and the stop button when you’re done (it also has a pause feature if you temporarily stop working on your piece to take a break, etc.). This will tell you precisely how long you spent on a particular piece of jewelry.
It is helpful to time yourself while working on a piece so that you know how much time you spent on it. Generally, the more time you spend, the more you should charge for the piece.
If the price result you get seems unusually high or low to you, make sure you have selected the right option in the first window “Retail or Wholesale.” If you select Wholesale, you will receive a lower price result than if you select “Retail.” Also consider your hourly labor rate. If the price result you received for your piece seems unusually high (and more than you think your customers would pay), consider lowering your hourly labor rate. Conversely, if the price seems much lower than what you think your customer would pay, perhaps you need to raise your labor rate.
We truly hope that you find this tool as helpful as we have! We want to reiterate that it is completely free so we invite you to share it with any of your beading friends. We also encourage you to share it on
Facebook,
Pinterest,
Twitter and
Google+! Please leave any questions or comments you have below. Thanks everyone and happy beading!
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