Pricing Handmade Goods

In a world where you can buy leather goods from Amazon and big box stores or chains, seeing the price tag on a handcrafted item can be a shock. Why pay $100+ for a wallet when you can get something that's good enough for $20 elsewhere?

It's a dilemma that all crafters have to face at some point or another: Do you undervalue your time and effort in order to be competitive, so you find shortcuts in your crafting process, do you buy cheaper materials to keep your own costs down, or do you stick to your guns and sell at a fair value?

I don't think underpricing the goods is the right answer. A lot of the goods you see that are priced so low are also cheap. You will often see these goods use fused leather (which is essentially leather bits glued to fabric and pressed to resemble real leather...because of a technicality they might even call it "genuine leather" because, technically, it uses leather) or PVC vinyl, are sewn by machine, and produced in mass batches.

Many crafters aim to get their production time down. Part of that is experience: the first time you put a bag together, it may take several hours. The second time, you've learned all the mistakes already and can even cut your production time down by half. Other tricks involve getting machines to assist in speeding up the process: Sewing machines can be expensive, but save time. However, the crafter has to weigh other decisions when it comes to sewing machines: for example, the lockstitch done by a sewing machine is not as sturdy as a saddlestitch, which must be hand-sewn. Edges can be sanded and burnished by hand, or a crafter can employ machines to assist in cutting that time down.

I've used a burnishing attachment on my Dremel, but I'll be honest, I feel I get better results when it's done by hand with a wooden edge slicker. I do use a sanding cylinder on the Dremel to help with shaping and evening edges, but once again, doing the final sanding with fine-grit sandpaper just seems to give better results for me right now.

Some customers would rather pay the lower price for machine-stitched goods, and saving up for a decent quality machine is something many crafters dream about. Some day I'd love to own a good skiving machine, and a good splitting machine, too.

Time is money, friend. If a crafter puts 20+ hours into a bag, they should be paid for their time as well. And not just $1.50/hour! Most crafters look to pricing their time at $15/hour...and they're not just trying to drag out the amount of time it takes to create that one item just to drive the price up. They want to make it as quickly as possible so they can make another item! Have trust that a person isn't just putting an arbitrary price on their goods...they're just trying to set a price that values their time as an artist as well.

So if the price tag on an item seems high, look to the description: Was it hand-sewn? That takes more time, but is higher quality. (For the record, the high-end, haute couture bags that cost in the thousands are often hand-stitched.) What quality is the leather? What makes the item unique?

Getting a one-of-a-kind item, that is of good quality materials, is constructed with methods that will make it last, and has the details that shows it's handmade shouldn't be a shock. You will own something that no one else in the world has...something that an artisan put a lot of time and care into creating. They want you to love that item as much as they did when they had it on their bench.