“wow, that is so expensive”… “wow, that is so cheap”
I often get comments about the prices of my pieces, both from customers and fellow goldsmiths. While customers argue my prices are high, colleagues say the opposite. So here is a brief explanation on how I price my art.
Every manufactured item, no matter the industry, has a production cost. Production cost includes material (metal, stones, enamels), labor (time spent making the pieces and buying material), and overhead (rent, energy, consumables like burs and sandpaper, wear and tear of equipment). One might also include design, packaging, website maintenance and so on, but let’s make it simple for now. Profit is whatever is added after production costs are met, and allows for reinvestment and growth. Simply put, final price = production cost+profit.
In my experience, most customers compare my prices to what they see at jewelry chain stores and foreign websites. Here is the catch: they use industrial processes and labor from abroad (let’s not go into the ethics of that) to produce large quantities of the same item. They save in material by buying metals by the ton and stocking when the market is favorable. Their production cost is incredibly low. Furthermore, they are able to reduce profit because they sell in large amounts. All of this makes this price comparison naive and unfair: think apples and oranges.
As a one-person business, I do it all by myself: I design, buy materials in small amounts, manufacture the pieces, take pictures, feed my website (which I made and maintain myself), do advertising and social media (my weakest point), pack and post orders, and so on. Because I don’t have formal education neither in goldsmithing nor business, and being a very recent entrepreneur (I’m learning as I go), I only charge the time spent making the pieces, for which I pay myself the minimum wage (agreed by the unions of the metal industry CAO).
Please remember, by buying from an artisan you’ll get a beautifully handmade product and support a more gentle type of commerce.
“BUY LESS, BUY BETTER. SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESSES”
