How To Price Your Hand Made Jewellery: Tips

There is a lot of confusion on how to price your hand made jewellery, and I haven't quite grasped it yet either! You might think that pricing you items low will make it sell quickly as people are always on the hunt for a bargain! Right?...Well, thats not always the case, especially with hand made items. If you under value your work not only are you under cutting fellow artists, but you can make other people think that your items are low quality or are even mass produced (which is one comment I had about my rings when they were seriously under priced!). Of course, you can do damage to your business by going too far the other way and over pricing your pieces, which can obviously put people off. 

Selling jewellery is a huge learning curve for those of us who make it and there is always more to learn!! So here is an article that may help you from the jewelrymakingjournal.com!

Pricing Handmade Jewelry Too Low

By Rena Klingenberg

Many artists make the error of pricing their handmade jewelry too low.

Often it’s for one of these reasons:

* They don’t value their own talent. They feel “lucky” to sell one of their pieces at any price, even if the sale barely covers the cost of their materials.

* They believe their jewelry is “unworthy” of netting higher prices.

* Their well-meaning friends and family (who don’t know anything about the handmade jewelry market) urge them not to “risk failure” by setting their prices too high.

* If their jewelry isn’t selling, they assume it’s because of the pricing – so the first thing they do is drop their prices.

* Their financial situation makes them desperate to make a sale, so they hesitate to put higher prices on their work for fear of scaring customers away.

* They’re not sure how to price handmade jewelry.

But why not charge low prices for your handmade jewelry?

I’m going to share some of my thoughts here, and then I hope you’ll leave a comment below to share your thoughts and experiences regarding low prices on handmade jewelry!

 Working Harder to Earn Less

Pricing handmade jewelry too low means the artist may have to make and sell 5 pieces of jewelry to earn $50, rather than earning the same $50 for just 1 piece.

When jewelry artists set themselves up to work harder while earning less, it’s not a sustainable way to run a business.

Sooner or later the overworked artist tends to either burn out, or shut down the business because it’s not profiting enough to stay afloat.

 Growing the Wrong Customer Base

Under-pricing handmade jewelry also means that artists tend to attract a customer base that consists of “bargain shoppers” rather than “handmade jewelry shoppers”.

That makes it hard for the artist to raise their prices without losing a big portion of their customer base.

It Devalues the Overall

Handmade Jewelry Marketplace

When some artists get into low-price wars, or try to compete with cheap imported jewelry, it can hurt other jewelry artists’ sales.

Unrealistically low prices can cause some customers to equate “handmade” with “cheap pricing”, and pass up jewelry that’s priced higher and more realistically.

Undercutting other jewelry artists doesn’t do you or your fellow artists any good.

You Don’t Want to Make

This Kind of Jewelry Sale!

I’ve seen some jewelry artists actually buy other artists’ low-priced jewelry … specifically to take it apart and remake the components into a much higher-priced piece of jewelry!

The under-pricing artist is thrilled to make a sale – but has no idea their creation is being bought as a cheap source of jewelry supplies.

Don’t let that happen to you!

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I hope this has helped you at the very least see the reasons why you shouldn't under price for the sake of attracting customers! Its likely to put people off you rather get people to buy from you!

In the meantime here is a selection of gorgeous jewellery from: http://www.nintaijewellery.co.uk

Until next time x