Help Please - Anyone selling through a shop??

[urbancrafters]

Hi everyone!
I am a useless 'business woman' and would love a little advice regarding my hairclips.
Someone has asked to buy my clips for their shop, which is great news. Especially as her shop is gorgeous and (I feel) the perfect place for my little hair accessories
The trouble is she (obviously) wants to get the clips from me as cheap as possible. And bascially it is looking as though I will get half of the selling price.
It seams really unfair to me that I am buying the materials, handstitching them and putting them on cute cards only to recieve the same amount of money as the shop owner - which won't all be profit once all of the above have been deducted.

Is this the norm?? Or should I hold out for something else??
It is also complicated by the fact that the hairclips aren't very expensive anyway ie. 50% of £100 is pretty good, but in my case 50% of £3.50 is PANTS

I look forward to hearing your views, Thanks!!

[musivarius]

Hi,

Two sides to look at on this type of thing, for you:
How much does each hairclip cost to make, ie all materials plus the time. With the time you need to also figure in making the display cards and the time to get them ready to post out/for you to deliver. You will see what your hourly earning rate is before tax.

From the point of view of having these for sale in a shop, it's exposure, customers may see you details and contact you direct for other items. The shop may, if sales go ok order larger amounts or even other things that you supply. Some of these things such as the exposure you get are worth more that what you get in monetary terms.

Going back to the hourly rate, if the shop suddenly ordered 200 pieces from you, would it be worth your while doing it?

Hope this helps.

[tipsylipsy]

Great news that someone wants to stock your hairclips, I'm not surprised at all though it was just a matter of time they are so lovely!

Is the profit margin on a sale price of £1.75 enough for you? If not renegotiate with her. The shop will have overheads as well, insurances, business rates, rent, insurances etc etc etc

Good luck with it all, let us know how you get on

[Glitterbug]

I think they're really sweet but they're worth a lot more than £3.50 as they're unique and hand made. I'd say the shop could retail them at £5 and you could get £2.50.

[just sally]

i have just had a peek at your clasps and i agree £3.50 seems a little low, i would much prefer to pay you a fiver(plus) than pay tesco the same for the very unoriginal stuff they sell

[urbancrafters]

Thanks guys, I had dropped off some samples at the shop for her to look at (and the lady working that day bought 2 sets off me for her daughter!) and she said she has been asking customers when they come in how much they would pay for them and it has all been around the £3 mark, as most shoppers aren't really too bothered if something is handmade, more in how big a dent it will make in their wallet

Thanks for all your advice, I will have to sit down and have a think

Oh, Just to re-iterate (sorry for terrible spelling) is that the done thing to have 100% mark up on handmade bits stocked in shops???

Thanks, Lisa x

[goblindreams]

You can get more for Sale or Return.. as the shop then has no initial outlay.

As a general rule, my friend who owns a shop has said that to cover their costs etc, they need to sell for at least twice the buying price.. But I have found when she's sold my stuff in the past, that she can sell stuff for a higher price!

Infact she has bought some stuff off me at the same price I've managed to get on eBay and sold it at over twice the price in shop and been back for more within a fortnight as they sold out

One thing she did recommend which helped though was to make an 'About Us' A4 laminate (or similar) she could use to display the items - which draws attention the handcrafted, locally produced element

Hope this helps

xx

[jencel]

Oh, Just to re-iterate (sorry for terrible spelling) is that the done thing to have 100% mark up on handmade bits stocked in shops???

Well, yes, it is normal, although a shops markup can vary. I think gallery type shops often do 30% or 40%.

The thing is that the shop has a lot of costs to come out of their markup...rent, rates, fuel bills and staff wages are the big costs, but there are lots more smaller ones, so they wouldn't be getting 50% from their sales to take home with them. Depending on the time of year, and how busy the shop is, a shop has to make an awful lot of sales before they get anything they can call profit, especially at the moment.

But I think the thing is that you need to be happy with what you get, and so you may need to charge a higher price to the shop.

[AnnieAnna]

Just back from selling for a shop, so seen it from both sides, and yes, they double the price of what they buy at. Actually times are so tough they were talking of double the price plus the VAT.
However........we found best sellers that had gone out of the £2.40 bracket and become £3 stopped selling.
(For those who know me the exchange rate in the pseudo C16th is 60p to a Tudor penny, £2.40 to a groat - hence the funny numbers).
Other things I saw:
some people see, love, buy;
some people see, want, think, don't buy.
And a middlin priced thing seems cheap in a posh shop but expensive in a bargain basement.

Who said life was easy........?

AnnieAnna

[ladyluckjewellery]

Hi,

A 100% (or sometimes more) mark up for a shop is normal if they are buying your items as stock, but if they're looking for SOR then I'd expect them to only take 30 to 40% of the selling price.

TBH, with things like your hairclips I'd push the shop hard to buy them as stock, as once they've been handled (or tried on) in a shop you'll find it hard to re-sell them yourself when you take back those that haven't sold at the end of each month, some will be clearly 'shop soiled'. It's not as difficult with jewellery as it doesn't seem to show wear & tear as much as fabric items or smaller things.

Like someone else said, if the shop put in a big order for 200 clips, would it be worth your while making them at your current price, or would you lose out - personally I think you could charge quite a lot more (I wouldn't blink at £5 or £6 for them) but it also depends on what sort of shop it is too.

HTH

Claire

[jencel]

I think you could easily charge more for them too, especially as you're selling them in pairs. And if the shop displays them as handmade, that can be a selling point.

[ejralph]

Firstly congratulations that the shop wants your work! That is great news.

Pricing can be tough - because you both need to make a profit. 100 percent mark up (which is the same thing as the shop keeper taking 50 percent cut of the total retail price) is very common.

I havent sold at shops for a while now, but here in the South East, when I was selling through shops and galleries 100 percent mark up was absolute rock bottom, some stores I went with needed even higher mark ups than that.

But you need to remember, they are not being greedy - they have a lot of overheads to pay for. And if you want to sell through shops, you need to work out pricing structures for your work that will allow you both to make a good profit.

My article on pricing goes into this more, in case you want to check it out - http://www.ejrbeads.co.uk/pricingjewellery.htm

I hope you can work things out with the shop so that you have prices that work for you both. I agree with what others have said - if selling your work at wholesale rates, it is quite acceptable to expect the shop to meet a minimum order amount too. Sometimes that can be a way around making less profit on some items - just make sure you are selling more of them!

[matt.chatterley]

Oh, Just to re-iterate (sorry for terrible spelling) is that the done thing to have 100% mark up on handmade bits stocked in shops???

100% markup (minimum) is typcial in most shops, for virtually all goods.

Generally when things are sold on a commission basis in art galleries et al, they'll take 30% commission as a minimum, too.

[Soapie]

Sadly many people are now thinking money rather than unique or quality - with no consideration for the love or labour you have invested!

When I had my stained glass business I had an in road to supply John Lewis which I rejected because they wanted to add 250% to my retail price and I felt that at those prices my stuff would sit gathering dust.

[Linden Blossom]

Getting the pricing right is always a tricky one. Personally I supply two shops on a sale-or-return basis. I tell them the amount I want for the piece if it sells (I double the price of materials and adjust if I thinks it's too much/too little*) and suggest they add 50% of that to get the retail price. In one shop the owner prefers me to just price up the items using that method. In the other, I supply with the price tags blank and let her set her own price (but I think she works with the 50% markup).

So basically the price the customer pays breaks down as 1/3 materials, 1/3 to me and 1/3 to the shop which I think is more than fair.

However, I agree with many of the other comments that a 100% markup if pretty standard, even more on some items like jewellery.


* costing your work ... another minefield!!