Gold and amber earrings

[handcrafted]

Someone has asked me to make some earrings as a commision. The will be long 9 carat gold chain with gold hooks and amber on the chain attached with gold jump rings. Its coming to at least £25 for all the bits.

This lady said she has a budget of £40 but that includes paying for gold FWP studs too which il charge £10 (cheaper than i would normally charge me thinks!). So she has £10 left for the amber earrings.

Now £30 isnt enough for these earrings. Is it cheeky to say that it isnt enough? Or should i be making them so that i can fit her budget.

How much would you charge for 1 1/2 inch long gold amber chip earrings?

[snowgoose]

i dont know about the pricing but maybe you could let her know that its possable to make them within her budget but if she would be willing to spend a bit more, then they could be better?

[cupcake]

Tell her the budget would cover goldfill or gold plate (I presume, you'll need to check materials costs) but for 9k she'd need to pay more. Don't undercharge or you'll make nothing. If the materials come to £25 and you charge £30, you're only adding £5 for labour and markup which is peanuts. Even if you were to markup at 50% instead of the recommended 100% That's £37.50 plus your labour, and even taking that at bare minimum the earrings would cost her around £40, so effectively you're giving her the other pair for nothing.

[auntynet]

You need to sort out a pricing strategy - and stick to it!!!

You should work out the cost of all your materials and then at least double it. Then you work out your time - you should be charging at least the minimum wage but round it up to the next £ so that its easy to work out to 15 mins.

Say an item costs you £5 to make and takes you an hour and a half. Working on £6 per hour you should charge £10 (twice the cost of your materials) plus £9 (one and a half hours time). So total selling price would be £19.

You have to stick to this strategy no matter what you are making and tell your customers what you would charge for what they want. If they aren't happy with your price then you try to reach an agreement that you're both happy with and by that I mean either the customer pays or you make something that doesn't cost as much.

You want to do this for a living so you gotta get strict on yourself and stick to your guns.

Gold findings are not cheap - have you suggest gold fill? They work out at a fraction of the cost and it is just as hard wearing - it would take a lifetime of wearing it for the gold to wear off. I've had customers insisting on 9ct gold until I tell them the price then when I suggest gold fill they're usually happy to go with that.

Another thing you need to be wary of is the fluctuation in the price of gold. You should give your customer the quote on the day that you actually order the findings to prevent you being out of pocket if the price jumps up after you've quoted and you don't actually manage to order for another week or so.

[CeeGee]

Auntynet is right, you can't squeeze your prices to suit your customer. When I do a commission for a customer that I haven't done before, I work out the costings and price before I start making it and email them a quote with the price. If they give the go-ahead I'll make the jewellery, and unless it's someone I know I get 50% payment upfront. No one has come back and said it's too expensive (yet!).

[MuranoSilver]

Have you added in the postage cost to that £25?
You need to bear in mind that she couldn't get Amber gold drop earrings in ARGOS for £30 so there's no way she could expect handcrafted ones be cheaper than mass produced foreign stuff

You just need to point out that making them in budget isnt a problem but
the total cost will be £40 - £45 (or whatever) for the Earrings and the
Studs will be an additional £10. In my shop I have some gorgeous chain off a hook earrings, quartz faceted drops in 9ct gold with a gold hoop around the bottom section and they're £65....

Nic xx

[AlexandraB]

I'd explain to the customer that you will have to charge more for what she is asking or use cheaper materials and see what is more important to her, keeping the piece in her budget or having the peice made from gold.

You must make a profit on them else if the customer tells someone else about the lovely earrings you made for her, they will expect to pay the same as the first customer and then you will be twice out of profit.

Choose a price that you are comfortable with and stick to it. She can't expect you to work for nothing!

[handcrafted]

Im awful when it comes to pricing things! Do i need to work out costs of each bead!

She wants gold as the person its for is allergic to silver. Il see what she has to say about gold fill.

Thanks everyone! Again.....

[Beadservice]

I think you're charging too little for 9ct gold, so quote her the correct price or offer to make them at her budget, but you would need to modify the materials cost, e.g less amber or less 9ct used, or alternatively swap to Gold Fill.

You would need to fully explain what 'gold fill' is to her, which is usually a 14ct extra thick plating. If someone can wear 9ct gold which is made up of 37.5% pure gold and 62.5% base metals, then they shouldn't have a problem with 'Gold Fill'

Good luck

Debbie

[cupcake]

Yes you need to calculate the cost of each bead, jumpring, bit of wire, chain etc otherwise you will never break even let alone make a profit.

If you're prepared to pay out money for software, there's an American program called Jewelry Designer Manager which calculates your charges for you. You need to input all your bits and pieces and how much you bought and how much it cost etc then it will work out a per item cost for you. Then when you make a piece of jewellery you tell it which items you used and it calculates the materials cost of the piece of jewellery and you can tell it the amount of markup you want to add on and it calculates a selling price for you.

The basic version of the software is about £53 (depending on that day's exchange rate) and the only downside is that it uses the $ rather than £, but I just put a pound value in and ignore the $ sign. I don't know if there's a UK equivalent, but it's easy to use and once you've gone through the chore of inputting your stash, it makes life easy.

[Pebbles]

If you're prepared to pay out money for software, there's an American program called Jewelry Designer Manager which calculates your charges for you. You need to input all your bits and pieces and how much you bought and how much it cost etc then it will work out a per item cost for you. Then when you make a piece of jewellery you tell it which items you used and it calculates the materials cost of the piece of jewellery and you can tell it the amount of markup you want to add on and it calculates a selling price for you.

The basic version of the software is about £53 (depending on that day's exchange rate) and the only downside is that it uses the $ rather than £, but I just put a pound value in and ignore the $ sign. I don't know if there's a UK equivalent, but it's easy to use and once you've gone through the chore of inputting your stash, it makes life easy.

I see what the program is doing and am sure you could write your own. Excel has many applications and am sure it could be modified to do this.

As you have to input all your stock to the program I am thinking it would not be too much hassle to type it all into a spreadsheet and put your own calculations together.

[Louise77]

You beat me to it - I was going to say exactly the same thing about excel, it's what I use to cost my stuff, you just fiddle about with the formulas in each box to calculate what you want, if you can use excel you can make a very effective coster for your work.
Louise
x

[CeeGee]

I'm another one who uses excel. I have an ever expanding spreadsheet with all of my stock (beads, findings, wire etc) categorised on it with the price per piece (or inch or whatever). Then it's a straightforward process to add up what's in your jewellery. Once you've set it up it takes no time to update with new items/prices etc. You'll be surprised at how the components can add up - it's boring but vital to track your costs in order to know if you're making a profit.

[goldy1]

I just wright the unit price on the zip lock bag or put a sticker on my storage box and work it out from there.

[cupcake]

Excel is great, I use it for all my eBay selling etc. This program is more than just a calculator though, it is specifically designed for jewellery crafters. It works out 3 levels of pricing so you can have wholesale, direct to customers and friends rates for example (yes I know you could do this on Excel as well) it keeps stock inventory, you can upload photos of parts and finished items, it tells you when you're running out of parts, it keeps full details of suppliers, and customers, it produces mailing labels, colour catalogues, invoices and other reports, just at the tick of a box or click of a button.

It was only a suggestion because Handcrafted seemed very phased by working out prices etc, this basically does it all for you, with a bit of initial data inputing. It's not particularly cheap but then neither is Excel if you don't have MS Office on your pc.