Welcome to the first post of my new Business Growth series! As a 7-figure handmade business owner, I wanted to start an informational series to help you start and build a profitable handmade business right from the start. We will cover every aspect of creating a profitable and sustainable business in this series, but we are starting with the beginning to make sure you are in the right mindset.
How to Create a Profitable Handmade Business
You are a business owner, and you need to treat your business like a business right from the start. As soon as you have items for sale, you are a business owner and left hobby territory.
As a business owner, you need to value your time, skills, and items.
Most of us, especially at the start, tend to undervalue our worth, which is not a sustainable business strategy. When pricing your items, you can’t just look at competitors (although market research with your target audience is critical) or try to low-ball your pricing. Most ideal customers will take a look at low pricing and wonder why, even subconsciously, “are the materials low quality?” “does the maker really have skills, or will this fall apart quickly?”
Those are just some of the questions customers ask themselves when they see a low priced item. They don’t automatically think, “what a deal, I need to grab this up right now!” It’s human nature to wonder why something is priced so low, and in doing so, you are doing yourself and your business a disservice.
How to Price Your Handmade Items Correctly
When it comes to pricing a handmade item, there are tons of calculators out there, but most don’t include everything you need to think about when it comes to pricing.
Here are just a few examples of things that you need to consider when it comes to pricing your handmade products:
- Legal Fees / Licensing / Insurance
- Paying Yourself
- The Materials Cost
- Software / Apps / Tools / Subscriptions
- Home Office or Work Space Overhead
- Hiring and Payroll (even if you don’t plan to hire soon, you’ll be happy to have a cushion built into your pricing for this right off the bat)
- Advertising
- Payment Processing Fees
Profit
And then most important is profit. Your business will not be able to survive for years without any profit, so that needs to be built into your pricing structure. Profit allows you to further invest in your business and continue to grow (ex: investing in more high-quality materials, paying more for advertising, etc.)
Another factor to consider with profit is if you will be offering wholesale pricing. Many handmade sellers start off with such low prices that they’ve boxed themselves into a corner where they then can’t do wholesale pricing and still be profitable.
Final Thoughts
You are worth your prices. Your handmade products are worth the price. You are a handmade business that is not competing with big box stores. Your customers know the value of handmade and are willing to pay the cost of your beautifully handcrafted products - you just need to trust yourself, your work, and that the right customers are out there.
