Thread: Angry Clientele?

Well done on selling an expensive piece.
It doesn't get much better than that.
No point pointing out the minor flaws in a bit of work to the buyer either. Heck! it's usually the maker only that knows about them.
In this litigious stupid world we find ourselves in you really only have to worry about the worst possible scenario.
For instance say you sell a chair to someone. The buyer sits on the chair. A leg breaks. Customer gets impaled on chair leg, then sues you for everything you own. Not good.
You might have product insurance, you might not.
Depends on your own personal quality control mechanisms.
There is a veritable encyclopedia of possible answers to your question here.
Interested to hear other points of view.
Best thing is "You sold something for a good price" hip, hip, hooray! to you. It is a great feeling and is something most creative types yearn.

Fear of client rejection is pretty normal and is one reason why I don't like making stuff for money, I'd rather avoid this agro and make an item for nothing or cost.
How much detail you go into about a product I reckon depends on the buyer and the item.
Some buyers just want the product and are not that interested in how you made it.
Others want to know as much about it as possible, and there are lots of people in between.
In general I don't go into detail unless the buyer expresses an interest.
If you want the buyer back to buy more then it will be worth your while to work out where she/he is coming from so you can give them the buying experience they want,

I did make a custom made item for a bloke that was a paid for by a someone else.
When it was finished they both came along to pick it up and I thought it was quirky enough to warrant some explanation of the details but after 30s of information it was clear neither were interested.

Another time I made something and I mailed it to the buyer and he shot me back an email saying he loved what I had done but wanted to ask me a few questions. We ended up having lengthy email exchange over it.

Congratulations Luke on selling your item.
I agree with what has already been said in that I do not go into construction details or "design" features unless asked and then only answer their question and do not proffer any further details.
You can sell the item on the finish, price, uniqueness, totally handcrafted etc., without pointing out minor blemishes or construction flaws.

I'm with you - much better at making than selling, but I think the other guys are right, only you know the mistakes and can see them, and the buyers are buying because they have no idea how to do it themselves, and for the same reason can't see the faults.

I recently retired to the shed, and people keep saying I should make and sell stuff, and I say what, this piece of junk I whipped up on the lathe or the work bench? Seems we see it differently. I just see a bit of "time + scrap wood" and they see a work of art. Such is life.
So keep it short, and quietly slip the cash in your pocket

Luke,

I haven't sold any big ticket items but I was present in a FNQ gallery when the owner was marketing a very expensive ($20k +) and spectacular red cedar dinning setting to US husband & wife clients. The wife was none to impressed that the red cedar appeared to be different colours. The gallery owner knows his timber and patiently explained how the timber for the dining setting all came from the one log and that it is all the same colour & that the reason that it appeared different was because of the angle of the light falling upon it & how the orientation of the timber affected the apparent colour. He even picked up and moved chairs to demonstrate his point. The wife insisted that before she purchased it the timber must all look the same colour so could you do something about it please. I guess that would be a bit hard to wear.

Alby Hall at Ancient Kauri Kingdom at Awanui in the North Island of NZ makes very very expensive ancient kauri furniture and other colleagues sculpt art pieces. Alby would have a few yarns to tell. One of his pet peeves is ill informed customers who insist upon testing timber with a key or finger nail. AK doesn't like that so much, nor does the maker.

Hi I can uderstand you asking this as once you have accepted a comission and started you always have a nagging doubt in your head that the client might not fall in love with the piece when you unveil it
I have done a few commissions and thankfully can say I have never had a client be disattisfied with the piece.You tend to get paranoid about every slight fault or blemish and feel, obliged to point them out ecactly as you say

I remember my first commission that I had over 25 years ago when I was first starting out as a business
Just about everything went wrong, I miscalaculatednthe cost ofnthe timber and themtime it would take so consequently woefully underpriced the job.

I had to make a pair of chests of drawers, a corner vanity unit and a small wall cabinet all in pine.
I decided to make it all from narrow strips approx 2"wide pine all glued together, big mistake as alot of glueing up just to make up the panels.With no real machinery to speak of it was a real challenge.
My workshop arena was the back half of my dad's single garage.I finally got the job done but 2 weeks late and no real profit made.The client was pleased, thankfully.
Lesson learnt there

I sell most of my pieces through galleries, mainly Boranup in Margaret River, so takes a lot of stress out of the equation.

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

Reasonable or unreasonable complaints, how often does this happen, and what can be done to minimize the chances of it happening?

I know that the simplest answer to this question is "Don't screw up." Unfortunately I'm still working on that...

Cheers,
Luke

The simple job of drawing to scale the item you are going to build for the client , and have the client confirm that they are happy with the drawing is the best way to minimize the risk of the client complaining about something they didn't expect.

Hey mate, I sell hand made and hand decorated pottery for a living, and every piece, while of really high standard, does have a slight imperfection or more. The vast majority of people know that this is because it is hand made, and any thing still perfectly functional but significantly flawed gets a discount. Just a few pieces aren't fit for sale, so they go home with us, or to a ceramic artist we know to be broken and used in murals she makes.

So the low down, little imperfections are part of the handmade game, and should be expected both by the maker and the buyer, even if we do like to aim for perfection in things we make!

A few relevant quotes:
"Nothing is perfect."
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
"If it ain't broke don't fix it."
"KISS - Keep it simple stupid."
"The Seven Ps - Proper prior planning prevents poor product."
"Know your worth."
"Self praise is no recommendation."
"Own your mistakes."

And the list goes on.

After 50 years in the timber industry, both as a raw material supplier and as a custom furniture maker, I have come to realize the relevance of the above.
Customers are as different as timber species. And the similarity often doesn't stop there! How you handle them is as much a skill as making the pieces for them.
The most important quality you can have is integrity.

Though its not so much 'selling' an item, i have gotten into hot water after restoring something for someone on one occasion.

It was a Japanese 19th century lacquer chest of fairly high quality, and carved in deep relief with floral patterns in black on black lacquer and extremely dull and dirty when it was brought to me. I was asked to clean all of the surfaces, colour match any missing or damaged areas and to polish it to the maximum 'mirror' sheen possible.

Before i began work i warned the client that it'd cost a lot to bring it up to his standards and that old black lacquer is very often extremely discoloured and murky looking from sun and moisture exposure underneath the dull layer of grease, dust and dirt and that once it was polished out any flaws would be highlighted (and that it was impossible to turn the lacquer back to being black once it'd turned murky). I also made sure to show him some worst case scenario examples of black lacquer so he could get an idea of what it could end up looking like if things turned sour.

He okay-ed all of it, signed off on the quote of $2500, put $500 down in advance and set me to work.

Flash forward by over 150 hours of cleaning and polishing and you could see yourself in the surface from across the room but it was coloured all shades of red, green, yellow, black and brown.
The client refused to pay for it for weeks until i agreed to take a cut of $1500 off the price and warned him that if he didn't pay i was going to put it into auction and take whatever it sold for.

That was the end of me agreeing to work with lacquer full stop.

I only worry about perfection in a competition piece as it is the only time people are searching for a flaw. Normally that level of perfection on a functional item is not required and fairly quickly redundant after a few uses. I also like finishes that wear in rather than wear out.

Over the years I have made and sold pieces from 20cents to $60,000 many off my own back and of my own design and many on commission, the more expensive ones now being worth as much as $100,000. In all the time I was making these pieces I have never had anyone say anything other than positive comments and praise about the work I did.

The only exception was the carvings for the Stock Exchange doors (head office of ANZ Bank in Collins St Melbourne). When halfway through carving of the two heads on the doors I was told to change the faces from what had been originally decided on, to different faces in case someone recognised that they weren't the originals. (The original doors had been removed around 1910 and the only photo of them was a very poor newspaper photo of doors opened and on a very acute angle)

Anyway long story short the face on the left hand door ended up resembling Elvis Presley looking down on his minions from above. I hated but had a good laugh over it, but those who commissioned the doors loved them. They can still be seen along with others on the Safety Deposit Building all on the Corner of Queens and Collins Sts in Melb along with a heap of linen fold panels, transom panels and other work inside the beautiful old bank and Stock Exchange Building.

Best part is or maybe was.... You could get a guided tour of the building and some of the magnificent carvings of the chambers, the beautiful lead-light windows and the amazing columns etc, etc. If you do happen to go for a tour ask the guide who did the carvings for the doors, transom panels, and replacement linen-fold panels and the response will probably be..... "A wizened old German gentleman" or at least that's what I heard the guide lady telling visitors some 17 years ago.

Oh well you can't win them all.

A couple or few things to bare in mind:

• Do good work and be proud of what you do and you will do well.
• People will pay and pay well for good work.
• Never undersell yourself or your work.
• Take a critical look at what you have produced and say to yourself "Would I pay good money for this if it were in a shop?" If the answer is a resounding yes then go for it. If no, try again and improve. If you are unsure, ask someone you don't know, they are more likely to be honest with you than a friend or family member who may not want to hurt your feelings.

I have watched sales at numerous exhibitions and a couple of stand-outs spring to mind:

• At a 4 day woodturning exhibition a man was selling a beautiful cocobolo bowl it was well executed with excellent form and a top class finish. He had a price of $15 on it and I asked him why it was so cheap. His reply was, "I paid $15 for the wood and I had my fun making it and I just want to get my money back." The piece was worth easy $100 minimum at the time (this would have been around 20 years ago) and it didn't sell because people were looking at it and saying how beautiful and when they turned it over and saw the price they put it down with comments like, "What's wrong with it!"
• Six weeks later that same bowl turned up at another exhibition and I talked the gentleman into putting a price of $150 on it saying, if it didn't sell I would give him $100 for it. That bowl sold for $150 about 2 hours after the show opened. The purchasers were ecstatic, the turner was over the moon and I didn't have to shell out $100 to prove a point.

For wood turners especially but every one in general.

• Don't undersell your work because it brings down the price of everyone's work and devalues the time, effort and expertise you have invested in the piece.

Cheers - Neil

Agree with everything above.

BUT, one of my major flaws is after putting so much effort, sweat and (often) blood into a job, I feel really bad about handing it over!

The clients love my work, but I always feel loss when swapping them for something as crude as money

One job i finished recently I loved so much I delayed ringing the client for a few days.

What Neil said about underselling. And again, and again. Unfortunately Aussies have become low price buyers and value is no longer a consideration. Im in the print game so Ive learned to walk away if the margins are not good enough. Better then losing money.