Thread: Pricing for our works?

work out your material cost per unit
estimate time to build and finish
multiply the time estimate by the amount of $ you want per hour
add the numbers together and there's your cost price

thats the easy part now you have to work out how much it will cost to sell it
add selling cost [inc advertising, market stall etc] add that to the cost price

now your getting close to what it will cost you all up

dont forget while your selling the item your not in the workshop building more sets of drawers so youd better estimate and add that cost as well

now its time to meet the real world and test your price / product in the market place

if its flawlessly built, eyecatching and carefully marketed you may find intrested buyers but be ready for the fact that they may not want to pay your price

good luck

If you just want enough to justify machinery, only make for people you know that way you'll only make what is presold and not be stuck with products that dont sell... that'll be counter productive.
You will not compete with 90% of products in average furniture shops as they are mass produced a lot cheaper than a backyarder can compete with, remember the shop will want 100%(at least)on wholesale price...

Thanks for the advice so far

Well, I'm not after huge amounts of money, I was thinking of charging the same amount, or thereabouts of the price in the furniture shops.

Material is of no real cost to me, I know a few people in timber mills in the area who can supply me with suitable timber for the job at next to no cost.

So I am really only charging for my labor, and I can make a better quality set of drawers than those mass produced ones (not hard lol) and charge a similar price, then I have a bit of an advantage. It is a spare time thing, in between working and finishing year 12, so I don't mind if I don't charge the full horse.

So my question now would be, what would you expect to pay for a properly made tallboy? And would you say $500-600 is a fair price?

Would be a fair price if you can show the workmanship and the quality of the product.
Best of luck with your adventure.
Mike

Originally Posted by Durdge39

Thanks for the advice so far

Well, I'm not after huge amounts of money, I was thinking of charging the same amount, or thereabouts of the price in the furniture shops.

Material is of no real cost to me, I know a few people in timber mills in the area who can supply me with suitable timber for the job at next to no cost.

So I am really only charging for my labor, and I can make a better quality set of drawers than those mass produced ones (not hard lol) and charge a similar price, then I have a bit of an advantage. It is a spare time thing, in between working and finishing year 12, so I don't mind if I don't charge the full horse.

So my question now would be, what would you expect to pay for a properly made tallboy? And would you say $500-600 is a fair price?

How long is a piece of string?
Last tallboy I made was made from quality Tasmanian Blackwood, Spanish Cedar and constructed as you say with traditional joinery and finished with a hand rubbed oil finish and it sold for $3500 AU.

You might also like to think about the following !
Making a living as a woodworker here in Australia in a difficult thing and made all the more difficult by the abundance of cheap imported furniture and poorly made local products. This difficulty is added to by people making furniture for various reasons and selling at markets etc way below its commercial value thereby offering another cheap alternative to the craftsman product.

Rgds

Ross

Originally Posted by Different

How long is a piece of string?
Last tallboy I made was made from quality Tasmanian Blackwood, Spanish Cedar and constructed as you say with traditional joinery and finished with a hand rubbed oil finish and it sold for $3500 AU.

You might also like to think about the following !
Making a living as a woodworker here in Australia in a difficult thing and made all the more difficult by the abundance of cheap imported furniture and poorly made local products. This difficulty is added to by people making furniture for various reasons and selling at markets etc way below its commercial value thereby offering another cheap alternative to the craftsman product.

Rgds

Ross

Luckily for me, I'm not looking to make a living out of it, only to make a bit of cash to justify a couple new bits of machinery. And as I said in the first post, I plan to make things similar to that in a furniture shop, made from pine, and hardwoods of varying types for a set as the wood becomes available, but instead of the cheap stapled together construction, I'll be doing proper joinery, and also, be using pine with less knots in it that what is in the shops (woody, if you take a look around the furniture shop up near the post office there you'll know what I mean ).

So same size and base material (does not include particle board ), proper joinery methods at a similar price.

While I wish you all the best in this attempt to cover your costs, you might want to keep this in mind

You state that you will turn out a piece of better quality than what you can buy from a mass producer, yet you are also saying that you will be sourcing your raw materials straight from the sawmills.

To my mind, and I am perfectly willing to stand corrected, materials direct from the mill are not going to be much use in furniture making without spending a considerable length of time in stick, air drying or being processed through a kiln. You will also have to take into account this time in your decision making. It seems to me that if you are trying to subsidize your hobby this way, you are either going to be making pieces that have a high moisture content and will ultimately resemble absolute crap or you are willing to wait years for tool acquisitions.

You will be better off spending the dollars buying quality materials at market prices and accepting the fact that you have a smaller positive cash flow from your sales.

A mill that is willing/able to provide you with timber at "next to no cost" is hardly likely to be giving away timber that can be used to produce pieces "a better quality drawer than those mass produced".

You cannot produce good, fine, high or better quality pieces using cheaply sourced material, trust me, I have a garage full of items that is irrefutable proof of that fact. You can at best only ever produce barely adequate pieces with such raw materials, certainly nothing that will bring in a purchase price of $500-$600.

Simple economics tells us that if the raw material will generate XXXX dollars return within the market, then any sensible business will take that price anytime over a small, one time order that will pay X dollars........

I am not trying to rain all over your parade, but if you go down this path, I think that you are in for a great deal of frustration and heartache, that is likely to see you lose all interest in woodworking.

Ray

Originally Posted by Durdge39

Thanks for the advice so far

Well, I'm not after huge amounts of money, I was thinking of charging the same amount, or thereabouts of the price in the furniture shops.

Material is of no real cost to me, I know a few people in timber mills in the area who can supply me with suitable timber for the job at next to no cost.

So I am really only charging for my labor, and I can make a better quality set of drawers than those mass produced ones (not hard lol) and charge a similar price, then I have a bit of an advantage. It is a spare time thing, in between working and finishing year 12, so I don't mind if I don't charge the full horse.

So my question now would be, what would you expect to pay for a properly made tallboy? And would you say $500-600 is a fair price?

What don't you make a few pieces and sell them to yourself? That is the best way to pay for the tools.

When you said you wanted to make them out of pine. I hope you didn’t mean radiate pine. They are not very nice to look at. I am not sure how you are going to get enough wood for next to no cost. You will need an awful lot of wood to make a tallboy with 11 drawers.

To me $500 - $600 will just enough to cover the cost of the timber. How much you can sell it for depends on how good you are and that is the question we cannot answer for you.

Best of luck.

One of our biggest challenges to deal with when producing fine furniture for sale is that a ridiculously cheap table from Ikea functions 100% as well as a $5000 hand crafted piece, hence 99% of consumers are appathetic to quality of design and craftsmanship. That being said, we are flat out at work with commission pieces and currently can't keep up. 10 months ago I was a teacher in a classroom....

GIVE IT A GO!!! You have very little to loose and a huge amount to gain. I suspect that your passion, like mine, is making things with wood. Your time spent making chests of drawers will be enjoyable, not a chore or burden.

I've made a few bits and pieces for sale over the years and all I can say is that it is fortunate for me that l don't do this for a living. I hate deadlines, working to exact specification, and ridiculously fussy clients - I get enough of that in my day job so doing more of that during my hobby time just seems like more of the same. When I work for myself I have worked out I'm working for an average of about $12/hour, but I do things at my own speed, meandering from task to task, stopping to make a jig or a tool that may help, usually using second hand materials etc - all very relaxing. When I've done jobs for other people I've sometimes only managed to cover the cost of materials and certainly not covering the cost of purchase and maintenance of machinery, less alone the stress factor.

Leaving the stress aside, I would work out any prices using the method old picker suggested. The only thing I would add as an extra is a reasonable cost for machinery maintenance and depreciation.

Then practice making something like a simple pine coffee table and keep a tidy set of accounts and see what it adds up to. If it comes to $2000 then it may be time to reconsider the idea. That said, it always takes longer to make the first one of anything as one is working our work flow and which tools to use etc. If one can make a profit on the first one should be able to make subsequent similar items a bit quicker.

Thanks again for your advice guys.

Regarding the timber, the mills around here usually save the timber from broken packs, and other similar situations, and puts them aside in bundles. Most of the bundles that come about are well seasoned, and yes, in lineal meter terms, the price for the timber is under a dollar in most cases. Becuase of the mismatch in timber sizes, most mass producers aren't interested in it. Sure it is Radiata Pine, but with the right finish, and selection of timber, they look quite presentable, and function quite adequately. Also, I said that I would be making sets from hardwood as the timber becomes available, but most of what is available to me is Pine, as disappointing as it is.

Ray153, I'm not sure what the furniture shops are like near you, but some of the rubbish that is sold around here for $500+ a set is pathetic, there isn't any joinery apart from staples, and the timber is just whatever comes out of the pack, knots and blemishes and all. Most complex finish is a stain and a coat or two of varnish. If people pay that much money for that crap, then I must have something to my hand.

Again, I am not looking for this to be my income stream, just a few pieces made in spare time, at my pace, that I enjoy, to help make the cost of the machinery less painful.

Hi Durdge, good luck with your venture, if your timber is that cheap then you don't have much to loose other than your time. Go get em!! Do your market research, know your local competion, quality and price. With materials cheap and your labour time your own, you should be able to undercut the competion and make your units very attractive to the market. You will soon know if you have to adjust your pricing after the first unit.
Good luck.
Even if you don't make much money, mum will still have dinner on the table.

Good luck to you durdge. It is very difficult to say what is a fair price for a piece that you may make as people view things differently. You must bear in mind that there are those that are quite happy to buy functional cheap furniture because price dictates what they can buy for their money. There are those who find fault with the cheaper finished furniture but thousands of these cheaper pieces are sold every day so I guess its a matter of demand for the product.
Young, newly married couples etc cannot afford expensive furniture because they need so many pieces of furniture.
If you can build furniture as you say better and cheaper than the ones available in your area then you should be able to achieve what you want to do.
I feel that you will always find a market for your particular product no matter what it is, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. But to attract buyers there has to be something appealing about your particular product. Look around at some of the better quality and better designed pieces and incorporate some of the ideas into the piece that you make.

Good luck.