Thread: Making a buck from your woodwork?

Originally Posted by woodPixel

Beardy, that seller is a true champion.

We could all learn from this.... Sell what sells.

if you can get away with it why not. At first when I read the label I thought the item had already been sold and the piece of timber was what it was displayed on, then the penny dropped.......
I then thought of the pile of firewood I had at home and realised I am a millionaire
Makes me shed a tear with every piece that goes on the fire

I used to give small offcuts to a friend, who wrapped them in pretty paper and sold them from her plant nursery as "Parcels of Love".
A friend of SWMBO gave her a small offcut with a label attached: "Place wood on floor and circle it three times. You can tell your friends that you've walked three times around the block."

People pay money for these things. Not much, but get a busload of tiddly ladies after lunch and you'll sell a lot.

The sky is the limit!

UK company launches $30 bottled air range for homesick expats | CNN Travel

Working for someone else (large scale commercial stuff) because my own stuff is good money when it's there -then it's not for a while! Have done markets before -don't now! Have not paid for advertising - Most work has been from word of mouth (got 3 table orders after one dinner party) also have a Facebook site Wood Spirit (it's the one at Manifold Heights -as others have wood spirit on Facebook now -originally was only me) which I essentially just put up random photos which is free of course. Getting cheap materials is of course important -more importantly materials cheaply -there is an important difference. Don't try to compete against imports from cheap labour countries. Quality is the only way to go. Good luck.

Don't try to compete against imports from cheap labour countries. Quality is the only way to go.

If you take nothing else from this thread, take this!

Great thread topic Josh, I'm enjoying the read.

Originally Posted by Dazweeja

Great thread topic Josh, I'm enjoying the read.

Me too Daz ... and thanks again everyone for your interesting and useful comments.

Very interesting thread - keep it coming. I've often wondered if quitting the day job and trying to make a living making furniture, even at a largely reduced rate, could be viable from a home shop. I've been thinking about it a lot more since getting a promotion (more stress, far more work, more hours - not a lot more money!) but I always think i'm just deluding myself. Now seems a particularly bad time too - heading into a possible massive recession.

Is it possible to make say - $50- an hour (including shop overhead sans materials) making higher end furniture?

Cheers, Dom

I guess other than cynical comments and not-so-funny jokes I can also make an effort to say something useful.

I haven't had a woodworking business myself, but I know a bit about businesses and getting them to make money, which is my job (pricing, costing, profitability, market strategy, that sort of thing). And there are some things that apply equally to both giant corporations and small businesses.

If you take something away from me, take this: Don't price your work cost up, it's a mistake. You will find countless videos on Youtube telling you how to price up your product or service by calculating and adding up all your costs and then adding some margin. Don't do it. There are some instances where you don't have any other option (more on that later), but generally you should try to avoid it like the plague. If Apple was pricing the iphone based on costs it would be $300, instead they're very wisely charging $1500. Your costs are irrelevant, nobody cares, your customer certainly doesn't. Some customers will try to get you into that cost discussion, avoid it, they're just haggling. Bottom line is, if the customer likes your product and can't find it cheaper elsewhere he will pay, if he doesn't he won't.

What you should do when you're setting your price is try to figure out what is the market price: what are other people asking for similar products as yours, and most importantly what are they actually getting. That's it. That's all you need to know, that's your price. If that price is higher than your cost then great, you're making money, if it's lower then you are pushing s*** uphill, drop that product and make something else. Don't be embarrassed if you are making a big profit in some jobs, bank that money and save it for a rainy day. Trust me there will be plenty of those if you're running a small business.

How to find what is the market price? Ask around, ask your wife, ask customers and tradies, observe other peoples' websites when they have prices on there, check Etsy and Ebay (both great because they have some historical data if you know how to search). Also, and this is a big chapter: understand your own product. Product is not just the tangible thing that you just made and you're holding in your hands, it's the whole package that makes up the total product experience for the customer: where they bought it from, the packaging, , the description, the advertising and words that came with it (if any), the photos and the backdrop (if they bought it online). There's a bit of story telling and atmosphere involved in every product in the back of peoples' minds. If you buy a cutting board from ebay it's a completely different product than the exact same cutting board from a high-end shop, you know what I mean? One is "something I got from ebay", the other is "an expensive cutting board from XYZ in Chadstone", which of the two do you think a housewife would be prepared to pay more for? And most importantly which one compares to yours in her mind? You will never compare to Chadstone in her mind, but there is currently a romantic view of traditional craftsmen in Australia, and some smart sales people take advantage of it. If the customer can see you, then do wear that stupid leather apron, show your traditional bench, grow a beard, smoke a pipe if you must, whatever it takes. It's all part of the package and can be built into the price.

Some jobs are so custom and unique that there is really no market price to compare to, like someone asking you for a bespoke cabinet, in this case maybe you have no option but to work out your costs and add something on. Having done that a million times, trust me, it's extremely hard to do accurately and very easy to miss something, and missing something immediately means you'll make a loss. Also, say for example you've been charging $100 for something that costs you $90, and people are buying it, great. Then say you start working on and discover some sort of process or material that cuts your costs in half, what does this mean, that you should cut your price in half? Well that would be stupid, wouldn't it, pissing away all the cost savings you just worked for. No, there is always a price that the customer is prepared to pay. Try to figure out what that is and price your product accordingly, regardless what your cost really is. I know it's tempting to just give them the cost + 10% but that's a cop out. Do the work, do the research.

People have the wrong idea about salespeople, they think it's someone who can talk a product up. That does help a little (if you're so inclined), but no. A successful sales strategist, the guy who moves up in the ranks, is someone who can really understand what he is selling, the total product package and the customer experience, how much the customer values it, what are the customer's alternatives on the market, what is the competition doing. And then structures and prices his product accordingly. That's thinking commercially, that's business, and that's what you should work on if you want to survive. Survive is the key word here: 2 out of 3 new businesses in Australia fail, so keep that in mind as well. It's tough, and a big part of failing is not getting the best you can out of the market due to bad pricing, there's a science and an art to it.

Someone mentioned before to avoid direct competition with imported products, I agree. It's hard to compete with them, it's not impossible but it is hard, you have to offer high quality and (the hardest thing) convince that it is higher quality and that quality matters and it's worth paying for. Uphill battle and that's why you rarely see anything "made in Australia" anymore. But there are still a crapload of services made in Australia. Maybe try to sell the service rather than the product, the service of talking to the customer and giving them exactly what they need as opposed to something imported, which, if it fits it fits. That's ultimately up to you. Maybe it's easier for you to churn out a thousand cutting boards and price them rock bottom, I don't know. Your decision to make.

There's another thing I have to point out: the right time to get into business very rarely coincides with the time you feel ready to get into business.

I know this guy, for years he was in Sales in a big importing company, selling office furniture, cubicle dividers, that sort of thing. He knew the job like the back of his hand, pricing, costs, logistics, suppliers, everything, but never had any burning desire to start his own business. One day his major customer told him that they hate his company, they find them difficult to deal with, and the only reason they stay is because they like dealing with him personally all those years and they trust him and if he had his own business they would happily follow him. It was a bad time for him to get into business, he had a mortgage and no cash, but he did it anyway because the opportunity was screaming at him. Had a rough start, ate 2 minute noodles for a while, but he succeeded in the end.

I know this other guy who was fed up with his corporate job, saved up his money for years and when he felt he had enough he set up a small business doing what he always loved doing (architecturally designed outdoors features in this instance but it doesn't matter, it could be anything). Unfortunately that wasn't what the market needed, there were just too little demand for this sort of thing and too many cheap alternatives out there, and he failed.

Be the first guy, If you're going to get into business do it when you see an opportunity in the market, not an opportunity in your personal circumstances.
And not to sound like a smartarse, I've also been the second guy many years ago. Got burned, learned the hard way.

Thanks for all you've written there, Spyro. Very interesting and helpful. You mentioned back near the start of this thread the importance of focusing on selling the service rather than the product, and thanks for reiterating that point just now - certainly a very relevant one. Thinking about that aspect of things, I'm reflecting again on our local weekend craft and produce markets in this area. They're a big thing, very well-attended, and I'm pretty focused on using them as sales platforms, at least initially while I'm checking out sales potential of the items I'm starting to produce. These markets really provide a good opportunity to showcase that whole service aspect, connect with the craftspeople making the items, hear about the personal aspects of the business and so on.

I think there are quite a few folk who are willing to pay the higher prices associated with hand-made wooden furniture and other woodwork, if they know they're supporting local craftspeople, and if the products are good quality. I feel there's increasing disillusionment with many imported products at present - Australia's seriously soured relationship with China would certainly contribute to that.

I remember a Bangalow market I went to a couple of years ago (Bangalow's a town on the NSW far north coast here that has a huge Sunday market once a month). It was a very wet Sunday and a lot of the regular stall holders weren't there. There was one stall selling furniture, and it was pretty rough - shoddy little coffee tables and the like. But it seemed there were lots of tourists browsing the market who seemed to really want to buy something, and this guy's pieces were selling well. I think a lot of people go to these markets just wanting to buy something "rustic" and locally made, and aren't content till they exit the market with at least one piece of locally made handicraft, especially in the case of tourists who come to a given area from, say, interstate, and want to take something home as a souvenir of their visit. Covid could slow that down a bit at present, but heh, let's be optimistic that this situation will pass.

Talking of *%$^# Covid, one or two people have said in this thread that they reckon it's not a good time to get into this kind of business, with a serious economic downturn looming. But there's a positive side to that also - with more of us more home-based more of the time, it makes sense that there'll be increased demand for household products such as furniture. There are still lots of people with cash to splash around, the more so now that their international jet-setting holidays are on hold for a while.

I think now is a great time to get into a little business like that, if you have the right product to sell for the environment you are operating in.

There is plenty of money around at the moment, DIY related projects are going crazy, boats, caravans bikes etc are booming in sales and there is often a 9 month waiting list to get them

Josh, maybe sell yourself a little bit along with the product, you know what I mean? While sitting there at the market, set up a bench or a small lathe and some shiny hand tools, whatever, and start making something. Make some noise, eventually people will gather round just to see what you're doing (careful not to lose customers because they don't want to interrupt you and then eventually they run out of time and leave, speak to them, just to make sure they know they can speak to you). People love to watch other people at work, hence youtube.

Has anyone tried to make a teardrop caravan? A friend with lots of spare storage space wanted to make and sell them, eventually I designed one for him in sketchup, then we got stuck in the metalworking, we just couldn't find the exact right wheels and axis we wanted (or the right price to have them made) and eventually forgot about it. But the carpentry for it is easy, just gotta get a few details right to ensure waterproofing and rigidity, and there is an abundance of plans, materials and accessories locally and online. Just have to pick the right ones to keep the cost reasonable. Lots of small businesses that make those things, especially in the US, some more successful than others obviously. But people especially young couples love teardrops now that more and more of them prefer smaller cars with smaller towing capacity, and there's definitely a market for them (if the price is right).




What I liked about it as a small business idea is that you don't generally have to make some massive investment, we could always just make one, and sell it on ebay. Learn from it, finetune, make the next one. And so on, until we hit a design, cost and pricepoint that works. And then decide if we go all in.