Handcrafted with love

How do I work out pricing?

Pricing handmade crafts is very, very tricky. It's a balancing act between making it worth the crafter's while and being affordable for the recipient.

If we take this cowl for example, The yarn costs between £5 and £10, and then delivery can be anything up to £5 (Or petrol if driving to the shop to get it)

Is then takes around 11 hours to crochet the item, and another hour to sew it together and weave in any loose ends. At minimum wage (£9.50 as of 01/04/22) We're looking at £112.58

Royal Mail small parcel is £2.85 and to package it up I'll use any spare packaging I have, else I'm looking at another couple of pounds for that

So for this item to be created at minimum wage we're looking at around £130.

Obviously I cannot justify charging £130 so then I need to try and find the correct balance. Thankfully I have a day job and this is more if a hobby so I can be a bit more flexible on the price.

So I look at how much I'd pay for something like this and speak with friends to get their take, and settled on £30.

This works out at about £1.50 (before tax, I do also have a day job!) per hour which whilst not ideal, this is a hobby rather than a livelihood and the extra pennies help towards holidays and of course, buying more yarn 😀

So when you see the prices you're looking at material costs, plus around £1.50-£2 per hour, plus a conversation with friends to make sure I have the balance right. A lot of time goes into creating these items!

Did you know..?

Unlike knitting, crochet cannot be replicated by a machine, there have been many attempts but the process of creating the stitch is too intricate.

When you see crocheted items in a chain shop that are only a few pounds, a person has made that by hand and very likely wasn't paid very much at all for the work.