How To Price Your Handmade Jewellery

Hourly rate & pricing models

From Angie Boothroyd’s book, Setting Up A Successful Jewellery Business, one formula to follow to determine your hourly wage is to take your annual overheads and divide this by your annual profitable making hours (actual hours sat at the bench). This will show the minimum you should be charging for your hourly rate.

Many pricing models, say to charge 2.5 times your material and packaging costs. Then add on your hourly wage, as well as 10% for your overhead and accidental costs. If you are selling wholesale, you may need to times your material costs by at least 4 to ensure you don’t lose out on money.

Also note how long you take doing admin tasks such as paying bills, delivering packages to the post office and answering customer queries. You will then be able to see what percentage of your time is spent making and on admin tasks with the business. This time should also be accounted for within sales of your jewellery.

While everyone has their own process for calculating their prices, we have shared some from our Facebook followers at the bottom of this post.

What do your customers want?

Other factors to take into consideration are your customers and understand how they value your product. If you are selling your jewellery for a low price and devaluing your skill, then customers are most likely going to ignore your shop and search for something of better value. This is the last thing that you want!

Who is your target customer? This could also affect the pricing structure you choose.

Many jewellers follow different pricing methods. We asked our customers over on our Facebook page to share their process

Lucinda Barton: "Materials + time + overhead costs + 10% of that."

Lana Lepper: "(Supplies + materials + overhead + time + profit)x2 = wholesale (wholesale) x2 = retail. I also then compare that end number with my closest competitors and industry standard. I adjust up for small things like earrings (increase margins) and decrease on big pieces like necklaces (decrease margins) so I stay aligned to market value, or even on the higher end of it."

Evie Milo: "(Time+materials+overheads+hallmarking+packaging) x1.5 = wholesale price. Wholesale price x2.4 = retail price."

Karen J Taylor: "Materials and time. I look at what I could get depending on the market and also what I think others would pay."

Kim Thomson: "While everyone has their own system, I find 'The Craft Calculator' App very useful. Especially as a ballpark figure when you're starting out."

Carolyn Storer: "Materials + overhead costs x2 + time."

Lindsay Swann: "Cost of materials plus good hourly rate."

Sara Swanson: "Materials, overheads (this is always tricky to calculate especially if you work from home, marketing/listing fees then I add usually 2.5 times which is standard retail uplift, well it used to be anyway! I do think it is important to alter your prices sometimes to suit your market but you shouldn't do it too much as customers might see your products elsewhere and see you have changed the prices!"

Our friends at Jewellers Academy have a fantastic video sharing how to use a spreadsheet to price your jewellery to make a profit...

Keep reading...

There's no one right way to price your jewellery, to find out more the books we would recommend reading for a more in depth guide to pricing your jewellery is Angie Boothroyd’s Setting Up A Successful Jewellery Business and also Kari Chaplin’s The Handmade Marketplace. For more inspiration and information to help with your handmade business, explore our range of jewellery making books and if you have any questions, do not hesitate to get in touch.