Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Big Purse

I've been a finishing maniac, since that purple scarf is behind me. Today I tied the last knot on this large crocheted purse. I blogged about it here when I'd finished the front panel.
It's about 11" across and 10" tall, with a 1" depth -- I put in a side/bottom panel too. You could probably fit about 3 or 4 paperback novels in there.
Here's a photo so you can see the yarn close up. It's Simply Soft. The button is large too, about the size of a quarter.
I lined it, of course, a necessity in a purse of holey yarn. And I put a little pocket on one side for lipstick or keys, so you don't have to go diggin'.
Pretty roses.
Anyway, here's my question, readers. I'm selling this at the market. What do you think is a good, reasonable price? If you saw it at a market, knew it was all hand-made, what price would you expect? If you liked it, what price would you be willing to pay? It's hard, because a hand-worker can never really charge for labor; the pieces take time. I probably put at least seven hours into this purse, I guess? (It might well be more.) Can I charge $7/hour, plus cost of supplies? No. That's silly. But how much will people pay? I always wonder. So I make a stab at prices, and I usually price too low, which means things sell. But perhaps that's not wise. Any thoughts, entrepreneurs of the world?

2 comments:

melissa said...

Oooo, not touching that question, because mainly my husband, with his smaller handcrafted pieces, never gets what he puts into it.

Wonder if looking at Etsy you could get an idea of what folks are willing to pay. Seems there's usually an average that works.

The way I see it, you can always go down in price, but once you've established a price, you can never go up again.

Well-done, girlfriend. You are such a creative family. :)

GretchenJoanna said...

Well, I really know nothing about these things, or what people in your area like, or like to spend...
But it's a Spring-y looking purse, so if someone doesn't buy it immediately that wouldn't be bad - you could mark it down 20% or 25% if it doesn't sell in a couple of weeks -- before it starts looking over-handled. What if you started at $40? It's one-of-a-kind at this point and so nicely made. Of course it's not actually a fair price - but if you are usually pricing things much lower than that you probably can't easily make too big a jump. It sounds like you should try at least some small increases in asking prices, tho...