What would you charge?

this has been asked just recently and the general consensus is 5x the material cost is the simplest formula. wood+sandpaper&consumables+finish+hardware=number x 5=cost
 
This question comes up on woodworking forums every now & then. I think it depends on whether you consider yourself in the woodworking business, or just a hobbyist. From the look of your work, you are or should be in the business. It's beautiful.
If you're a hobbyist, and a good one, I think materials cost plus $10-15 per hour is reasonable.
If you're in the business & not charging materials plus a minimum of $25-30 per hour, you're not charging enough.
 
This question comes up on woodworking forums every now & then. I think it depends on whether you consider yourself in the woodworking business, or just a hobbyist. From the look of your work, you are or should be in the business. It's beautiful.
If you're a hobbyist, and a good one, I think materials cost plus $10-15 per hour is reasonable.
If you're in the business & not charging materials plus a minimum of $25-30 per hour, you're not charging enough.

Tom the Hobbyist only charging $10 to $15/hr is why Pros have trouble making a living charge what its worth. When I had my wood business going I charged $65/hr and that was over 10 years ago. DONT UNDER CHARGE you are a PRO if you take money for it so you should act like it and not give it away.
 
15 years ago, $65 per hour including design time. Design time only, $150 per hour. Plus materials down to the last piece of sandpaper used. All was a spreadsheet along with proven estimated times for each operation. All calculated automatically. Took years to develop that spreadsheet. I was a pro. Did I get that kind of money? Well, I was in business nearly 25 years, so , yes, I did. The time I could not charge for was for marketing efforts. Nor could I charge for marketing costs. That had to be amortized through the hourly charge. How did I make more money? I worked more efficiently. And if I screwed up, I paid big time.

And, yes, one could take the opinion that the $10-$15 an hour guys where taking our business. No, they weren't. Their customers could never be mine. Their customers cost more time and were much harder to please than mine. So to me, they didn't qualify to be customers.
 
I hired an interior designer to come and help me choose colors. I shopped around - best price I could find was $125 per hour - that is what I paid.

Get your car fixed and it will cost you at least $100 per hour

Hire a contractor and it is going to be about $100 per hour

When I ran my Mr. Handyman franchise I was charging $85 per hour 10 years ago.

Why??? WHY??? Would anyone think the value of work I see in those pictures is valued at only $15 per hour. Sorry but that is an insult. Even $30 is about 3 times too low.

Go to home depot and price out a particle board cabinet with a production made door piece of crap, put together with staples = $300 to $400

I built a cabinet like my customer saw at IKEA, but better than IKEA. I had a professional cabinetmaker evaluate the cabinet and he told me the finish alone would be $1000 and the cabinet would be about $4000. IKEA price was $1200 - I made a mistake and charged the $1200. I make $35 per hour on the job and walked away knowing I made a mistake.

I do handyman work now only as a favor and for a little hobby money and I charge $50 per hour and I make it CLEAR to my customer that they are getting a BARGAIN. I would want to get $50 per hour PLUS 2x on materials, or $1000 whichever is higher.

DO NOT - sell by some materials times some number. Sell by VALUE. That bed is worth at least $1000. If you don't believe me - go and try to get a price for something similar. Don't look at bargain outlets they don't sell the quality you are making. Look at the quality furniture makers and don't be surprised to see stuff like that priced at $4000. It is a custom designed - one of a kind bed.

You are NOT making a wally World piece of Furniture - so don't compare to that market.

DON'T underestimate the VALUE
 
leo, when i suggested to him to use the material x number ,,, that was from others i know that have alot of experience in the field and are using it successfully now.. carol is a wizard in excell and done well with her plan and still does.. but in my experience i have been in on all facets of it and still have not got to where i wish i could be.. the location is a very big part of costing out work, but we are our own worst enemies, if we are born to be frugal we wont buy frivolous and if we have had plenty we buy what we want, and sometimes a name or color is what will warrant the cost not the wood or smoothness of the finish.. if we were looking for a chair and saw 2 rockers one was in average shape and the other looked new but there were some name on the worn one (maloof) that old one could be 2 times more money and only the ones in the know would pay it. that is how the ikea and the poor finished cabs of other companys get there sales price and looks.
 
and then the problem comes in will the client think you are totally nuts or off the wall when you tell them a childs bed made out of plywood is 4000 dollars.
If one chooses to market his skills to an area of low to middle class incomes, he cannot hold out for 65 dollars an hour pricing.
He can, but I doubt if he will get any jobs.(this post is not directed at the original poster of this thread, not insinuating his target audience is lower income, Im just trying to make a point for any woodworker)
people of wealth can afford to pay for hand made custom furniture.
 
Well i am going to disagree with a load of what has been said.
First i will again make a point that cost has nothing to do with selling price. By this i dont mean u can ignore cost i mean that the issue of how much u can get for something has to do with what the buyer will pay. Not how much it cost u to produce.
Close next to that is the question of how much to charge and that is based on how well u understand the need and have articulated/presented to the buyer that u are the most ideal provider to attend and satisfy their need. The extent to which you match your service or product to their real need will determine the value you can command.
I say real need because when the client says i need xyz this may be the physical need in one respect however the word need extends beyond physical into other realms like emotion and psychological needs.
Example
A summer ago i worked with my son on refurbishing his 97 honda civic.
His need was a car that goes. My need was that he drive a safe vehicle. However if one goes to ask what he would spend was very different to what i would spend. If we asked what would be fixed it was very different for both of us.
But behind this physical needs my overall need had nothing to do with the car itself. I had in mind in my outlook (right or wrong, relevant or not to others) to be a better dad and felt/saw it as my duty to convey and teach him how to go about fixing his car. This is the kind of need one needs to uncover in a custom sale to determine price. There was no common sense related to my project with him with regards to the money involved.
Custom work by its very nature is something not mass produced with jigs and fixtures etc. Its not relevant to the customers need to know that. But it is relevant to the reality of having a cost that meets expectations if you going to try sell custom work at mass produced prices.
The other key is being prepared to walk away from a job when the terms (not just price) are not acceptable. Most are not prepared to do this and then the decline sets in for once you do you will never stop doing it. Mentally in the sales process you have in effect reduced your value in your own mind.
The problem in not getting your price starts and ends with u. One may be an excellent craftsman but you need to learn to market and sell yourself and your product if you are to get your price.
In any market place there are A,B,C clients. If u target C clients then dont expect A client pricing.
So somewhere in your discovery of needs process you need to weave into the discussion establishing whether or not this is a A category customer however u have defined category A.


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Okay, Dennis threw this out to us, we bit, he hasn't been back. He said he quoted a price, wonder what it was. Is he have remorse? I have built 10 different beds of this type. You will never get out of one what it cost to build it. This has to be a labor of love. Or, you have to build at least half a dozen to make it efficient and profitable. Now, are there half a dozen people that want that bed? You might have to find half a dozen different communities. If the child needs a bed and mom and dad are buying it, won't sell for over a couple hundred. Now if Grandma thinks she needs this bed, 4-500 bucks could be had for it. Just my two cents worth.
 
Tom the Hobbyist only charging $10 to $15/hr is why Pros have trouble making a living charge what its worth. When I had my wood business going I charged $65/hr and that was over 10 years ago. DONT UNDER CHARGE you are a PRO if you take money for it so you should act like it and not give it away.

I have to agree with another comment that hobbyist's are not really competing with people in the woodworking business, hence I stand by my relatively cheap hobbyist rate (plus materials).

Earning a few bucks for someone who makes something for family or friends helps them feel good about woodworking...maybe kinda makes them feel like a pro, maybe even gets them aspiring to move that direction without really competing with the pros, because his friend is not the pros potential customer. For that reason, I still think the hobbyist rate is fair. If you charge more, there's a greater expectation from the client. Good way to tick off family & lose friends.

As to the pro rate I mentioned, maybe I'm just out of touch & it should be higher. I was kind of thinking of someone working out of a home based shop without regular business overhead. At $30/hr, a 40 hr week gets you $1200 plus your materials costs. There are a lot of people that would be glad to do what they love for 50K a year. I'm not saying that 100K wouldn't be nice if the hourly rate that supports that income gets you enough business to stay busy.

This is always a topic that generates a lot of opinions. I'm the worlds greatest authority on mine. So there.
 
As to the pro rate I mentioned, maybe I'm just out of touch & it should be higher. I was kind of thinking of someone working out of a home based shop without regular business overhead. At $30/hr, a 40 hr week gets you $1200 plus your materials costs. There are a lot of people that would be glad to do what they love for 50K a year. I'm not saying that 100K wouldn't be nice if the hourly rate that supports that income gets you enough business to stay busy.

When I last priced out all the overhead of running a business like this from home as a full time business the overhead was at least 2x (highly optimistic) the hourly rate once you take into account sales time, bookwork, insurance, etc... etc.. so if you figure you'll pull in 50k on your hourly you'll be really lucky to be pulling in 25k and more likely closer to 12-15k. I think this is one of the big stumbling blocks a lot of folks making the transition from hobbiest to pro run into - that and what Jonathan pointed out about being able to do batches work to increase efficiency. This is one reason why a lot of shops start hiring more people so you you can amortize the overhead across more folks - the downside of course is that you end up spending all your time doing overhead and none of the time doing what you actually like to do.. :(

As far as Dennises original bed.. well.. my cost would be a lot higher than a shop that was setup for it. The 3D work would take a fair bit of time doing it by hand (maybe there's a quicker way I'm not seeing, if so I'd sure be interested in learning the techniques :D), a shop that has a big CNC could whip it out in a fraction of the time so their overhead would be a lot less (of course they have to pay for the machine so there's that). The rest of it doesn't look to bad complexity wise (although again I'm not setup to do anything other than simple iron-on edge banding for the edges so.. would have to factor in some % of the cost of getting that going, if you were a small one man shop the new festool product looks interesting, it is $$$$s but looks really handy for this - in this case since its painted I'd probably just punt and seal the ends with something like durhams water putty and sand it smooth).

Its a darn cute little project though, hope you made out well on it.
 
My Daughter bought some radiator covers for her house because I just didn't have the time to do it for her. That's what the market value is.

I would say there was a 1/4 sheet of MDF, some knock down hardware, some stamped sheet metal and a nice sprayed on white paint job.

I could probably build them in an hour or less if I was geared up to be doing that, which I am SURE the seller was.

I am pretty sure she paid well over $100 each.

Trust me - nothing fancy there.

Sooo - what is the difference between a hobbyist and a professional that values the hobbyist work so low?

I was told once that as soon as I start selling something I am no longer a hobbyist.

Hobbyist folk consistently grossly undervalue their work.

Call a locksmith and have your front door hardware changed - that will not be $15-20 for the 15 minute job

Call an electrician to have a receptical replaced - that will not be a $25 bill

Call a plumber ---- awww you should get it by now

Why does any of that warrant more money than the skilled work of a hobby shop woodworker???

No - Sorry - but I also know several very successful pro's and there is no way they would work for $15 per hour.

Those folks at Walmart, McDonalds, make that money.

The BED - on the OP post is likely CNC made - but even that does NOT kill the value. Sure CNC is not hand carved - but hand carved would make that bed worth $10,000 or more.

YES - demographics have a lot to do with it. Dan Sawasky say's - well if they cannon afford it - they are just not my customer. I would not try to open a BMW dealership in a bug city slum either.

Even with a low demographic area I would not sell a $400 for $50 just because they cannot afford it.

Do you remember the discussion a few months ago about a textured wall hanging for sale at JC Penny?

Please - your hobby work is worth far more that $15 per hr.
 
Read al the comment and have to agree with Leo, I quoted her $1000, but then she bought a bunch of other stuff so doing the bed for $850.00 it took 4 sheet of 3/4 birch plywood, and 2 gals of paint, other then that just time so $600 for the weeks work and did some other projects to boot while glue and putty dried.


I also had some other items on ebay for sale, One item was a plate rack was selling it for $99.99 and only a few sales, the raise my price up to $144.99 and it started selling, Something you can be to low for perceive valve.

Thanks for the input everyone , when people comment on stuff like this and you sell you in the right market price place makes you feel good and sleep better at night.

Dennis
 
dennis i think i would have stayed at my first price,, kinda like the fact that you got sales on the plate rack,, at cheaper price they didnt move but at higher they did.. this client for the bed would have had more bragging rights if it were a thousand dollars and you would have another benjamin in your pocket.. if they come back and dicker for price is one thing but to just lower it is another.. your experience with to low of a price is something we all need to pay attention to.
 
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