{EAV:96f269f8f623438e} One of my fellow vendors at Redmond’s Bazaar posted quite an entertaining rant recently about the lack of traffic through our craft bazaar versus the congestion at the Wal-Mart.  It kind of got me thinking about the ‘shopping mindset’ out there and wondering why people don’t support local artisans and crafters when it’s gift-giving time. I’ve only been at the bazaar for a couple of weeks now and had a pretty lousy location to start with but the lack of traffic had me concerned.

I’m told that November and December were really rockin’ months for the bazaar because people were shopping for Christmas gifts. Makes sense. What about birthdays and anniversaries? Graduations? Promotions?

Do people only think about handmade gifts at Christmas-time?

With the number of people whining about how the Chinese are taking away our jobs it seems that the demand for factory made knick knacks and ‘crafts’ would be pretty low but is there too much price sensitivity? I mean, generally speaking the prices for handmade in the USA goods are going to be higher than factory made in China simply because none of us can live on $350 per month nor can we knock out 100 of the same item per hour. As an artist I can tell you that I’m frequently stunned by the artificially low prices I see at craft fairs and farmer’s markets because I know something about how labor intensive some of these things are. I have to make allowances on my prices because if I set the price to match the amount of labor that went into certain pens there’s no way I could sell them.

And think about this – as an artist, I am self-employed. That means that in addition to the income tax you see taken out of your paycheck, I get to pay both halves of the social security bite. Also, in my particular case, if I’m at the bazaar, I am actively not making any new product to sell. So for every hour I spend there, at least one more hour is spent in the shop. Usually more than 2.

People tend to make a value judgement on a ‘craft’ item based on what they believe the materials cost to be – Someone looks at one of my quilted clay fountain pens and thinks ‘Oh my god? $75? There can’t be a dollars worth of clay there’ True. There were, however, about 6 hours labor getting from buying clay to displaying a pen. Since the hardware cost me $6 I’m looking at a gross of $68. You’re going to pay with a credit card which costs me another $2 and I get to pay tax on the $66 that’s left so I actually get to keep $51. My effective labor rate is now down to less than $8 per hour. Oh, wait; I also pay for the space at the bazaar (even on days that I don’t sell anything) and I get to pay for the fuel to get back and forth. And the shipping charges that I paid to get the materials delivered to me to begin with….. And I had to buy the tools. I lost material (and therefore $$’s) to practice and perfect my skills… It goes on and on. In reality, about 50% of the posted price goes towards actually paying my bills.

So the next time you’re in a craft fair or farmers market, do me this favor – Imagine yourself making the item you’re looking at and multiply the time it would take to make it by $12.50 per hour (remember, as self-employed business people we pay a higher effective tax rate so that only puts $8 in my pocket) and then make your value judgement.

Rose’s rant http://rosescauldron.com/

Redmond’s Bazaar http://www.redmondsbazaar.com/