Pricing

Information about pricing

Transparency about the issue of pricing is meant to serve other artists who are wondering "how much should I charge?" as well as curious customers who may be wondering why prices keep going up (it's the economy!). Read on for details. [And big shout out to MT for telling me that they appreciated this section!]

A great resource for up-and-coming (or established) artists are the "Small Biz Resources" put out by The Peach Fuzz Co.

My cards sold for $5 apiece from 2009-2022, including MS word icon cards printed on cardstock and linocut greeting cards printed on a range of materials. As of 2023, I had to start charging more in an attempt to break even. For comparison, at a local convenience store / pharmacy in the US that I'll call "Smalgreens," cards from a conglomerate that I'll refer to as "Smallmark" run $6.99-$12.99 (or even more - I've seen cards for $16.99. Let's just say the sky's the price ceiling).

Case Study

By way of elucidation, I'll use one (small!) item as a case study to explain my (current as of 2024) pricing for the Chicagoland area.

• To create one popsicle card, currently priced at $8US, requires:

  • A roughly 50/50 consignment split (a booth fee + part of the purchase price equates to approximately 50% of the sale price that goes to the store for their overhead, including taxes, bags or other packaging for customers, rent on the shop, credit card use fees, etc - this list is not exhaustive and this list is not a litany of grievances! more of a "transparency in the cost of doing business" list for your consideration). All of that brings the purchase price of $8 to a "profit" of $4.

But wait! There's more:

• • Additional overhead not including raw materials for the card:

    • a die-cutting machine plus replacement parts (so even though I found a Sizzix at the thrift store for $10.99 plus tax, replacement plates run $20+ and are necessary for its operation)

    • a popsicle die cut, which can apparently run you under $3 on Temu, but from a Real Store is closer to $16.99 or $22 or... I am finding a lot of variability so we'll call it $10 to be boring

    • scissors (yes, I already have these, but they do need to be purchased or stolen at some point and then replaced through similar, ideally non-nefarious, means)

    • glue, tape, really any adhesive regionally available (again, I have this on hand, but it was purchased _and_ I don't always get it right on the first try. I've had a lot of luck with purple Name Brand glue sticks, but not for every application, such as fabric on cardboard for another project, for example)

    • letter stamps (I have a Trodat letterpress set from Austria that I found second-hand through Texas Art Asylum on Etsy for $30 including taxes shipping and handling - and a large part of that, no doubt, went to their overhead charges from Etsy and processing credit cards)

    • ink (thank you, Chicago Creative Reuse Exchange, where you can buy fill a box with goodies for $20) for the logo on the back of each card

    • ALSO: time spent sourcing all of the equipment, setting up materials, creative thinking, cutting / gluing / assembly, and then shop set up (putting items into bags, adding price stickers, dropping everything off in person), as well as time for childcare & food expenses & covering anything else one might be doing with one's time otherwise

  • These bullet points are kind of making me talk myself out of creative pursuits... But for the fearless, read on!

  • The components of each individual card include:

    • paper to make the card (in this case, a sturdy colorful cardstock sent to me from British Columbia)

    • paper to decorate the card (thinner paper of the scrapbooking variety sent to me from Maryland)

    • popsicle sticks for the ... well, popsicle stick bit

    • two-sided puffy craft stickers (think the 3M type) to adhere and slightly suspend the colorful popsicle paper over the popsicle stick on the card (this is what I mean by adhesive experimentation)

    • glassine envelopes because I am extra

    • popsicle stickers to decorate the envelope (see previous)

    • 2018 vintage scratch-and-sniff popsicle stickers with USPS domestic forever value (68 cents in 2024, but I bought these on ebay for a higher price due to their semi-scarcity and my desire to really lean in to the theme)

    • 2 label stickers (I used Avery because I wanted them to actually stick - another example of trial and error), one for the addressee and one for the return address

    • a plastic sleeve for store display

    • pricing information (I printed this out on regular printer paper to provide extra details about sealing and sending the glassine envelope) - this also falls under the category of "time" spent "editing" and also "typing" and also "learning touch typing" - wow, life _is_ basically the layers of an onion, Shrek really called it

    • washi (tape) to seal the plastic bag and adhere the additional pricing information - also clear tape to go over the washi when you realize it's cute but doesn't hold up great to handling in a browsing setting

    • as well as materials used that resulted in errors during the manufacturing process! (see previous discussions regarding glue, peel and oops-they-did-not-stick labels, etc.)

• I'll have to run the numbers on this with individual pricing per sticker as time allows. For now, I'll just say:

  • Let's estimate about $20 per pack of papers at a nearby craft store that I'll call Smicheal's (which does have coupons, and sales, etc)

  • $20 for a pack of 1000 popsicle sticks

  • apparently $170 for 1000 double-sided 3M strips (which I found out from searching it up)

  • $10 for 50 glassine envelopes (I can't remember where I got these, but I'm guesstimating with shipping here from what I just looked up)

  • $20 for 20 scratch-and-sniff postage stamps on eBay (shipping not included)

  • approximately $30 for 9000 Avery label stickers

  • $10 for a bulk assortment of 50 popsicle stickers

  • let's say $20 for 1000 plastic display bags and shipping from PaperMart (surely the receipt is somewhere for tax purposes?)

  • and I'm not even going to price out the washi because I know they cost $1 to "a lot"

  • Once again, this accounting is really making me question my overhead on this project. BUT! I think you get the idea.

  • Factoring in the consignment split, overhead materials, and individual components of each card, if I made 20 cards at an $8 price point, roughly half goes to consignment (so we're at $4), $1 went to postage (so we're at $3), envelopes are $0.20 each & stickers are $0.20 each & 3M strips in bulk are $0.17 each & display bags are $0.02 each (a bargain, thank you again The Peach Fuzz Co.) & I guess both Avery labels work out to be about a penny & popsicle sticks are $0.02 & let's call the washi and scrapbook paper combined at maybe $0.38 just to bring us to a dollar (so we're at $2). At this point, we're getting into minutiae of "how many times can I use my $10.99 machine with a $20 replacement part," so I'll assume operating costs are in the pennies, generally, but this still means that even if it took me exactly one hour to assemble all of these materials, come up with the unique ideas, and hand make 20 cards (with absolutely no errors or wasted product or material whatsoever), I'd make a bit less than $40 in one hour just for the execution. However, this total doesn't include time spent packaging the paper cut art for sale & then delivering it to a shop 30-45 minutes from my house. Factoring in just one hour of making and one hour of commuting, I'd make a bit less than $20 in one hour, which actually is pretty acceptable unless I have to pay anyone for any childcare (which starts at $15 per hour for one child), find any form of non-free transportation to the shop (is transforming into a carrier pigeon a viable option, one often wonders), and / or want to earn any additional amount of money. I'm just saying, I understand why people buy & sell in bulk from overseas factories - it's so much cheaper!

• HOWEVER, in the stunning conclusion to this story (kudos for reading this far), you are left with a unique, bespoke, handmade, mailalbe-within-the-US-and-US-military-bases-and-US-territories-and-other-eligible-locations-for-domestic-postage-price piece of popsicle mail art for the popsicle lover in your life, made using  items upcycled as much as possible and sourced from Chicago, British Columbia, Maryland, China somewhere along the route, California, Texas, Austria, and probably elsewhere! Did I mention "bespoke" often enough?

• Oh, and it costs $8 to result in an almost but probably not quite living wage for the maker, assuming that absolutely everything sells all at once immediately and nothing is ever damaged by anyone's carelessness in the shop (or, just a strong wind or something).

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I haven't even gotten started on the breakdown for running a market booth, but I'll just say that the application fee for one local (Chicago neighborhood) art fair in 2025 is $45, and the booth fee is another $400. 

The booth fee for the South Bend Rebel Art fest (in South Bend, Indiana) is much more manageable at $60, but then you have to get yourself to South Bend for the day - so the calculations and logistics can go on and on!

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I was looking at submitting my junk journals for sale on consignment, but would I have to charge $120 apiece? Um, yes. So I think it's better to just teach you to make your own!

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Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.