pricing

[nystock]

Hi All,

I'm having trouble pricing my handmade goods. How do I figure out my cost of yarn if I don't use the whole skein? Is there a way to figure cost per yard? If there is 1020 yards and my cost it 9.99. If I divide 9.99 by 1020 the number is.0097941. Can you help?

 

Lynn

[greyhoundgrandma]

That's the way to figure it. If the skein has 1020 yards and costs 9.99, and you use 500 yards, the cost of the 500 yards would be 4.90.  It might be easier to calculate it by weight since you can weight the remainder of the skein easily instead of trying to figure out how many yards were used or are left.

[Granny Square]

Well, the .0097941 is the cost per yard, but if you don't know how many yards you've used, that won't help.

1) No cost solution, but lots of math -- make a swatch in the same stitch/hook that you made your sellable item.  Figure out the square inches of your sellable item, and also of your swatch.  Now unravel your swatch, and measure the yardage (wrap it around a yardstick, don't pull tightly).  Now, you can figure the yardage per inch, which you can then multiply by the cost per yard (.0097941), and have the cost of the yarn used on your item.

2) One time cost, but less work, and maybe easier math -- Buy a scale that measures down to grams, or at least fractions of an ounce (most yarn is labeled in ounces and grams, and grams is the smaller measure so would be more accurate).  Measure your sellable item's weight.  You know the weight of the skein, so you can figure the fraction of that weight used in your sellable item.  Example, your skein is 800 grams, you used 200 grams on your item.  200 divided by 800 is .25, times the cost of the skein, is $2.50 rounded up to the nearest penny.

edit - oops, didn't see you were posting as I was typing greyhoundgrandma, great minds think alike   I just looked at Walmart, they have gram scales anywhere from about $5 -$20-ish.  

[redrosesdz]

Or you can forget trying to price by materials used. Where are you selling (e.g., online, craft show, personal orders, etc.)? Look around wherever you sell to see what similar items are priced. If you're still not sure, look at etsy.com for similar items. Try asking non-craft friends, family, neighbors what they would be willing to pay for something. 

[Granny Square]

Yes, good point Redrosesdz.  It's sad, I go to 'flea markets' occasionally, and a few folks are selling crochet (or offering - I don't see many interested looking customers at those booths) for about the cost of the yarn, which is sad.  They have to be losing money because I assume they have to pay for the 'space' to sell there.

[Avon Lady]

My crochet club and I just finished two craft shows--still have one to go.  We always check the prices of our competitors, and so far, after 7 years of doing craft shows--we're still managing to stay within the prices of the others.  I don't worry about having the same items as others have on display, because they're almost always made in different colors and sizes than ours. We usually end up pricing them about twice what the yarn cost us.  We aren't making millions of $$$--but all of our crochet profits go into charity projects.