Leatherwork - fair prices?

[Paul_B]

There's a few leather workers here so I'll ask my question. What's a fair price for leather products?

I'm curious as to what is a fair price to make a journal or organizer like filofax? I've seen £20 ones that look like these cheapest £48 filofax ones. I've seen them up into silly money too. Just curious as to cost and fair mark up.

Any opinions?

 

[Stew]

There are a few factors.

- How long is it taking you to make it?
- Materials used?
- Basic or added details such as stamping or extra pockets.

 

[Buckshot]

in addition there's also how much do want to sell it for?
By that i mean are you a hobby leather worker just looking to cover materials and beer money or is it a business.
Corter leather on YT has some interesting videos on pricing goods.
It boils down to
raw materials (including wastage)
+ cost of time (insert your hourly rate here! might be minimum wage or much more if you are a skilled craftsman)
+ overhead
+ profit.

That could mean you might be charging £150+ for a wallet for instance.

A hobbyist might charge say £30 for the same piece.

Not many people nowadays are prepared to pay for quality craftsmanship...

 

[Paul_B]

I guess quality of leather and other raw materials, quality of work and simply the value the maker puts on his time really play into this. It's hard to tell quality of materials from photographs on a website. Quality of work might be indicated in the photographs if you can zoom in on details. Then unless you know of the maker you really can't determine his/ her quality.

There's possibly only the adage that you get what you pay for.

 

[ocean1975]

Its a tough one,ive been pondering the same thing as i’ve been making things recently,i put a post up earlier today.I would like to sell items just to cover cost materials and to keep the hobby going as leather ain’t cheap or the dyes and everything else that goes with it.My craftsmanship improves with every project and would like to be able to make some beer out of it as the time taken wouldn’t pay the bills.It’s all good fun and takes you away from the screens and a good sense of satisfaction of making making something from scratch.

 

[Broch]

I've been asked by several people if I can make them the tooled notebook covers I've been making recently but, although I enjoy making them, I won't give my time away. There's about £10 worth of good quality veg tanned leather and miscellaneous materials. For an organiser there's some hardware on top. It takes me around six to eight hours to make one depending on the level of tooling and a few hours on top of that if I do original artwork first. So, at £15 an hour that works out at £100 to £130 and more for artwork - clearly something most people won't pay for. Obviously, if I made more I'd be faster.

OK, I could charge less - but how much would you be prepared to charge your time out for?

I've just started making myself an A5 carved leather ring binder

 

[Buckshot]

I have the same issue Broch. Your covers look very nice.

I have made some stuff for friends but to charge a decent hourly rate makes things more expensive than people want to pay.
This is one of the last things i made before Christmas. It was a present for a friend. If I'd have charged Brochs hourly rate it would have been worth maybe £130 to £150 or so.
2021-01-12_05-05-03 by Mark Aspell, on Flickr

The other side is often we do things because we enjoy doing them in our spare time. selling them and getting paid puts additional stress on the situation and might mean it no longer becomes fun!

 

[lostplanet]

Its really sad that craftmanship isn't appreciated as much as it should be anymore. I made a belt for myself a few years ago and its does everything I need but by the time i had finished it it cost me £40?? without labour. I did it for fun more than anything but when you are up against this as a seller:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=leather+belt&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 ???

Unless your market understands whats involved to make some of the works of art and how skillful workers are and the beautiful products they make, to justify the cost, very difficult. its not for this disposable world we live in now. People just don't know and worse i don't think they care on mass.

 

[Broch]

There is the other issue of course; there are craftspeople out there that rely on their craft to put food on the table and put clothes on the kids - why should I undercut them for a bit of fun just because I don't rely on that income. The reality is though, ebay and amazon are already undercutting them with ridiculously cheap imports.

 

[Stew]

I guess quality of leather and other raw materials, quality of work and simply the value the maker puts on his time really play into this. It's hard to tell quality of materials from photographs on a website. Quality of work might be indicated in the photographs if you can zoom in on details. Then unless you know of the maker you really can't determine his/ her quality.

There's possibly only the adage that you get what you pay for.

Ah, you’re asking this as a buyer not a maker?

 

[Buckshot]

There is the other issue of course; there are craftspeople out there that rely on their craft to put food on the table and put clothes on the kids - why should I undercut them for a bit of fun just because I don't rely on that income. The reality is though, ebay and amazon are already undercutting them with ridiculously cheap imports.

That assumes it's the same customer. Some would be i guess but most would be different people with different ideals and pockets!

 

[Broch]

That assumes it's the same customer. Some would be i guess but most would be different people with different ideals and pockets!

True.

 

[ocean1975]

I have the same issue Broch. Your covers look very nice.

I have made some stuff for friends but to charge a decent hourly rate makes things more expensive than people want to pay.
This is one of the last things i made before Christmas. It was a present for a friend. If I'd have charged Brochs hourly rate it would have been worth maybe £130 to £150 or so.
2021-01-12_05-05-03 by Mark Aspell, on Flickr

The other side is often we do things because we enjoy doing them in our spare time. selling them and getting paid puts additional stress on the situation and might mean it no longer becomes fun!

Is that the dye and shaving foam affect

 

[Buckshot]

Yes it is Ocean

 

[Paul_B]

Oh definitely! I'm not the sort of person to be a maker. It's not that I couldn't learn to do something more that I've not got the patience, tools, time, etc to do it. We're all different and there's parts of me that prevents me being a maker of anything other than pointed sticks when whittling away! Lol.

Mass production has made a lot of leather products at a range of qualities and prices. I sometimes think you can get cheap but quality and expensive but poor quality. But mostly the quality follows price. Then do you need or want quality beyond what works?

I've got a reduced price Filofax that cost me something like £35-40. The cheapest in WHSmith. My question came about as I looked for a larger replacement that wasn't Filofax. They've increased their prices such that you're getting mass produced product for £130. Then I saw a £20-25 leather file with the Filofax ring binder in it. It was better than my budget, synthetic leather branded Filofax in looks, quality and it's leather.

I looked at a website for a couple who make and sell leather journals. Called earthworks journals. For £50 you get a plain organiser or £70 for a tooled one. Broch reckons £130+ for his which I must admit still sounds less than it's actually worth. Is the 30 years experience of doing it for a business why they sell at £70? I think broch puts more into his tooled leatherwork as I think it's more detailed.

At the moment I can't spare money on a handmade organizer cover so my query is academic. I'm trying to understand the craft and true value it should have versus the value it has possibly due to mass produced, cheaper stuff.

There are a lot of skilled people on here and makers who earn a living or top up their income through commissions. I have a question but I'm unsure about asking because it feels like it's wasting a maker's time to ask. I don't want to offend people.

I have very few things in my life I wish I had the money to collect. These include watches, pens and organisers/fancy notebooks/fancy journals. Obviously with the last category it's leather that interests most. One day I'll buy the product of a craftsman in the format of a leather cover organiser folder. Just how much for the last organiser you'll ever need to buy???

 

[Buckshot]

All good stuff.
Also bear in mind there's a difference between entirely hand made and hand finished.
A single large stamp could be used to tool a piece and it could be stitched on a machine as opposed to tooling using the small tools hit by a hammer and then gluing and hand stitching in a stitching pony.
The first could go from raw material to finished product in under an hour or so, the second would take far longer.

 

[Stew]

Oh definitely! I'm not the sort of person to be a maker. It's not that I couldn't learn to do something more that I've not got the patience, tools, time, etc to do it. We're all different and there's parts of me that prevents me being a maker of anything other than pointed sticks when whittling away! Lol.

Mass production has made a lot of leather products at a range of qualities and prices. I sometimes think you can get cheap but quality and expensive but poor quality. But mostly the quality follows price. Then do you need or want quality beyond what works?

I've got a reduced price Filofax that cost me something like £35-40. The cheapest in WHSmith. My question came about as I looked for a larger replacement that wasn't Filofax. They've increased their prices such that you're getting mass produced product for £130. Then I saw a £20-25 leather file with the Filofax ring binder in it. It was better than my budget, synthetic leather branded Filofax in looks, quality and it's leather.

I looked at a website for a couple who make and sell leather journals. Called earthworks journals. For £50 you get a plain organiser or £70 for a tooled one. Broch reckons £130+ for his which I must admit still sounds less than it's actually worth. Is the 30 years experience of doing it for a business why they sell at £70? I think broch puts more into his tooled leatherwork as I think it's more detailed.

At the moment I can't spare money on a handmade organizer cover so my query is academic. I'm trying to understand the craft and true value it should have versus the value it has possibly due to mass produced, cheaper stuff.

There are a lot of skilled people on here and makers who earn a living or top up their income through commissions. I have a question but I'm unsure about asking because it feels like it's wasting a maker's time to ask. I don't want to offend people.

I have very few things in my life I wish I had the money to collect. These include watches, pens and organisers/fancy notebooks/fancy journals. Obviously with the last category it's leather that interests most. One day I'll buy the product of a craftsman in the format of a leather cover organiser folder. Just how much for the last organiser you'll ever need to buy???

I’m not sure what you’re getting at.

Do you basically just want to know how much a certain project will cost without asking a specific maker to quote for it?

 

[C_Claycomb]

Experience isn't the only thing that can reduce cost. Specialising and limiting choices can also help reduce the cost of manufacture, allowing a maker to sell for a lower price and still make the necessary profit.
There are plenty of videos about this. Instead of offering many products, offer just one or two. Don't offer many different designs, or materials. If you only have one size, in two colours and two finishes, you can set up a much more efficient process than if you accept everything from organisers to archery equipment.
All that lets you limit the set up time, you can have stations set up for your limited process, not needing to repeat set-up helps with speed.

Paul,
I am not sure that your question is answerable.
"I'm trying to understand the craft and true value it should have versus the value it has possibly due to mass produced, cheaper stuff."

"true value" of a thing is totally subjective. Do you place more value on a leather binder that has been hand stitched, or machine stitched? Both could be made by a sole craftsman, both could be done in a factory. Do you place more value on a binder that was made, to a standard pattern just for you, than one that was made to the same pattern in a batch and put on a shelf awaiting orders? What about the processes, edges that are hand sanded and hand rubbed vs using a belt sander and buffer/power burnisher? Two items could be made to exactly the same spec, one by a solo craftsman and one in a factory, using largely the same processes. (In knives, Bark River Tools is a bit like this, its a factory, but an awful lot of the processes are done by hand, as they would be in a single person shop), the solo shop version could be twice the price and be a fair price for time and materials. How do you value the difference? Is there a difference? In the actual product there may be no objective difference, so is the solo hand made version a rip off? That craftsman could be earning less per hour than the person in the factory.

 

[Paul_B]

I'm trying to understand the market out there. With makers selling directly and through online market places it's not really clear why items are costing what they do. Example being some small online companies sell at £70 others the same type of item with what appears to me to be equivalent construction, quality, design, etc for £150+. These are often one guy or a married couple doing everything. Often made to order not to stock as well. Similar types of business I think.

 

[Broch]

Experience isn't the only thing that can reduce cost. Specialising and limiting choices can also help reduce the cost of manufacture, allowing a maker to sell for a lower price and still make the necessary profit.

Yes, but that is one of a very large range of marketing options and, as most small 'craft' based businesses do it because they enjoy the process (or at least, that's how it starts), I can't think of anything more soul destroying. The other side to the coin is, as soon as you specialise, you've reduced your market spread. The only products that make sense to limit your offerings to (usually) are the very high-end expensive ones where a niche market allows you to exploit it.

The truth is that some people are happy to pay for a hand made unique product and, as long as the craftsperson can get to the market, there remains opportunity for people. It's getting to the market that most small craft based business fail to achieve and under-plan for.

Buyers have to keep in mind that the hourly rate they are paying for is not just to make the product: it's the desired income, plus costs, divided by the hours available to 'make'; there's a whole load of non-revenue earning time in running a small business that also has to be paid for.