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Post by Lexxi on Jul 15, 2014 17:15:54 GMT
Hi all, A friend of mine sells shirts on etsy: www.etsy.com/shop/TheCasualCosplayer. He makes them all by hand and loves making them. He was recently featured on a blog and has been getting an increase in business (yay). The problem is that each shirt takes 6-8 hours to make so it's becoming a time suck and it works out that he's getting paid about $5/hr for his time (which I think we can all relate to). He doesn't want to give up the shirt business, but he's having trouble balancing it with everything else and support himself. I suggested raising the prices by $20/each. His concern is people won't buy, which I argued you need to sell fewer for the same amount of money. So I guess my question is what do y'all think? Could he sell the shirts at $50? Or too high? And/or what would you do? |
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The Rice Hat Samurai
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Kick reason to the curb and make the impossible possible.
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Post by The Rice Hat Samurai on Jul 15, 2014 17:34:38 GMT
Do a bunch of research into the matter, see if anyone else is doing something similar. If not, raise the prices, $5/hr is unacceptable. If there is, he's gotta find a way to make his shirts stand out from everyone else's.
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Post by Lexxi on Jul 15, 2014 17:44:43 GMT
I know he had done some research initially. Most of the superhero stuff out there is more elaborate and his idea was to do a basic concept/representation of the logo - keep cosplay as a no big deal doesn't need to be an elaborate production thing. Also with his stuff, it's all pieced. You'll see stuff where someone will glue the batman logo onto a solid shirt - his is all pieces/inset seams. And also really high quality (I have the Star Sapphire shirt).
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Post by Toni on Jul 15, 2014 21:06:38 GMT
He definitely needs to increase his prices. I would suggest a gradual increase. $5 every two months being them up $15 shouldn't be too much of a sticker shock right away. They are not regular printed t-shirts, people would pay for them.
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eliste
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Post by eliste on Jul 16, 2014 9:50:19 GMT
I'm with the others. Those prices have to raise or the costs have to be cut. $5/hour is not acceptable. If he's not yet looking at bulk-buying fabric, he should be. Buying a whole bolt of a fabric brings down the cost a lot.
$50 sounds like a lot, but I think he still might be able to sell them. BUT I think that would be more likely to happen if he broke down and got some more professional photos of the shirts done. We might know they're good quality, but I don't feel that the photos are doing them justice. If you're going to ask for a lot of money, you need to convince the audience that they are quality and better photos would help do that.
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Yurtle
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Post by Yurtle on Jul 16, 2014 14:09:55 GMT
I think it will be a bit more difficult for a random person to buy the shirt at $50. He would then be focusing on the true connoisseur of all things geek or people that truly appreciate handmade goods and are willing to pay the price. Right now, he's probably getting a pretty good mix of people that just think his stuff is cool and will pay $25 (or whatever they cost now - shows up in CAN $ for me). If he wants to be paid more, he either seriously needs to find a way to reduce his costs or time or will have to spend a lot of time on specific marketing. Besides that, I can't comment on the $5/hr bit because that actually sounds really good to me, especially if he has another job. But then again, I'm terrible and am probably making more like $1/hr on some of my knitted stuff. But this isn't about me!  If this is going to be his job and main source of income, he really needs to figure out the material costing and marketing. |
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If this is going to be his job and main source of income, he really needs to figure out the material costing and marketing.