Charged a museum shop €2,200 for a welded steel piece. Took me six weeks and I ate the material costs.
Quoted a museum shop €2,200 for a welded steel piece, thinking I'd build in some cushion. Took six weeks. Then I added up the steel, the oxygen, the acetylene, the grinding discs, the days I stood there deciding not to add one more curve and redid a joint that was already fine.
Came out to about €11 an hour before tax.
The shop sold it in a month. Marked up to €4,800. That part's on me, I set the number. But I keep thinking about the steel supplier who charged me more for the material than I'd budgeted and I just paid it, didn't even blink. Meanwhile I'll haggle with myself over my own labor for a week.
I've been at this thirty years and I still price like I'm twenty-six and grateful for the work. Raising the next quote twenty percent regardless of what it costs me to say it out loud.
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The math never lies, and that's the cruel part. Six weeks is real time, not cushion time.
I get the supplier thing though. You pay the material bill without blinking because it's printed on paper, it's been a cost since day one. Your own hours don't have an invoice attached, so they somehow feel negotiable. I've done the same for years. The gallery takes forty percent and calls it standard, and I've signed that without a word, but I'll stand in the studio and think hard about whether a tube of cold wax is worth it.
The shop mark-up stings, but like you said, that one's on you. €2,200 was the number you set. The part that isn't on you is that six weeks of skilled, physical work, acetylene, grinding discs, standing and deciding, somehow gets priced as if it were a hobby you fit in on weekends.
I don't know what the fix is. I suspect honesty: next time, price the hours by what a plumber charges, not what an artist 'should' be grateful for. Weird that we both know the plumber number and still don't use it.
You hit it exactly. The invoice thing. Supplier hands you a number, it's a fact. My own hours don't come with paper so I treat them like they're up for discussion. It's backwards and I know it and I still do it.
I'll tell you what finally got through to me, and it took long enough. I had a young guy working in the shop a few years back, just starting out. He asked me what he should charge, and I gave him a number. Seemed reasonable to me. Then I went home and realized I'd just quoted him lower than I'd ever quote myself for the same work, and I didn't even notice I was doing it until it was out of my mouth.
That was the mirror I needed. I'm still not good at it, but at least now I catch myself before I sign.
The cold wax line made me laugh. I know the exact version of that argument with yourself.