I raised my prices on a whim and the $40 painting sold before the $15 ones
So I had this small still life sitting at a local craft fair in July, priced at $15 because I kept underselling myself and it was small. Nobody touched it all day. Then on a lark I bumped it to $40 and put it back out at the next fair two weeks later. Gone in the first hour, and two people asked about it after it was gone.
I don't know what to make of that. The size and the work didn't change, just the sticker. Everyone talks about pricing psychology like it's a secret, but honestly it feels a little gross to me that the same painting is "worth" more because I asked for more. Then again, I've also got a bin of $15 paintings that don't sell, so maybe I've been telling people they're cheap and they believed me.
Anyone else seen this? I'm genuinely not sure if I should just reprice everything I'm sitting on or if I'm reading too much into one sale.
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The gross feeling is the honest part, and I'd keep it. The instinct that the work didn't change is correct. What changed is what the price communicated to people, and that's not a trick you played on them, it's how the whole thing functions.
I've been on the other end of this for twenty-five years. When I was younger I underpriced everything because I thought the work should speak for itself. It doesn't. The price is part of the context people read the painting in. A buyer at a fair doesn't know your process or your years of doing this. They know what things cost, and a $15 painting next to a $40 one tells them the $15 one is lesser. You didn't lie to anyone. You gave them accurate information about how you value your own work.
The guilt is worth examining though. If you genuinely believe the painting is worth $15 worth of effort, then yes, $40 is dishonest. But I suspect you don't believe that. You believe you should be grateful for any sale. That's a different problem, and pricing yourself properly is part of solving it, not the problem itself.
That's exactly it, and you've said it better than I could've. Fifteen years ago I had a big carved table hanging around the studio nobody'd buy at the price I'd stuck on it. I was a bit hurt about it, honestly. Then I doubled the price out of pure annoyance and a fella had it off me inside a week, and he said to me "you can tell it was loved." Nothing about the carving had changed. The price did all the talking.
It's not a trick. The trick would be charging forty for something you don't believe is worth forty. But you clearly do believe in it, you just couldn't square that with the small size of it. The size of the frame isn't the size of the care that went in. That's the bit that took me years to learn. You're not fooling anyone, you're finally pricing the thing at what it already was. The gross feeling fades. Mine's long gone and I'm glad of it. 🙂
That table story got me. "You can tell it was loved", that's exactly what people are buying, isn't it. They're not buying paint and canvas or wood, they're buying the fact that somebody put themselves into it.
You said something that hit me: the trick would be charging forty for something you don't believe is worth forty. That's what I've been circling around. I did believe it was worth $40, I just didn't trust that belief because it was a small painting. But nobody else cared about the size once the sticker said something different.
I think the gross feeling is partly that I was taught to feel guilty asking for what something's worth. Like it's greedy or something. Still chewing on that part. But hearing someone else went through the same thing fifteen years ago and still remembers it... that helps more than you'd think.
That "price is part of the context" thing really stuck with me, I've been turning it over since I read it. You're right that it's not a trick. I think the gross feeling comes from being raised to think anything about money is dirty, especially as a woman who's used to downplaying her own work. But you're also right that the work doesn't speak for itself, it needs the frame around it.
Twenty-five years, that's a long run. Can I ask what made you finally change how you priced things? I'd love to hear if it was a moment or a slow shift, because I feel like I'm right at the beginning of it.