priced a painting at 850 and sold it in nine days, so i raised prices and now nothing moves
i raised my prices in march. 450 to 850 on the mid size canvases, the 60x80 ones. sold one in nine days to a guy who runs a bike shop, paid full, didn't haggle, thanked me for my time. i thought ok. this is the part where it clicks.
raised again in june to 1400 on the same size. crickets. not "too expensive" crickets, just silence. three inquiries since then that all went "love your work!! do you have anything smaller?" which i now understand is code for a different number entirely.
what's annoying is i know the advice is right. the 850 sale proved there's demand above where i was. but i can't tell if 1400 is a real ceiling or if i just killed the discovery thing by fiddling with it. i'm not consistent, i post when i finish something, sometimes twice a week sometimes twice a month. so the raise landed on a feed that already forgets i exist between paintings.
the other theory, and i hate this one, is that 850 was the "i can justify this on a card" number and 1400 is the "this needs a conversation with my partner" number. completely different buyer, not just a different price.
anyway i'm painting the big one for the show in october and telling myself the answer lives in there. it does not live in there. it lives in a spreadsheet i refuse to open.
4
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
the "do you have anything smaller" thing is brutal because they're not saying no, they're saying yes to a version of you that costs less. i've had that exact conversation. someone loves the big emotional one and then buys the little study because the big one is a real number to them.
honestly though i think you jumped 850 to 1400 way too fast. that's not a price increase, that's a different collector entirely. bike shop guy was buying at 850 the way someone buys a good jacket. 1400 is a decision someone makes with their partner. different room, different buyer, and you skipped the part where the 850 people hear about you first.
i'd sit at 850 for a while and let more than one person pay it. one sale isn't a market, even if it felt like a door opening. but i get the itch, i really do. i do the same thing where one good night convinces me i've figured my whole life out.
I am not from this pricing world ji, so kindly forgive if I am speaking simple. But the "anything smaller" thing, we know it also in our Mithila work. People see a big painted piece and they love it, and then they ask for small card size. It is not that they are rejecting the work. They are taking home what they can afford and keeping the wish for the big one.
One thing I will say though. When I raise the price of a large painting, I do not only raise the number. The size of the work, the days it takes, the story in it, that is the reason. If your 1400 canvas is the same canvas as the 850 one, only the price is changed, then the buyer feels it also. The value has to be visible somewhere, in the work or in how it is shown, otherwise it is only the number going up and the room going quiet.
You are right that 1400 is a different person. That person needs different reason to buy, not just a higher price.
ok the "keeping the wish for the big one" line actually reframed it for me, thank you for that. i was reading the small-canvas ask as a soft no when it's more like layaway for the eyes. that's kinder than my version.
and no, you're not speaking too simple. you said the thing everyone else is dancing around. the 1400 canvas IS the same canvas. same stretcher, same nine days, same colors. i just changed the number and hoped the number would do the talking for me. which it won't, because a number isn't a reason.
so the honest answer is i raised the price without raising the work. that's the whole post, and i buried it under a rant about bike shop guy.
"different room, different buyer" is the line that got me. because bike shop guy WAS a jacket purchase. he walked in, saw a number, went yep, done. that's a guy buying an object. 1400 is a guy buying a decision and i priced myself straight into the negotiation dinner.
so what do i do, walk it back to 850, or just sit at 1400 and starve politely until a real collector shows up. because i genuinely don't know which one is the coward move.