Quoted $4,800 for a carved stone piece, client said "that's it?" and I went home and re-did the math
Took a commission for a carved limestone piece last winter. Eight weeks of work on and off. Quoted $4,800 and the client said "that's it?" which I should have read as a warning about myself, not a compliment.
I broke it down after delivery. Stone cost $620. Studio overhead, sanding discs, carbide, the rented truck to haul the block, my time at what I actually worked, it came out to about $11 an hour.
I've been doing this thirty years. I still price like I'm afraid someone's going to find out I'm not worth it. The client was happy to pay more. I was the one who couldn't ask.
Raised my rate last month for the first time in four years. $65 an hour. Feels like robbery. That's the whole problem.
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This really resonated with me, but from a much smaller scale. I sell at local art fairs and I still catch myself pricing pieces so low people look at me funny. I had a painting last year I priced at $150 and a woman asked if it was a print. When I said no, she said "oh, I thought it was more than that." She bought it anyway but I remember walking away thinking I'd just told her what I thought of my own work.
The "client said that's it" moment is brutal though. Thirty years and an $11 an hour rate. I think some of us just never shake the feeling that we're playing at this, even when we're not. Hope the rate raise stuck. Did you figure out a system for pricing going forward, or is it still a gut thing you're working on?
The "she asked if it was a print" thing is the one that stings. People read price like a language, whether we like it or not. You price a painting at $150 and you're telling them it's a poster. They're just repeating it back to you.
I've done the same dance. Had a found photograph piece I priced low because I didn't want to seem precious about it, and a friend of a friend looked at it and said "oh, this is the cheap one." Said it kindly. Still took me a year to stop hearing it every time I priced something.
The funny part is the buyers aren't the ones with the problem. They'll meet you at whatever number you name. It's the voice in our own heads doing the undercutting.
"The cheap one." That's the phrase that sticks, isn't it. Not "affordable" or "accessible." Cheap. And you hear it long after the piece is gone.
You're right about buyers not being the problem. Most of them will pay for what they can see is real. The problem is standing there and naming the number without flinching. Took me thirty years to learn that and I'm still fighting it.
My daughter keeps telling me the fix is to just raise the rate and let the work catch up. She's probably right. Old habits die hard though.
The "$150 painting, are you sure it's not a print" thing is a whole article on its own. That woman wasn't being rude, she was being honest with you about what your price told her. That's the part that sticks.
I hear you on the playing at it feeling. My old mentor said it to me once, decades back. He said the work never gets easier to price because you never stop seeing the flaws in it. The client doesn't see them. That's the whole point. You're pricing what you haven't finished hating, and they're buying what they love.
Thirty years and I still wrote that quote like an apprentice. The arrogance would be charging too much. But charging too little isn't humble, it's just another kind of ego. Took me a long time to see that.