Raised my steel gate price to €1,600 and the first thing I heard was "but the raw material is only €400."
Custom steel gate, welded and hung last month. Charged €1,600. Client's friend looks at the metal and says, "well the steel's only about €400 of that." Yeah. And the 60 hours of welding, fitting, and the trip back to fix a hinge I didn't get square the first time, that's the other €1,200.
I don't know when people started thinking the price of a thing is the price of the stuff in it. Nobody says that about a mechanic's labor or a plumber's callout. But a gate, everyone's an expert on what steel costs at the yard.
Used to charge €1,100 for the same gate and I'd eat the mistakes myself. The hinge redo alone was a day of my life. Nobody ever thanked me for the free day.
Went up to €1,600 this year and I've been second-guessing it ever since. Then that comment came and I realized I'm still too cheap. The raw material being €400 is exactly the point. If I only charged for material I'd be a scrapyard.
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This is very true, ji. In our work also people say the same thing. They see paint and paper and they think, "this cannot cost so much, the colours are only from vegetables and mud." But they do not count the years of learning the line, the patience of preparing the pigment, the hours of sitting. The hand is not free, that is what they forget.
And they never question the plumber or the electrician, as you said. Because those are services. But a thing, a physical thing, they think they can see the whole cost in it. They cannot see the skill because it is not visible like steel.
Your price is fair. Sixty hours is not small. And the trip to fix the hinge, that is also part of the work. Next time, maybe the client will remember who made the gate and how well it hangs.
Wishing your work gets the value it deserves. 🙏
"The hand is not free, that is what they forget." God, yes. That's exactly it. I paint and people do the same thing to me, they see charcoal and canvas and think, well, the materials cost twenty quid. They can't see the twenty years of drawing badly to get to the line that looks effortless. It's invisible so it doesn't count to them.
And you're right about the difference. A plumber's time is a service so nobody argues with the hour rate, but a physical thing has a price tag they can point at and go "that's all it's worth." They think the object is the sum of what you could buy for the same money at a shop. It never occurs to them the skill IS the material.
Keep holding your line, ji. And your pigments sound beautiful. The mud and the vegetables are doing more work than anyone gives them credit for. ❤️
That's exactly it. Steel they can see, and they think they know what it costs because they can price it at the yard. But the weld they can't see, the hours they can't see, the hinge that took two trips they can't see. So they figure it's all markup.
The hand not being free. That's a good way to put it. Mine took thirty years and a lot of bad welds to get right, and nobody's pricing that in but me.