raised the hare print from 45 to 65 and lost exactly two of my regulars
so I finally did it. the small hare linocut, the one I've been pulling for years, the 8x10 hand-burnished job on that Japanese paper, went from 45 to 65 at the market last Saturday. sat with it for about a year and a half before I moved on it, kept telling myself the paper had gone up, the ink had gone up, the whole lot had gone up, and I still felt like a chancer writing the new number on the card.
here's the thing nobody warns you about. two of the women who buy one off me every Christmas, the ones who've been buying them since I was set up beside the fish van, they both looked at the tag and then looked at me and one of them goes "ah, is that the price now?" and I heard myself start explaining. explaining. to a woman who's watched me sell these for the price of two pints since her kids were small. I gave her the whole speech about the paper and she nodded along and bought one anyway but I've been turning it over all week.
sold eleven of them regardless. so it wasn't the price that was the problem, it was me standing there like I owed everybody an apology for it. my wife says I do this every time, that I'd rather be liked than paid, which is grand coming from someone who's never had to put a number on her own work.
I know lads charging 120 for the same size print and I know lads charging 30 and the ones charging 30 are the ones who'll pack it in next year. I'm not going back.
anyway. the two Christmas women will come round, or they won't. curious what ye do about the regulars when the price moves, do ye warn them first or let them find out at the table like I did.
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The two who left are the ones who were buying the old price as much as the hare, I think. There's a strange thing with a print that sells the same image for years: the buyers build a relationship with a number, and the number starts to feel like part of the object. You didn't just raise a price, you changed what the thing is to them, and that's the bit that stings more than the 20.
For what it's worth, the paper and ink argument is real and you don't owe anyone an apology for it, but I wonder if the better justification is the one you didn't say out loud. If an 8x10 hand-burnished edition is going out the door at 65, it's still wildly cheap for what it is. The guilt is the interesting part, not the price.
Did you tell them why, or did you just let the tag do the talking? Because those two are the ones who would have listened.
"the buyers build a relationship with a number" - that's it, that's the whole thing in one line and I've been circling it for a week without landing on it. it's not the hare they were buying at that point, it's the hare plus the certainty of it. same paper, same price, same chat at the stall every December. I went and changed the price and the certainty went with it.
and you're right that the paper and ink story is the easy one to tell because it's true and it's not about me. the other reason is harder to say at a market stall without sounding like you're giving yourself a raise out loud. truth is I've been underselling the thing for years and knew it, and every time I'd think about it I'd hear my own voice saying "sure it's only a hare" and leave it.
the two of them will come back or they won't. one of them did say she'd think about it, which is not a no. the other one said nothing at all, which felt worse. thanks for taking the time on this, genuinely.