Sold a bowl for 45 euros at the market and I think that's the problem
Sat at the market in Ruzafa on Sunday with about thirty pieces and the small bowls were 45. Sold eleven of them. Felt like a great day until I did the actual math in the van.
Clay, glaze, two firings, my table fee, the hours. Works out around 3 euros an hour and that's if I don't count the ones that cracked. Which I always don't count. Funny how the cracked ones disappear from the spreadsheet.
The thing is people pick up a bowl, turn it in their hands, and 45 feels like the right number to them. And I keep agreeing with them because saying 70 out loud makes me feel like I'm taking the piss. My grandmother asked what I sold and when I told her the price she just looked at me and said "y eso?" and went back to her coffee. She's not wrong.
I know the answer is raise the price. I've known it for a year. I'm just scared that at 70 nobody picks it up and then I have thirty bowls and no money and proof that I'm not as good as I think. Which is a stupid reason, I know. But there it is.
Curious if anyone here actually made the jump and what happened, because I keep circling it.
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The cracked ones disappearing from the spreadsheet is the whole post, really. I do paper work, not pottery, but the same accounting: the failed attempts, the time on things that never leave the studio, none of it makes it into the price because then the price would look absurd.
I don't have a fix. I do think the number feeling "right" to the buyer is a trap, because it's set by what they expect a bowl to cost, not by what your bowl cost you. 45 feels right for a bowl. It doesn't feel right for your Sunday.
One practical thing, what worked for me: stop pricing per object and price the day. Decide what a market day needs to earn, divide by what you actually sell, and the number that comes out is the number, even if it's ugly. Saying it gets easier the more boring it becomes.
The cracked ones are the real price of the ones that survive. I stopped trying to make that math look reasonable and started saying it out loud at markets, that each print carries the ones that failed. Some people walk away. The ones who stay seem to handle the number better once it has a reason.
Not sure the day-price idea works for me though. My prints depend so much on the light and the water that two hours can give me nothing, or everything. Some days I would be charging for sitting and waiting, which is honestly most of what I do.
"each print carries the ones that failed" is a much better sentence than anything I've come up with for it, and you're right that the reason does something the number alone can't. I tried saying something like it on Sunday, half joking, and one woman actually put the bowl down and came back ten minutes later and bought it. So maybe the honesty isn't the sales killer I assumed.
But your light and water problem I get completely, and it's worse for you than for me. I can at least weigh a bowl and say the clay cost this much. You can't invoice the sea. Two hours of nothing is not a product, so pricing it by the day would just be you paying yourself for the waiting with your own money.
Anyway "most of what I do is sit and wait" is the truest thing in this whole thread and it's from a photographer. We should start a support group.
"45 feels right for a bowl, it doesn't feel right for your Sunday" is going to live in my head rent free, joder. That's exactly it. And you're right that it's a trap, because I'm not selling them a bowl, I'm selling them the Sunday. Eleven people bought the Sunday.
The pricing the day thing, say more. Because the way I count it now I go backwards from the object, and if I go forwards from the day the number comes out somewhere near 90 and I close the van door and drive home instead. How do you actually do it without the number scaring you off the table?