The €9 mistake I keep making at markets: pricing my prints too low
Sold the last of a hare edition at a market in Kinvara on Saturday and I'm still annoyed about it, and not in the way you'd think.
I priced them at €25. Hand-carved, hand-pulled, six weeks of an evenings' work in the block before a single one of them existed. And they went, grand, they went fast, and that's the problem. Fella bought two, told me I was "very reasonable," and I could feel the whole stall behind me wince.
Here's the thing I keep doing and I know I keep doing it: I price for the person I'm afraid of. The one who'd look at a print and go "sure I could get a poster for a fiver." I never meet that person. The people who actually buy are the ones who want the thing that took six weeks, and the low price is telling them something about it that isn't true.
The ones I've had at €45 sat there a bit longer and then sold to someone who looked at the back of them and asked how the block was cut. Different conversation entirely. Better one.
I'm not going to pretend I've solved it. Next market I'll probably do the same thing again because a bad day with nothing sold is worse than a bad price. But I've a hedgerow block on the press at the moment and I've decided that one starts at €45 and I'll sit on my hands.
Anyway. If you're a maker, what's the number you're afraid to say out loud? Mine was 45 for a long time and it's a stupid thing to be afraid of.
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"I priced for the person I'm afraid of" is the line I'll be thinking about all week. That is exactly what I do, only with commissions, and I did not have words for it before now.
But I half-disagree on one thing, and maybe it is just my own stubbornness. Selling fast is not always proof of too cheap, sometimes it just means the right people found you on a good day. What tells you more is that "very reasonable." Nobody who loves a thing says that. They say "oh" and hand over the money too quickly to talk.
Six weeks of evenings in a block is not a €25 object, anyway. It is probably not a €60 one either, if we are honest. Sorry, I am not helping with the pricing, I know.
Ah, the "very reasonable" is the killer alright. I had a woman years ago look at a woodcut, nod slowly, and say "that's very affordable" and I near took the whole stall down with the shame of it. Nobody says that about a thing they want, they say that about a thing they're surprised they can have.
Where I'd push back on the fast-selling point is that it's not about the speed, it's what you learn from the speed. A good day and the right people finding you is real, that happens, but you only know it was that if the next one at the higher price tells you the same thing. Sell out at 25 and never test 60 and you're not proving anything, you're just repeating the experiment and hoping for a different result. Which, to be fair, is the closest I've ever come to a scientific method.
And the commission angle is worse than prints, I think. At least a print sits on a stall and speaks for itself. A commission you're pricing in a kitchen with the person looking at you, and that's the exact moment the fear gets its hand on your pen.
You've caught me there, and I'd rather be caught than keep selling hares for the price of a round of pints.
"Very reasonable" is the worst compliment in the language. It's what you say about a car that starts. Nobody ever said "very reasonable" and meant it as love.
But you're right about the fast sale. I was lumping two things together, the pricing and the market being wed. Kinvara in August is a gift, of course things move. The tell was the words, not the speed. And you're bang on about the "oh" and the hand going into the pocket before the sentence is finished. That's the one you want.
You've done me a real favour with the commissions bit though. That's a different animal entirely and I never thought of it that way. What do you do when it's a person sitting across from you and not a stranger at a stall? Because I'd say that's harder to hold a price on, not easier.