Why Undervaluing Your Work Hurts All Crafters

In a Facebook group, I recently joined in a conversation where a crocheter asked how much she should charge for an infants dress. She explained she lived in a small town and people were not willing to pay a lot for items and wondered if $15 was a reasonable price. In my head, I was screaming "NO!" but my words have to be a little more gentle when dealing with others...I know...I'm maturing. More surprising than her suggested price, were the number of other hookers who were agreeing to the $15 price. I posted "Seriously? I think you are undervaluing your work," because, even an infant's dress, takes longer to make, has more materials, and is a more complicated design, than a child's hat and that's what I charge for a hat. I went on to explain that, I too, lived in a small town and understood how places with a lower cost of living expected lower prices. And I do believe your prices should reflect some consideration of the demographics of your area, however I wasn't prepared for the number of people who argued they did value their work but crocheting was just a hobby and they only wanted people to enjoy their work, so as long as materials were covered they were happy. OK, but you are selling it for $15 and a skein of yarn is $5, you have still tripled the cost of materials, so if you only wanted people to enjoy it you should only charge $5, so you are looking to profit, which leads me to believe you are keeping your prices low because 1. you don't value the time and skill aspect of pricing, 2. you are underselling your competition out of vanity. Neither of these reasons are very attractive and hurt other crafters who may be trying to make a living with their work. The excuse that crocheting is just a hobby, is even more hurtful and frustrating.

Let me give you an example:

Supposed your hobby was gardening, specifically vegetable gardening. One year you have a bumper crop of tomatoes. You produce so many tomatoes you could not possibly eat them all. You give some away to friends, family, neighbors to the point that they stop answering the door when they see you coming, so you decide to take your crop down to the local farmer's market to earn just a couple extra dollars. At the Farmer's Market there are local produce farmer's who have businesses to run so they have put a lot of time and thought into the cost of doing business and come up with a price of $2.39 a pound for tomatoes. The other farmer's there may be able to get by with charging $2.20, but there is a bit of an unwritten rule at the market that everyone charges close to the same price to keep from creating an unfair market. Don't believe me? Pay attention next time you go to the Farmer's market. Anyway, you bring your tomatoes and you realize to pay for your booth and have a little extra, you decide you will sell your tomatoes for $1 a pound. After all you don't need to make any real profit, and this is just a hobby and all that's important is people enjoy your tomatoes. For the rest of the day, no one buys the tomatoes of the farmer's who have businesses to run. You seem pretty proud of yourself because everyone wanted your tomatoes instead of the professional farmers so you feel your product was superior. In actuality, you were cheap. The other farmers are then left with the dilemma of marking their prices lower to compete with someone who doesn't care if they make a profit, or let their product "wither on the vine". You don't think it's that big of a deal because you are only one person and you are only going to be there that one day, but what you don't realize is there is someone doing the exact same thing ten booths down, every day. There are always hobby gardeners who have no clue what to charge because they just want to sell their stuff and excuse their low prices as they are just hobbyists. 

Look, I get that you don't want to price gouge people, believe it or not, I don't think it's right to over charge for an item either. A great deal of "What would I pay" goes into how I price my items, but a fair price should include a consideration of your time AND SKILL. Just because this is something that comes easy for you, doesn't mean it doesn't have value. Painting, sculpting, singing, acting, basketball, baseball, football, swimming.....are all skills that come easy to the people who are masters at their "craft", that's why they put the time and effort into developing their skill. SO DO YOU. Don't poo poo your abilities, because I will promise you, as someone who has tried to teach others how to crochet, not everyone can do it. 

If you aren't comfortable charging a fair market price for your work, then don't charge....donate your items, there are plenty of avenues for donating your work that will make you feel good about yourself. Don't stand on the "I just want to cover my materials..." excuse because I will assure you if you donate your time and skill, someone will donate materials. But stop undervaluing yourself AND your fellow crafters.