Why's It So Expensive? The True Cost of Handmade

 The True Cost of Handmade

One thing a lot of crocheters often hear is how expensive their handmade items are. Commonly alongside a comment about how you could just buy the materials and do it yourself. Do you do that anywhere else? Do you tell the supermarket that apples are too expensive, so you'll just buy the seeds and grow your own? 

Handmade items are just that, handmade. This means that someone has put a lot of time and effort into learning a skill, and used that skill, and yet more time, to create an item. Many business people say that 'time is money', but doesn't that mean we should value our time? No matter what job you do, you expect to be paid for your time and effort, so why should that be any different for someone who has created art with their bare hands?

When you are buying a handmade item from a small business like mine, you are getting a carefully crafted item that has been made with love. It's also a business, so making a profit is important, otherwise, you couldn't call it a business, could you? So let's break down the costs of creating and selling one of my items, such as my cute little Highland Cow plushie.

Obvious Costs

Let's look at the obvious costs first. Materials to make the item. What does it require? Yarn, stuffing and safety eyes. All of these need to be purchased. I also need a crochet hook, which is a one time investment, but still had to be purchased, along with a yarn needle, stitch marker and scissors to cut the yarn. So that's your material costs.

But if you are buying online and don't live near me, then there are other costs too. Packaging materials, a box, tape, protective materials. Shipping costs and printing a label as well. 

Then there are some legal requirements: soft toy items sold in the UK must meet minimum safety standards (more on this later) and must have labels with specific information on them, as well as details about washing and care instructions. These labels need to be printed and attached to the toy. So I need to design and order them as well, ensuring they are legally compliant. 

Less Obvious Costs

So the part you don't see. As mentioned, soft toys sold in the UK must meet minimum safety standards, known as UKCA marking - this is retained from the EU requirements and CE marking and the rules are pretty much the same as before we left the EU. This means I have to ensure my designs meet these standards, and involves rigorous testing and setting things on fire and such. 

In order to do this, you must either send your toys to a lab to do all the testing for you, which is not free, or self-certify, which requires a purchase of the materials and documentation in order to do so. It also requires making at least two prototype toys to test on, which is material costs that are lost as the toys are burned during testing, so cannot be sold. So you have to eat the loss in materials and time. 

Other less obvious costs include things like purchasing a pattern (if you are not designing your own), paying for hosting your website or listing fees for online marketplaces like Etsy or Shopify. There will be transaction fees as well for taking payments. 

The One Everyone Forgets

Time. Remember, time is money, right? So my Morag the Highland Cow toy takes around 1 hour to make, give or take. The national minimum wage for someone my age is currently £10.42, in the UK, and it will go up to £11.44 in April when the financial year rolls over. 

Remember also that in this example, the pattern in question is my own design, and it has taken me a few hours of work to design and tweak the pattern to perfect it, write up the pattern and take and edit photographs of the final pieces and all the in progress photos to guide anyone else using my pattern. So that's probably a good 6-7 hours of work right there. 

That's not even accounting for the time my pattern testers will put in to test this pattern for me, and help me ensure it is fit for purpose before I release it into the wild. And the time I've spent promoting it on social media, which is marketing, which is an actual job people do. Without having to do all the other stuff too. 

Artists deserve to be compensated for their time. Just because they're not performing life saving surgery or cooking food in a restaurant, doesn't mean their time is any less valuable. Yet, it seems to be the more artistic fields, like photography, graphic design etc, where people are expected to work for free or for very little. 

The True Cost of Handmade

So, now you understand where a lot of the costs come from in running a small handmade business. Especially as a sole trader, where you are designer, manufacturer, copywriter, marketing specialist, social media creator, accountant, admin, quality assurance and a whole lot of other things all at once. 

So next time you are browsing stalls at a market, or thinking about ordering from a small business online, and you want to complain about the prices, please remember this and consider carefully. If you don't want to spend money, then you can always do a lot to support small businesses like mine for free by sharing and interacting with our social media. These things can go a long way to getting our products seen by people who are in a position to buy from us.