The Crafts Report: Public Opinion

What Price Points Are Selling Best for You?

What’s your opinion?

Each month, The Crafts Report invites readers to respond to the Public Opinion question. Responses are published in the magazine.

The Crafts Report is seeking short commentaries (400-500 words) from craftspeople describing recent experiences or concerns that significantly impact their craft businesses.

Please respond by May 8. Responses to this question will appear in the June 2004 issue.

E-mail: publicopinion@craftsreport.com; or answer online here.

Send responses to: “Public Opinion,” The Crafts Report, Box 1992, Wilmington, DE 19899; fax: (302) 656-4894.

Anonymous responses will not be published.

In 2003, I sold fused glass jewelry mostly within my own county of 40,000 people, doing two local shows and three open studios. Single-item-purchase bestsellers are post earrings at $40, with dangles at $70 coming in second. Matched “suite” best-sellers are slide/posts suites at $100, with bracelet/posts suites coming in second at $280.

We’ve pushed our price point for our art furniture to over $3,000. Our prior high-end art furniture leveled off at $1,000. We are selling the high-end, and, even better … we are finding our $350 to $1,000 price points are selling very well during this normally slow season. Our January was 42 percent over January 2003 due to the higher price points!

There are two price points that sell best for me presently: Under $30 and between $100 and $200. I sell beaded jewelry and it seems that most people want something under $30 lately. But the people who are looking for something different/special/unique will go for the $100 to $200 purchase!

Susan Goracy
Tavernier, Fla.

Wholesale prices from $17 to $34, and retail prices from $28 to $65.

Our gallery is located in a maritime resort town on the eastern shore of Maryland. We see the majority of traffic during the months of April through October, so we currently aren’t operating on our full schedule.

Per item, the best selling price point for us during the Christmas holidays, and thus far in 2004, has been around $50. However, customers have been buying those items priced in the $10-$25 range in multiples. (For instance they might pick up three sets of $15 salad tongs at once or four $10 bookmarks to keep on hand as hostess and small thank you gifts.)

Over the holidays, big-ticket item sales (those over $500) slowed considerably. This past weekend, though, we had several nice juicy sales: one couple purchased a $1,500 Cricket Forge garden bench and another couple bought a Timothy Landers Rock Tree and an acrylic sculpture by Michael George for a combined total of nearly $1,500. There were several other larger sales over the weekend as well.

Although the sale of higher priced items is extremely common during our summer months, we typically don’t have a great deal of this kind of spending in the dead of winter. We hope that this is a sign of things to come.

April and Rodney Whitacre
The Mind’s Eye Craft Collection
St. Michaels, Md.

Price points selling best are $50 and under for gifts — often multiples; $200 to $300 for art pieces in clay, glass and jewelry; $500 to $900 for wall pieces. The average ticket price is $240.

At the end of 2003, the higher priced items — over $100 — started doing better.
Now, the price points seem to be moving even higher. I think that the increased consumer confidence is helping that number, but it may be shaky because of the political climate in this election year.