Calculating freight & labor costs for part

Jewelry Discussion
1

Peter,

If you buy 10 $10 items and pay $20 in shipping, the shipping cost
per item will be $2.

If you buy 10 $1000 items and pay $20 in shipping, the shipping cost
per item will still be $2.

As to your time in assemblage, since it seems that you’re describing
a “buy-sell” business (buying pre-fabricated items, assembling them
by stringing onto chain or ribbon, then selling them), your labor
costs should be fairly low. Take the hourly rate of your assembling
workers (minimum wage?) and the total hours spent assembling, then
divide by the number of pieces.

Your self-created PMC pieces, by contrast, should have a higher
labor rate associated with them (higher skill needed = higher rate).
You need to know how much time you’ve put into each piece. If you’re
doing them as a batch of 20 pieces, take the amount of time to finish
the whole batch and divide by 20 to get the per-piece rate.

Don’t forget to also spread the cost of supplies, advertising,
travel/show expenses, studio space, etc. across all your work as
well.

Now that you know the cost of each piece, your price is calculated
by multiplying the cost by the profit margin you’re going for (for
example, 50%).

Make sense?

Karen Goeller

2

I understand what both you and Geller propose for pricing - but be
sure that the price, including realistic labor charges, and your
profit - which I like to calculate at 50% of costs is the wholesale
price. Otherwise you have set yourself up to never do wholesale
because 50% of your price is less than your costs.

Judy Hoch

3

Purchase a 500 lb machine for $1,000 and 50 ruby rings for $2000 ea
and calculate prorated shipping costs by your spreadsheet. Need some
sort of adjustment. Tom

4

Does anyone have any tips for setting up pricing sheets, perhaps in
excel that you can change metal prices universally to update your
entire price list. Thanks for any input or suggestions.

Catherine

5 
Does anyone have any tips for setting up pricing sheets, perhaps
in excel that you can change metal prices universally to update
your entire price list. Thanks for any input or suggestions.

You can buy a spreadsheet for pricing jewelry from Eni Oken’s
website. It’s a $5.00 download.

I know that others have purchased it and then adjusted it/added to
it for their own needs.

Elaine
http://www.CreativeTextureTools.com ™
Hard to Find Tools for Metal Clay