What would you charge for hand knit socks?
Let's say that your yarn would cost $3.79/ball. Each ball is 231 yards/50 grams.
Ok. In my mind...
For a woman's medium pair of socks, i would need two balls of yarn putting the cost of supplies at $7.58+tax. Let's call it $8.00. I've not even cast on one single stitch and already i would need to charge a customer $8.
Now, how in the world do i go about calculating my time involved and what i would want to be paid for it? Truth be told, i've never kept an actual accounting of how much time it really takes me to knit a pair of socks...hour by hour. Have you? Let's skip that for now, shall we?
How much is minimum wage these days? $6.15 here in Maryland?? Let's call it $6 so that we don't have to fiddle with the change. If there was some small chance that i could whip out a pair of socks in 8 hours, i would need to charge $48 + supplies of $8 for a total of $56 for one pair of socks. However, i don't knit that quickly, i'm sure. Besides, isn't knitting a skill? Shouldn't i be paid the same fair wage as a skilled laborer rather than just minimum wage? Yeah, that's what i think.
See? Naming a price on a hand knit item is a tricky business. Recently my Mom tried to gain a knitting order for me. A lady she knows was interested in 10 pairs of hand knit socks. So i struggled with all of these same questions. i came up with what i thought was a fair price of $25 for adult's sizes and $15 for children's sizes. Even at that price, i would not even be earning $2 per hour for my skill. The supplies alone would cost me $7.58+tax+shipping. So my profit would have been about $16, less if the pair was a larger pair and required and additional ball of yarn.
Needless to say, the potential customer, although she admires hand knit items and thinks that i do lovely work...did not think that the work was worth $25 per pair.
Oh well, more time for me to knit Christmas gifts for people who might appreciate them. ;)
~Suz~
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12 comments:
Yeah, craft pricing is tricky. We always charged 3x the cost of creation.
Everyone at work wants me to knit socks for them, but when I tell them the cost, they never say anything else........lol.
Thanks for the comment on the picture, we have an entire album of them that I am slowly scanning and restoring.
That's the number one reason why I rarely knit for hire. People don't understand the cost involved in knitting. I think it's fair to assign a cost to each yard of yarn you knit-- so, let's say you knit 300 yards of yarn at about .15 per yard would be a cost of $45. Once you add in the cost of the yarn, you're looking at a pair of socks costing $53. You've given her a deep discount, by offering to sell her the socks for $25!
I wonder how many people would contract a hitman, and then only want to pay him $100 to knock off someone? They'd never think of that, but they'd love to pay you nothing at all for your knitting skills. Not everyone can be a hired killer, and not everyone can knit socks.
Uhh. The hitman-sock knitter probably isn't a good example, huh?
Hmmm........for socks, I always tell people $200. Seriously. Given the materials, For example a skein of hand painted sock yarn on most sites runs from 18 to 25 dollars, then if I am conservative in charging $10 an hour. I figure around $200.
Next time I think I'll use Felicia's analogy, for sure they'll never ask me again!! LOL
That is why I NEVER knit for $. It's never understood or appreciated when it comes to the amount of time and effort that is put in to an item. I'll offer to teach people how to knit but it's up to them to follow up on it.
I would never, ever knit socks for $25 a pair. And I want to know where you are getting sock yarn so cheap? I am pretty frugal, but most of my socks are around $10 - $20 a pair just for the yarn!
Exactly - it is so hard to recoop the price for materials and for time spent with crafting. Plus, socks take me SO long to knit. I usually finish a sweater before I finish a single socks!
Definitely, knit for people who will appreciate it!
Everything everyone has already said is true. That's the way that the "craft" world is perceived. 10 pairs of socks will take you longer to create than a painter would create a painting. What's the difference? Both are created by a person's hands and heart. There is craft and there is art. I see very little difference between the two.
There are those who can do, and those that have no clue.
Hey, how about a sock machine? You can produce quite a few in a lot less time. (I've made over a dozen pairs in the last few weeks for gifts.) They're still hand made, if not hand knitted.
After this past summer, I do know how long it would take me to knit a pair of socks. :p
There's no way I would knit for pay because no one would be willing to pay what I would charge for my time, talent and ability when they could go to Target and buy a bag of socks for six bucks.
Quality is not cheap, but few people seem to remember that these days. People expect a bargain and do not want to pay for what something of quality is really worth. Yeah, I blame the right wing, but I would. :p
What everyone else said. I would have thought $25 was more than reasonable (cheap!) for a pair of handknit socks but it doesn't surprise me that people don't get it. I have this one girl at the office who says I should sell everything that I come to work wearing - I'm like, first of all, there's copyright issues, second, no one would pay me enough to take away from my "knitting play time." I look at it almost more from an opportunity cost perspective than anything else - if I was knitting this for someone, what would I not be knitting that I want to? LOL.
Well you already know my opinion on it. Even other crafters do not realize the time that goes into making a pair of hand kint socks. I always name a super high price because I do not want to do it. But if they are foolish enough to not blink, I will do it. But I also make sure that I have control of the materials. And I give myself plenty of time to make the item.
When I was knitting to sell on Etsy, I'd go by the simplest formula, that of taking supply cost and multiplying by 4. Are you getting compensated fairly for your time? Of course not. But I was more interested in selling items and making a decent profit margin on my cost than really getting fair wage.
So I suppose it depends on your motivation, and how much you want to knit said items. Friends of mine custom-order things all the time, and I usually charge them the cost of yarn plus $20-$30, depending on what it is. I mean, they're *friends*. But for anyone else? $10/hr + yarn - and I'm a slow knitter. *laughs* I hate knitting custom orders for strangers, so I want to make sure there's no way in hell they'll want to order from me. So far, so good! LOL
Short and Sweet: There ain't no amount of money that can pay me for my time and effort, only love. LOL
All that math makes my head hurt, but those are eye opening numbers!
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