The most stressful part of running a small shop isn't making things. It's deciding what to charge for them. Here's the framework I use so I don't have to relitigate the question every single time.
For the first year I priced everything by vibe: I’d look at a finished print, guess a number that didn’t feel greedy, and undercharge by roughly half. Vibes are not a pricing strategy. What follows is boring, repeatable, and has kept the shop from quietly losing money.
01Start from cost, not from the competition
Looking at what other people charge tells you what the market tolerates, not what your object costs you to exist. I start from the ground up: materials, plus my time, plus the overhead everyone forgets — packaging, listing fees, the shipping supplies, the failed prototypes.
If your price doesn’t cover the mistakes, the mistakes come out of your pay.
02The formula I actually use
It’s deliberately simple. I’d rather use a rough formula every time than a perfect one never.
| Component | How I estimate it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Materials | Real cost per unit, including waste | $6 |
| Labor | Honest minutes × a real hourly rate | $14 |
| Overhead | Flat ~20% of the above | $4 |
| Base cost | Sum of the three | $24 |
| Retail | Base × 2 (covers fees + margin) | $48 |
03Why the ×2 isn’t greedy
That multiplier feels aggressive until you subtract everything it absorbs: platform fees, payment processing, the discount codes, the returns, and the fact that you can’t work every hour of the day. The margin isn’t profit — it’s the buffer that lets the shop survive a slow month.
04When to break your own rule
- Loss-leaders — a cheap sticker or card that gets someone in the door.
- One-of-a-kind pieces, where scarcity does the pricing for you.
- Wholesale, which needs its own math entirely, not a discount hack.
The point of a framework isn’t to obey it blindly. It’s to know the real number first, so that when you choose to charge less, it’s a decision — not an accident.