At a glance
- The formula: (materials + labour) × 2 = wholesale; wholesale × 2 = retail
- Most common error: counting materials but not counting time
- Second most common: pricing against Etsy competitors instead of against costs
- Minimum viable hourly: your local living wage, not zero
Count your materials honestly
Not just the clay. The earring posts, the backs, the glue, the sandpaper you wore out, the packaging, the thank-you card, the postage bag. Work out the cost of one finished pair including every consumable, then add ten percent for the pieces you ruin.
For a typical pair of polymer studs that lands somewhere between $1.10 and $1.80.
Pay yourself for time
Time your process once, properly, from opening the clay to sealing the parcel. Divide by the number of pairs you produced. Multiply by an hourly rate you would accept from an employer.
If you made twelve pairs in ninety minutes, that is 7.5 minutes each — not the two minutes the fast part took. Include conditioning, cleanup and the bake you had to wait through.
Double it for wholesale
The doubling is not greed. It covers the costs that do not attach to a single item: your listing fees, your website, the light you photograph under, the pieces that never sell, and the tax you will owe.
Double it again for retail
This is the number you put on your own shop. It leaves room to run a sale without losing money, and it leaves room for a boutique to stock you at wholesale without undercutting your own store.
What to do when the number scares you
It will look high the first time. Sit with it. The alternative to a price that scares you is a business that quietly costs you money for two years before you notice.
If the market genuinely will not carry it, the answer is to change the product — better photography, a more distinctive design, a higher-value material — not to cut your own wage to zero.
You are not competing with the seller charging $6. You are competing for a different buyer entirely.
Review it every six months
Material costs move. Your speed improves. Both change the number. Put a recurring reminder in your calendar and actually redo the arithmetic rather than assuming last year’s price still works.
