Why do people charge so much?

Unlike mainstream products, this is much more "you-get-what-you-pay-for" marketplace. Not always, of course, but I have been getting increasingly more willing to pay more for something nicer that really works for me. When I'm done, all my dolls will be in urethane eyes and heat-resisting fibre wigs. I find both just bring them more to life than other options. Clothing has been slower, but I am more willing to spend more on one really nice outfit than settle for cheaper ones I like less. I have seen things in doll marketplaces here worth 30,000 yen - they were worth it. If I were into frilly antique lace dresses, I would spend that much on those outfits. They were gorgeous, hung beautifully on the doll, OOAK, incredibly intricate, and everything was to scale.

In clothing for people, for example, spending more is unlikely to get you anything better, because brand name is everything. Some expensive brand-names make, IMHO, utter junk. Some inexpensive department stores (NOT the big W) produce long-lasting, decent products. You just can't tell by the pricetag these days.

This is what people are used to, and so they don't always understand the value of experienced, talented, and/or creative craftspeople and artists. Sewing I think is especially under-rated, when it's a skill fewer people have now and should be valued more because of that. Overall, I think it'd be good for the world economy to encourage more high quality, long-lasting products where craftspeople, artists, tradespeople etc., are paid decently for the good work they do. *sits in her dreamworld for a while*

 

A while ago, I realized something about the items that are bought and sold in this hobby. Very often, the people that make/sell these items are self-taught. There are not as many people trading doll items as there are in a more mainstream market. For example, the faceup artists need to teach themselves many of the skills and techniques they need. While painting skills are very helpful, there are also quite a few other areas that they need to learn, some of them exclusive to painting BJD's.

 

If somone persues this as there passion, it takes a bite out of their time and their own personal schedule. Not to mention, the creativity and though put into the doll clothes, faceup, ect. takes major love and skill for what a person does.

 

Well, I've also learned that Art School courses, like life drawing and anatomy, drawing & painting....
may apply somewhat to doll things (face ups etc) but there's no art class I've seen yet on face ups, body blushing dolls... fashion to scale...

Even with a STACK of skills, coming into this hobby as an artist can mean developing a whole NEW stack of skills.

 

Yep -- and a certain level of 'unlearning' things that are necessary for human-scale items but not dolls, or require different materials when done to scale, or require making components when working in smaller scale that one can just buy cheaply at human size... all manner of things. Finding doll scale jewelry clasps? Hello, nightmare! Making them often costs a lot more than just buying a bunch. Doll size artsy buttons? Again, sometimes you have to make them. And so on. Working to scale is the wicked stepmother of invention, seriously.

 

I'm being massacred by things like eyebrows! (so I just have a doll with NO eyebrows and have decided I meant her that way!)
and now pants... pants on a person that when the person sits don't halfway fall off, because human butts & thighs SQUISH when we sit... so it's re-engineering the idea of pants. (zeesh! that should be simple, right?)

 

The quick answer is that the people who make the clothes you typically buy for yourself earn their wage in a currency that is worth a lot less than ours.
A good majority of things we buy, clothes and toys especially, are made in china, and then marked up exorbitantly for resale.
According to Wikipedia, which I know isn't always correct, the current (as of 2006) lowest minimum wage in China is .39USD.

So, when you factor in artisan skills, and the time required to learn them all, and the effort they put in to perfecting an item for sale as apposed to the item having been passed around an assembly line, from one person who only knows how to do one aspect of creating this item, to another person who knows how to do some other aspect of creating it, and that the quality of said item usually isn't the greatest, and the fact that most people in North America or Japan could make more money buy digging around under their couch cushions?

That is basically why doll clothes are more expensive than the clothes you might typically buy, especially if you buy from people on DoA.

Then there's the matter of value. People place higher value on things they like more or want more. Designer brands of clothing will fetch higher prices even if they are made in the same place as Walmart's clothes.
Supply and Demand. Someone who does drastically better work on this site can quote a much higher price, even if they don't spend any more money or time on creating an item. They can quote a higher price, because people are more willing to pay it. They might be more popular because they're more skilled or possible they just have better design sense, but in the end, if you charge a price people see as too high it gets you nowhere, no matter how skilled you are.

 

Beisdes the disparity in pay rates and exchange rates for money, most people have no idea how long it takes to make something in an old-fashioned manner at home or in a very small atelier, the way a lot of doll artisans work. I told someone that it took my mom 15 hours to make a relatively simple applique wall hanging, similar in size and less complex than the doll quilts she makes. If she charged $150 USD, for that many hours, it wouldn't pay enough to cover her time and materials at a living wage in anyof the Western countries. It doesn't take a skilled faceup artist all that long to do any one doll's head, if the resin is smooth and things are going well; what you're paying for are the hours of wrestling with stuff that isn't so great. Wiping them, over and over, until it meets their standards. And, as other folks noted, experimenting and teaching yourself how to do things, which may not be the way anybody else ever did them before.
That's not to say that people shouldn't try it themselves; you learn a better appreciation for highly skilled folks' work.

 

I can't speak for anyone else, but my prices change, depending on either A) what is going on in my life at the moment, or B) how slow or fast paced business is. Whenever I have full slots, with a waitlist, i tend to charge more, because i'm more in demand. But other times it's slow, and i have no commissions. Then, i tend to lower my prices a bit, to draw in business. At the end of the day, business is business. It is irrelevent if someone things an artist is charging too much, because it's up to that artist to decide what their time, supplies, and ability is worth. I'm not the best, and i'm by far not the worst. So i charge usually between 30 dollars, and 45.00 for my work. I have to take into consideration my MSC, my Pastels, and my acrylics. At the end of the day, i'm not making a ton on each face-up. Its more a job of passion than of money making.

 

Another thing people tend to either not know or overlook is manufacturers are buying their supplies wholesale and in bulk. So cost-per-item comes out to be significantly less than someone going down to the fabric store and buying a yard of something.

This is aside from all the other 'you're paying for an artist's time/talent/whatever'.

 

Like many mentioned, it takes alot of skill to work on a smaller scale, because there's little room (excuse the pun) for mistakes/mishaps. It's also supply and demand, whether it's an LE or a customized product. I spent at least $100 on good basic supplies to do faceup and blushings alone and not much gets used, true, but if you can't or don't know how to do it, then paying for all that material isn't worth it. Materials can be very expensive and time is precious. So when you think about it, you'd be spending more for good materials and be losing valuable time working on the project and in the end, wind up paying more to do it yourself and be left with all the material/tools that you won't use hardly ever again as opposed to someone who did that all already and plan to make good use of the materials they have on hand and work the time for you. In other words, doing it yourself is good if you're going to do it in the long run, but not so good if you're doing it up front.

 

Yes, like most everyone else has said, making 1/3, 1/4, 1/6 and even smaller doll clothing, is MUCH more difficult, more time consuming, many times more frustrating and absolutely more delicate than making full scale human clothing. So, even though there are less fabrics used and it's 'smaller', the time to make and the tiny nature of the work, makes doll items MUCH more expensive than human clothing.

My grandmother was an expert seamstress, but she refused to make even the chubbier 'baby doll' clothing because it was so much trickier and more difficult than regular human outfits. This is not uncommon----there are MANY wonderful human clothing seamstresses all over the world, everywhere. But to find a really good doll seamstress? It's very unique and so, to pay for her time to do it, the prices need to be rather high. I only do what I do (doll seamstress) because I love it, but if actually calculated what I make? It's practically nothing---just about $3.00 an hour or LESS in most instances. ^^;; Tiny detailed outfits are super time consuming and thus, need to cost as much or more as full size outfits, even though the fabric may be less.

I think for most people, who aren't into 'bjd' or custom dolls and don't know all about the time and custom work and effort involved, they think 'Barbie' and that doll outfits they're familiar with are $10 or less. So when they see $40 or $50 or $100 or more for one 'doll' outfit, they think it's insane.

 

Oh yes! I was a professional theatrical costumer and it took me the better part of a year to scale down and practice tiny sewing until I am now comfortable enough to offer things for sale. And as far as that $40 or $50 or $100 outfit goes-if I charge $60 for a tiny dress that takes me 8-10 hours to do (multiple layers and pieces, some hand sewing) and $10-$15 in materials (trim is expensive and lolita eats trim!), then I am not exactly making a living wage now, am I? So I second the $3 an hour or less estimate. And I'm sorry, but that being the case, I get hot under the collar when someone suggests that they should only have to pay $20 for it.

 

hmmm for me the right price for an item depends on what I am looking for, for example:

Is it hard to make? (that would make it more expensive)
does it take long to make? (that would make it more expensive)
is the material expensive, or hard to find? (that would make it more expensive)
does the item look profesional? (that would make it more expensive)
do I need this in a dificult size? (that would make it more expensive)
Do I want any customisation to the item? (that would make it more expensive)

so I look at what a Good price is for something on a case to case basis.

 

Okay, I usually avoid the heavy topics, but this one is kind of a personal thing for me and I kind of find the whole 'Why does it cost so much?' and 'Makeit cheaper!' thing kind of... well....

Insulting.

Yes, you can buy your own clothes for cheaper or the same price at some store in the mall. The reason?

#1.) It is made in China, India, or some other poor nation in a sweatshop where the people are paid crap. The person that made your doll clothes,jewelry, armour, doll itself, wig, anything, is most likely trying to at least get paid partially for the time they spent MAKING that thing what they would get if they had a regular job. Otherwise, how will they pay for making it in the first place?

#2.) They are mass produced, in huge volumes, with an entire set up where individual people work on one section of the build of the clothing in a construction line. They only need to know how to do their section, not how to make the entire piece, and as they are mass made, they save of buying materials in huge bulk orders, and again, commonly pay their workers crap.

#3.) Doll clothes is not mass made to anywhere near the extent of human clothes. Except maybe barbie clothes. I DARE you to hold a peice of mass produced barbie clothing with its low grade material up to a properly done piece of BJD clothing. Notice any differences? I bet you do!

#4.) This is a persons talent and hard work they are putting in to the product. They don't have a workforce of forty or more people under them doing all the tedius parts for them after designing. They do each part themselves. They should at least get paid back for their time and the materials they put in to the piece.

#5.) Working on a smaller scale can be INCREDIBLY more difficult then working on a human scale. Everything is smaller, which means you may have to adjust how something is sewn together to make it work or what could be sewn quickly on the sewing machine at human size cannot be done the same way ina smaller size with proper accuracy.

#6.) The materials themselves that go in to some of the peices cost a lot more then the threadbare T-shirt you bought at Ar-deans at the mall for 10$. Trust me, I know, I am wearing one right now and it is so crappily see through I have to wear at least three of them so you don't see my bra. There is commonly a lot of lace used in BJD clothes also, which can be a devil itself to use sometimes.

#7.) With doll clothes you are commonly either buying a one off or a limited release of an outfit. Not everyone in your neighborhood is going to have the same shirts or be able to have the same shirts and pants as you, because there aren't that many. It is a unique design someone put their heart in to and now it is yours. If you commision a seamstress or buy a special oneoff from a clothing company I can bet you, you wil lpay more then you would for something out of a regular mall store.

... and I think I will leave it at that for now. Sorry if it all seems rather pissy, but I have to say, the one absolute thing that gets under my skin is this. If I, or they, or you, have a talent and want to sell what they can make at a believable price for the work, materials, and ability of it, they should instead of having to sell themselves short!

 

I only charge 20 dollars for faceups, which I think is a fair price for the effort and time I put into it. Usually I spend 5-8 hours on a head...so it's important to get money for that to me ^.^ I'd do it for free but materials cost monies.
So I don't think there's much overpriced stuff...For faceups? I think anything over 100 dollars is ridiculous and to a certain extent it's like buying for the artist name only >.<

 

Well for FU it really depends. Minimum wage here is like $9 or so atleast. If one spent 5hrs on a head, $45 isn't alot to ask for at all.

 

My non-doll owning friends think I'm vastly undercharging for faceups. They do take hours, and lots of concentration and hand steadiness and are just NOT easy, and the materials can add up over time also. I enjoy them, but they're not easy... I am really picky about them and will re-do them until they're right if I have to. I'm a graphic designer, and my company charges $84 an hour for my time, and that work is usually MUCH easier than a faceup. (I don't take home near that much, of course, but it is my charge rate.) So really I think most faceup artists are charging a VERY fair if not low price for their time and work. There's just no way to make a living wage off faceups unless you're working for a BJD company, but I feel artists do deserve to cover their material costs and be compensated a bit for their time.

 

i think that apart of the time spent and the price of materials, what counts too is the the person may feel proud of what they have created, being face ups or doll clothing, so the price go according to it.

 

Here's my take on this:

Working tiny is hard, laborious, and complicated. When something is small it's very easy to make mistakes that are visible. That is what I can say about the sculpts and clothing. On top of that, the art/crafts world is very subjective. Someone may charge a lot for something because they think it is really good, even if you don't necessarily share the same view.

As for the dolls themselves, I always thought it was ludicrous to charge so much for them. I understood that they are works of art- hand sculpted and cast, and then add the shipping costs onto that and you may have a 100-200 45 cm doll. Still didn't make sense to me for them to charge so much until I talked to my sculpting teacher. I brought him my doll to ask how I would cast something like that and what resins to use. He explained to me that most molds are probably made of silicone, which is an arse ton of money to buy (upwars of 100 dollars a gallon). The resin he told me about is probably a two part plastic, costing around the same as the silicone per gallon.

When he explained that to me, my face did this O_O. That explained so much as to why they charge a lot of money. Quality, labor, material cost, shipping . Just like any other goods producing industry.