Why do people charge so much?

I would have to say that so far NO ONE has gotten angry at me and I've been doing face-ups for completely free! So I don't think price policing is really a problem around DoA. If you are charging a price and getting the amount of business you want, and people are happy, then you're in the right spot.

If your price is too low, simply, you will be overwhelmed and go AWOL off the boards, make everyone mad with how slow you are and eventually you will snap, hide and hate the world. I can count half a dozen examples of that.

Be glad if your favorite face-up artist or commissioner charges a high price. It may mean they'll be around longer!

 

Being someone who sews myself, I can understand the difficulty of creating clothes on such a small scale. The fabric may not cost much (depends) but the time and effort needed to create a quality piece are worth some serious cash depending on the piece.

What irks me is when I see someone string a $2.00 bead onto $.50 worth of black string and they charge $25 +s&h for it.

Then again, I make my own so it doesn't irk me that much.

 

The price of BJD clothing has always surprised me. There are some amazing pieces that are completely worth the price and talent that was invested into them. And then there are pieces that were obviously easy to construct (like skirts and dresses that took maybe at most a couple of hours and 1/2 yard of $3.99 cotton) yet they still sell (or attempt to sell) for a high price. I came from the world of Pullip/Blythe and the clothing there doesn't fetch nearly the same amount as BJD yet is so much more difficult to sew in that scale than in a larger SD size. So I find some of the prices shocking.

 

>.> I am an incredibly artistic person, I took up pencils and went 'bow down and kiss my feet' to them and they did. I took up water colours and demanded the same; they did. Ink followed in much the same way. So when I first tried my hand at doing face ups I went 'holy hell! This is so easy!' HOWEVER I just finished paying $120 for a face up and mod job by Healdria.

So, if I can do this all myself, why am I willing to pay to have someone else do it? Simply put, I am missing some of the materials needed. The MSC or the other stuff that is called flat something is what I'm missing. I have acrylic inks, so many bloody expensive paintbrushes you'd oggle in amazement and a damn lot of water colour pencils and pastels. These I've built up over time (they're freaking expensive!)

THAT'S where the main price is coming from when you are paying an artist. Do you know how much an airbrush costs? Hell, it's not even the airbrush that is the real expenditure, it's the air compressor! And the paints! I was looking into getting an airbrush recently; it's $400 for the initial layout! Then I have to learn how to use it, don't I?

So, it all boils down to initial expenditure + upkeep or equipment = the price of your face up. And then if the person doing the face up is really, really skilled you're also paying for that skill.

 

I thought I'd chime in for wig makers,

For me, my dreadlocks cost roughly twice the price of a normal wig but you pay for a specialist thing.
Even making normal wigs is time consuming and in comparison to what you'd pay for a humans dreadlocks I think all the dreadlock sellers on doa are pretty generous.

When it comes to dolls, its a lot about designer labeling, if you were to buy a designer piece of clothing in real life the price would be much higher than a piece of clothing you bought from an everyday mass produced store. Similarily you can get cheap dolls clothes or designer dolls clothes.

 

yeah, ive thought the same too. things like the jeans or beautifully embroidered or hard to sew things, i understand the price. then i see a skirt thats just some lace and a teensy bit of fabric for over $20 - lace costs me 40p for a metre of it. i just dont understand where some of the pricing comes from. so i do just make it myself, im extremely amateur, and trust me, it looks the same

but im not complaning, really. like ive said before i just dont buy it. but it does make me wonder where that price is coming from.

 

It really does depend, tho, on WHO is doing the charging, & what is the volume of their business, whether the price is fair or not.

I make real gemstone/gold/silver jewelry, shoes, & outfits, one at a time, by hand, one of a kind items. I don't even bother to charge for labor/time, because if I did, Bill Gates couldn't even afford my stuff! So all things considered, while the price per item might be on the high side, it's way lower than it SHOULD be. One of the commercial companies like Luts, however, gets their stuff made by the 10,000-lot from some cheap factory in China - & then charges 'way over cost AND margin - not to mention shipping costs, which are even more exploitative, since there is NO way packing and postage for a 2-oz wig tote up to $20 or more! This sort of charging is just plain price gouging, IMO.

 

EMS shipping, though, *is* that expensive. In the US, EMS rates begin at $22 for the smallest, lightest envelope--and that's consistent with the rates everywhere.

While some countries have a cheaper registered airmail option, not all do. And many sellers, both individuals and companies, insist on EMS shipping for international packages because it is the only completely trackable method. I can certainly understand their reluctance to bang a wig in an envelope and send it off for a few dollars of untrackable or minimally trackable airmail postage. If anything goes wrong with that package in transit, or if the buyer happens to be dishonest enough to claim that the package never arrived, the seller is going to be shelling out for a refund in short order. When I multiply that possibility by the volume of sales, I think it makes sense that many companies will only ship by the safest method, even though it's also the most expensive.

 

I work in the clothing industry and it makes perfect sense to me why BJD clothing is so expensive. Most of it isn't mass produced in a factory in china like the t-shirt you buy at Old Navy was. A lot of this clothing is made by people in developed countries where wages are much higher and on a small scale so it isn't cost efficient for a factory to produce it in the first place. If you can easily go find a job making $10 an hour which most people in the USA can you don't want to get paid less then that to sew something. Very elaborate outfits can take two whole days to sew not to mention the cost of materials and time spent buying said materials.

 

I really would like to see proof of your claims that Luts gets their clothing made by a sweatshop or "cheap factory in China."

As Cynthia has already mentioned, EMS shipping is that expensive, and if it's indeed "plain price gouging," which it isn't since it's the actual rate that post office charges, you may want to complain to said post offices instead of shifting the blame onto the company.

Shipping overseas with protection to the seller and buyer is that expensive. If I was a seller mailing goods abroad and if the buyer didn't want to pay for trackable shipping, I would deny the sale. If items are lost, there is no possible way that I, as a seller, could afford to replace parcels that were inexplicably missing whether it be to a dishonest buyer or to the post office losing things. I have a feeling that if packages were consistently lost, that would result in the price of items in the store being raised to make up for the loss.

 

Wow, I really like what everyone said and it comes from many different and interesting perspectives. I just only a year ago started to sew clothing for myself and now I am starting to sew for my doll. It is hard and I don't sew like a professional. I was never taught how to sew. But the clothing I do make is very creative and detailed but not professionally done. I put alot of effort into it. I like the clothing I make and I get better with experience and maybe someday I would sell to others but I know that my quality would displease people so I would tell them that they are poorly sewn but well fashioned. I do it because I like it. If I were to sell anything it would be so I could afford to buy my doll some eyes or something.

 

This is an age old debate that has been going on in all the handicraft circles. One of a kind items made by hand in North America are going to be costly. If artists can't make reasonable money for their skill/product why should they continue? It takes a lot of practice to get really good at something. I consider free time to be quite precious because I don't have much of it, so I won't spend it chained to my sewing machine for 50cents an hour.

It's strange to begrudge artisans the cost of their wares when we unflinchingly pay several hundreds of dollars for our dolls.

It's quite hard to make stuff this small, for my part I can tell you that (as was mentionned earlier) those armholes are really hard to sew you can barely fit your sewing machine foot in the opening. Making those french pockets is murder, you miss one you have to recut your entire front and start over. Everything is so small, the tiniest mistake looks huge on doll clothes you don't have a lot of leeway when you make them. So, yes $80 jeans, I'll pay that for them because I know from experience they are incredibly hard to do properly.

On the other hand I have seen very expensive garments that were poorly finished but otherwise very stylish and original, style and originality have their value. I try to get the best quality I can afford as a rule. It's like anything else I can admire a Christian Dior but I won't necessarily be able to get one. What I can do however is try to make my own version of it.

 

Ah, I'm so glad to see that everyone here is so understanding of pricing!

I've been doing fashion and costume commissions for several years, and I have had a very long history of getting nickeled-and-dimed on all of it. I averaged around $5/hr on my cosplay commissions (if I was lucky!) just because I had to charge competitively to get commissions at all. I'm one of those perfectionist seamstresses who can't stand to cut any corners at all -my costumes had to be the kind of fit and quality you could wear everyday for about 5 years - so that market was just... really not for me, because most people just aren't looking for that level of quality for an anime convention.

I've had similar experiences as Pixie Thief, where someone might be like "WHOA, $800 for a set of fiberglassed armor?! NO WAY." Never mind that the materials alone cost over $200, and I'd be putting a good 60-80 hours into it. People just see the finished pieces; they don't realize all the time it takes to create forms, drape and resin the basic pieces, fill and sand, fill and sand, fill and sand, fill and sand, paint, paint again, add details upon more details... It's one of those things you just can't appreciate unless you know the process.

So I'm really looking forward to making outfits for the BJD community, because the people here are what I've always been looking for- people who appreciate quality, and don't mind paying the price for it.

And like MelancholyWings, I came out of the Pullip world where handmade clothing is priced extremely low. I ended up not even trying to sell in that community because it just wasn't worth my time to try. (It's hard to compete with Barbie clothes, I guess?) Most people tend to base how much clothing costs on how much materials are required, even though the real cost is generally in the labor.

 

As a note, you see a lot of price variation going on in commission art (such as doll portraits and whatnot). I'm really confused when people charge $10 less than their usual (for "normal" style) if they do it in a "chibi" style, when I think "chibi" takes just as much work. I'm really surprised at how low people are charging in the art commission section of the marketplace. $15 for a full-color portrait that probably took four hours to do? $10 for an inked, black and white piece? Dang.

 

The worst thing about trying to make money as a craftsperson (in my case faceup artist) is that the number of hours worked do not always have a 1:1 correlation to the amount of finished product. Sometimes I will sit and paint lashes or brows for hours and nothing comes out right. So frustrating!

Raven

 

Its expensive because it takes so long. I sew my own clothes for my oldls coz i dont want to pay the prices, and im happy with the clothes i make myself, for my tinies anyway ^_^ Im gonna be selling off a few elf elly outfits cheaply, but im not trying to make a profit - i just enjoy sewing and my Alice can only wear so many clothes at a time. Fabric can be quite expensive, and when you consider the time taken to make an outfit like that - i think the prices are often about right, tho i would never pay more than $100 for an outfit, because, well, i need that money to buy their shoes!

 

Depends on the person.... I can draw a nice chibi in less than 5 minutes,if I'm just dinking around.
People are most likely charging low in the art commissions since they're trying to under cut other people (I'm not saying it's true but if you look on DA the prices are higher) as you can see there are lots of different artist in the art commissions. And sometimes it reflects on the quality of work... cheaper doesn't mean better.

 

To me, it very much depends on what you want to buy and how much you're willing to pay for it. As said, people decide the price of their items by the amount of time they use. The quality of materials they use and them coming up with their own original design will also add up to the price.

 

There is an old joke in engineering circles.

"A hugely expensive piece of equipment in a factory broke down, and the manager had to send for a specialist engineer to fix it. When the man arrived, he looked the machine over, picked up a hammer and smacked one of the parts. Immediately the machine came to life and began humming along like it was new!

The engineer produced his bill: $10,000. The manager stared at this for a moment. considered how much it was costing him to have the machine out of service, then sighed, but said, 'Look, if I am going to pay you this much, at least give me an itemized invoice.'

The engineer took the paper away, scribbled on it, and gave the invoice back to the manager. The invoice now read:

Hitting machine with a hammer. $1
Knowing where to hit and how hard: $9,999"

This is what you are paying for. The specialized skills and expertise of someone who has spent a lot of time honing those skills.

 

kind of OT, but I work in a craft store, and you wouldn't believe the detailed stuff some people expect me to know on the next-step-up-from-minimum-wage pay I get. I always want to explain to them that they would have to pay SO MUCH MORE for their products if the store were staffed by people who actually were experts in every single field of crafting...and then they'd complain confusedly about it just like we are in this thread (there, tied it back in).