Pricing handmade with 'Pay-as-you-go': Autumn Wiggins

Here's a novel approach to pricing handmade. Don't price it at all. Autumn Wiggins, owner of Upcycled Exchange Materials Market in St Louis, proves it's in fact a great way to run a business. I thought I'd pick her brains and get to the bottom of this unusual approach. She was kind enough to oblige.

What made you go with a pay-as-you-go business model versus the traditional one?

We have a couple restaurants in St. Louis that use this model successfully. It made sense in my scenario, since I’m not paying for the inventory. It saves me a lot of time and angst since I don’t have to tag and price things. I can handle running the store - sorting out stuff and taking care of customers by myself with time to spare for working on freelance websites and other projects.

Shock? Wonder? What were some initial reactions from the community?

People seem to love it! It’s a totally different shopping experience when you aren’t focused on getting a deal or stressing because what you need is expensive. Some have described it as the feeling of getting to treasure hunt in your grandma’s attic(as in, there’s all this neat stuff, and you can take anything you like), only instead of junk, it’s really well organized craft supplies. I try to make it feel more like a spa than an attic.

Let's say a business owner decides to go pay-as-you-wish. What are some rules or guidelines to keep in mind?

Having a suggested price is necessary, but the broader the better. I have one section by volume and another by weight. I am very dismissive of the suggested prices though. When I show new customers around, I emphasize that it’s totally up to them - I’m not going to measure or go through what they buy.

Presentation is everything. I like to think that I give our materials dignity just by having the shop in a beautiful space and making it very organized. You want to add value however you can, and visual perception is very important.

I have a rule of one purchase per person per day, only what you can carry out the door on your own(besides bulk sized items). Now, so far, no one has even come close to that limit. My intention with that rule is to make sure some smart ass that just wants to put me out of business can’t come rolling up to my door with a Uhaul.

You also have an online store with a subscription model for ordering supplies. That's brilliant, but also new concept. Do people get how it works?

The commodities idea is really in it’s infancy, and people don’t quite get it yet. I’ve been so busy just getting the shop open and all that, I haven’t had much of a chance to promote it, but I think it will evolve. If other people who start Upcycle programs had it in place from the get-go, it might be a little easier to integrate.

Too many artists tend to underprice because they believe that's how they'll move merchandise. Do you have any advice?

They probably have nothing to lose by trying a pay-as-you-wish setup in person and gauging what they should charge in their online shops from that. Back in my crafty hayday, a really nice lady paid twice my asking price for a sewn zipper pouch. She was very upfront about me not charging enough, but most people would never question your asking price. If you put the ball in their court though, they will be really open to assessing the value for themselves. You just have to give them permission to.

I would be terrified to have a pay-as-you-wish model at my Etsy store. Am I being paranoid?

I don’t think that’s even possible on Etsy, but what an interesting tangent. Someone should start a pay-as-you-wish handmade market. Although, I think it would work much better in person. The anonymity of the internet doesn’t lend well to this model. You could easily do it at any craft show, but keep in mind people do like a reference point. Simply saying “suggested price” on your tags might be a way to test the water.

Before money, bartering was huge. Now I hear about a lot of bartering (swaps) happening around the bay area. Should the treasury department be concerned?

In the immortal words of Bork, “Start your own currency!”

I think the treasury department is pretty concerned with Bitcoins right now, actually.

You know though, bartering evolved into money because it was inconvenient. I think we are still a long way off from bartering being universally convenient, but the internet is beginning to facilitate that.

You organize the Strange Folk Festival? Can you tell us what it is and what makes it unique?

It’s just a little ‘ol indie craft show I started 6 years ago! I guess the gnome with no legs is unique, but Strange Folk is in the suburbs, and it’s pretty eclectic compared to urban shows. We have a lot of kids activities on one end of the spectrum, and people in period costumes doing demos of blacksmithing and such on the other.

What are some other innovations is brewing in Autumn's mind?

I am really focused on open sourcing Upcycle as a franchise right now. That’s #1, but it does segue towards my interest in seeing crafters experiment more with open source concepts in general. I think there is a lot of needless angst right now within the handmade community over intellectual property, and I have a few ideas I’d like to experiment with in that realm.

Thank you Autumn, plenty of new thinking here and you may have just inspired a few stores in the East Bay to give 'Pay-as-you-wish' a try. Wish you best luck for all your future projects.

Store Details

Upcycled Materials Market Exchange

3309 Meramec Street, St Louis

upxchange.com

This post is part of a monthly series on the touchiest of all subjects, pricing! See you again in July.

Vinit

Tips for a Tuesday - Creative Ways To Fund Your Work

Say you've got a great idea for a new artistic endeavor - a new line of jewelry, a new series of paintings, a new documentary about some wonderful thing you've stumbled across - but you lack the necessary dinero to make it happen.

Starving, yet clever artist, meet kickstarter.com.

Kickstarter provides an ingenious way to leverage your existing network to help fund your project in exchange for a piece of what you make in return. This way, you can get the money you need without having to beg a bank for a loan, or feel like a big ole mooch. The process is something like this. Submit your idea to their editors. It has to be a creative project with a fairly specific and narrow scope. For example: "Help me Pay My Bills for a Year So I Can Keep Making Art" is less eye-catching to them than, say, "I'd Like To Travel The Country for a Year Painting National Monuments." If they like what they see, they give you the go ahead to create your pitch.

You also have to set a specific financial goal and a specific amount of time in which to reach it. Say, $2,000 in 30 days. This is an important part to give thought to, because if you don't reach the minimum in the allotted time, you don't get to keep any of what anyone has pledged. However, if people pledge more than your minimum, you get to keep the extra money. Once you've got that part all figured out, you create rewards to give your donors/backers in exchange for certain levels of funding. Again, the great part about this is that it incentivizes people to contribute because they're getting something out of your project as well.

The site gives you a place to post a video about your project, which it encourages making in order to connect you better to people you don't know. At any rate, if you'd like to know more about the process, their FAQ can be found here.

I just spent the past 2 days creating and launching my own project and found the site really easy to use. Even better, my project has been live about 8 hours and I'm already at 25% of my funding goal (29 more days to go)!

So go check out the site - check out some of the projects seeking funding, get inspired to create your own. I'm working on getting a trip to Costa Rica funded so I can experience first hand the interesting personalities of all the little critters there and create some art from the adventure.

What might you be inspired to create if you had the funding to do so?

Until next time,
Maggie

Monthly Positive Dose : Opportunities

"Don't Forget To Be Awesome" taken from Pinterest

Would love to hear your stories of opportunities! Have an awesome month!

Cheers,
Bernee
byleedesign.etsy.com

Tips for a Tuesday - Keepin' in Touch

So you've set up your Etsy site, to which you regularly add new treasures and relist older favorites. You've created a blog, where you post every now and again to remind those 60+ subscribers that you're still hard at work. Perhaps you even have a more robust website with a news section where you list events coming up. But all of these methods rely on your customers coming to you to hear the latest and greatest.

Enter the email newsletter. "Oh, but I don't want to spam my customers!" you think to yourself. Or perhaps you haven't been keeping track of people's emails, which in all honesty, you shouldn't be doing without their owner's permission anyway. Enter Mail Chimp (or another contact/email system), a trusty spiral bound journal of sorts, and a healthy sense of propriety.

The skinny on Mail Chimp.
I like them because they're free, super easy to use, they have a monkey as their logo, and it says funny things to you. I'm on their Forever Free plan: send 12,000 emails per month to 2,000 subscribers. Holy cow, like I'm ever going to send 12,000 emails per month to anyone (this is where that sense of propriety comes in). But how nice to have the option. I'm sure there are plenty of other wonderful similar services out there, but I'm going to champion these guys for a little bit. With Mail Chimp, you can organize emails into different lists, create those fancy emails with the pretty pictures in them via a number of lovely templates, and then view data on the number of people that actually opened those emails, see which hyperlinks they joyfully clicked on, etc. They also offer a number of free training sessions if you want to become the resident expert.


Gathering emails. 
This can be done a number of legitimate ways. If you're a craft show person, bring a journal or a clipboard with pre-printed sheets where people can Join Your Mailing List. Make sure there's a pen with it, and that it's off to the side somewhat so people don't feel like they're in the way while filling in their info. I've found it's also helpful to fill in the first line to show what kind of info you're interested in. Do you just want their email address? Or perhaps their name so you can customize your mailings a bit more? Also, don't be shy about asking people if they'd like to sign up.

Mail Chimp also lets you create short and fancy online forms where people can enter their info and it gets automatically added to your list. See the little sign up box in the column of this blog? That's one example of the short form. I've added a fancier version to my own website, and have included a link to it in the message that gets automatically sent to my customers when they make a purchase through Etsy. In the fancy version, I've added a line where people can post comments of sorts. I've also added the short form to my own blog. 

Are you a facebook or twitter user? It makes sense to occasionally (and I'm thinking about once a month) to let people know you have a mailing list by posting a link to it there.

Ok, so you've gathered and organized your email lists. Now to determine what to share, and when to share it.

Enter that sense of propriety I mentioned earlier.

No one likes a spammer. Also, if you have too many people unsubscribing from your list on Mail Chimp, your account will get flagged. Personally, I'm fine with getting an email from a company once or twice a month. Any more than that and I get grumpy. I like to try and consolidate my announcements down to once a month. I'll list upcoming shows and announce new items that will be hitting my shop soon. It's also a nice place to let people know about discounts I'm offering for that month, which is another way to see how much traffic you're getting as a result of the newsletter.

Alrighty, I'm sure that's enough to get you started.

Good luck, and a happy Tuesday to you!
Maggie