So I have completed a Dart style puppet that I will be listing on Ebay for sale in the next few days.
I am in the final stages of making an arm rod for him so that you can control his arm with a rod that you hold in your hand. I had an idea all set up that ended up not really working out, so I have designed another idea that should work and I should be able to complete it tomorrow night.
On top of the puppet, I have also made a couple of puppet stands that I will also sell on Ebay. They are very basic but work perfectly, and they also look pretty nice on top of that. I plan on offering them for about $9 or so with a couple bucks for shipping, so a total of about $15. I MAY think about offering a discount of a couple of bucks on them if someone purchases one with a puppet.
My initial pricing idea for the puppet is $35. I find quite a few puppets that don't look nearly as nice in the $55-60 range, so I'm hoping that the $35 price tag will fall in well and generate some interest. If it goes really quickly, I may think about raising the price a bit to see how well they do at maybe about $45.
As I type this, there are basically three styles of puppet that I can make for people. The one has eyes like Paddy that are covered with the same color fleece as the puppet. One has eyes like Blip that stick out off of the head. The final one is the one that is for sale, it's name is Dart and it has large yellow eyes. I'm thinking that Paddy and Dart will list for the same price as each other, with Blip costing a few dollars more due to his eyes.
I haven't had very good luck figuring out an exact cost for the puppets due to things being on sale and me trying so many different things with them. I haven't been able to get a good feel for how many puppets can be made from one yard of fabric. I am pretty sure I can get four puppets from one yard of foam, but I think I can only get three from one yard of fabric. That means that the foam costs about $2.50 per puppet, and the fleece would be about $3.33. The eyes are running right around 60 cents per puppet, and the miscellaneous fabric for the mouth and tongue is right around 40 cents per puppet. That means that the cost for each puppet, minus my time, is right around $6.83. There are little other things that might be added from time to time, like some pipe cleaners, and obviously the hot glue that I use for putting things together and the thread, but those costs are pretty minimal. I will say that in material, each puppet costs right around a total of $7.50-$8.00. My time, of course, is where the majority of the "cost" to the customer goes. Each puppet has taken me over two hours to complete. Even as I have gotten better, I have continued to have to go back and redo something on them.
I hope that my price of $35 is fair. I don't want the things to cost a lot more than what they are costing me to make...but I figure my time is worth about $15 an hour (that's less than what I get paid at work) so with that said, I would actually be losing about $3 on the sale of each puppet...but that's not a big deal, I don't really look at it as using my time up because I enjoy doing it.
Hopefully this first one will sell. I have two more heads finished and ready to be turned into whole puppets, so if this one sells I will have two more up for sale shortly after that.
1 comment:
Don't sell yourself short! Your time IS worth money. If you don't see your time as very valuable, neither will your customers.
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