A Service for the Maker Economy
I’m feeling this great vibe. Everyone wants to make something now. Something physical. Not stuff on the internet (well, that too) but things you can touch and hold in your hands. A toy, a cell phone bumper, Mesopotamia inspired furniture. All kinds of things. People are making full time, part time or night time along with their day jobs.
The exhilarating part is people are making. I’m also beginning to see some mass producers behave like small makers. What’s up with that? Whatever it is, it’s a good trend. But it leads to another problem.
Selling.
Independent makers don’t have the resources to test market their products like the big marketers do. And since many products are one of a kind, there’s no precedent to say how much something should cost. So the next best thing is to rely on a trusted resource. Which is each other. Friends, artists peers and of course the experts in the field. Ask and find out what the value of what you are making and what you can do to increase it’s value. Functionally, emotionally and of course monetarily.
A maker of toys could introduce the product and get an appraisal from toy enthusiasts. They could then use that data or perhaps combine it with existing formulas like these to arrive at a more informed price.
That’s our hope, not just a way to get things appraised but also to get feedback on how to increase it’s value. It’s hard to predict the right solution but least we can do is try.
The Pricerie is an appraisal site for independent makers. Sign up to get notified when we launch.
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Posted by Vinit Patil
I’m co-founder at The Pricerie
I’m an artist partner at The Whiteout
Featured Appraiser: Tom Christmann
Tom is a rare breed. A writer who can illustrate. His recent illustration “iSad” following Steve Job’s death was featured on the NBC Nightly News and The Today Show. Tom has also made illustrations for Quiznos and is currently working on a secret comic book project which we can’t wait to see. Here, Tom appraises ‘Hand-Stitched Eye’.
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HAND-STITCHED EYE
ARTIST’S DESCRIPTION
Lovely study of a human eye, hand embroidered original stitched illustration. Black thread on heavy weave cream cotton, ready to hang in it’s wooden hoop this work measures approx 5 inches in diameter.
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SPENCER’S APPRAISAL
$30
(Ratings from 1 to 3 stars)
Originality ***
(Have you seen anything like it before?)
Execution ***
Does it have good craftsmanship and attention to detail?
Talk Value ***
What’s the probability you will share it on facebook?
EXPLAIN WHY (TOTALLY OPTIONAL):
While Tom didn’t explain the reason for the price we found it quite peculiar that he priced it at $30 after giving the highest rating on all three counts. However like we always say, there is no wrong answer. Maybe Tom was impressed by the craft but less by the content. Or maybe Tom prefers larger objects. But it is also possible that most people would think $30 is the right price even if the maker disagrees. Right now we don’t have enough data to make any deductions. Next week we’ll poll a few more people and see what they have to say.
Sign up for the Pricerie launch at thepricerie.com
How Artists Spend Their Time
Read this interesting post how photographers spend their time and thought it might be good to take a crack at how artists spend their time.
Why reducing prices may not be the best idea
I met an artist at a design fair this summer who made beautiful miniature figurines encased in glass boxes. Each piece was a scene in a play and staged with obsessive detail. Well worth the $500 price. Maybe not a price that appeals to everyone which is probably why a customer who was browsing her art started backing away slowly after seeing the price tag. The artist stopped her and asked how much she would pay and even suggested a few prices…
“$100, $50…$25??”
$25?!? I thought she was kidding (and so did the customer). But no. She was serious.
As a pricing geek, I asked why she was offering such ridiculous discounts. Her answer was: “I’m just starting out and I just want to put as much of my art in people’s homes.”
That’s a reasonable explanation. I make art and sometimes I’ve talked to the artist I partner with about ways to get our art into people’s homes. We’ve toyed with the idea of reducing all our prices. The more we’ve talked the more it’s sounded like desperation and insecurity. We stopped and asked ourselves, is price really the problem? What if it’s something else?
Are we selling at the right venue?
Are we selling to the right audience?
And most importantly, if some pieces aren’t getting any interest, is it because they’re duds? (Oh yeah, we make a lot of duds.)
It’s important to analyze that kind of stuff before reducing prices because once you do roll back, you send a few signals to your audience:
The most glaring of all is, previous customers who paid full price will feel cheated. Not even Apple fanboys can get over that hurt. Apple initially introduced the first iphone at $500 dollars, then dropped the price by $100 after a few weeks. For the first time, the fanboys blogged in anger. Apple hardly ever apologizes but in this instance, they did. They also returned $100 to everyone who bought at full price.
Another problem is, you’re telling customers that they might be bringing a cheap product into their homes. This is a real turn off. To a customer dropping the price may not translate to “We’re doing this because we want to get our art into your home.” Rather “This isn’t as valuable as we imagined.”
Another side effect is, customers may start waiting for the price to drop even more. The car companies must have trunk loads of case studies to back this bit. Even video game enthusiasts waited for the Playstation3 price to drop (as always) and it never did, hurting sales.
If price is the problem—and in this tough economy sometimes it is—it may help to TEMPORARILY reduce prices to get stuff into people’s homes. But how do you do that without hurting your brand?
All the best marketers I know use one tactic: Give people a GREAT REASON for lowering the price. The best reason is, you are doing for fun versus just to get them buy stuff. And by fun I mean customers have to feel like they’ve earned the discount.
A manager at new Ikea store in Sweden uploaded pictures of his store and asked his customers to tag their favorite pieces of furniture. The first person to tag an object got to take it home. Customers had fun and the promotion cost him nothing. Except the price of the furniture which he wanted to give away anyway.
Zappos keeps prices high but offers free shipping on sales and returns. We took a page out of the Zappos playbook. We just gave free shipping to a customer in Brazil. It cost us $40 to ship. But we got it into his home. We also said we’ll give him another 50% off on his next purchase if he sent us a picture of the objects at his house with 5 friends. He wrote back saying he’s throwing a party to gather some friends.
An artist we know offered a customer 50% off a San Francisco themed print if he could answer three questions about the city. The customer got all the answers right. He earned the reduced price only because he aced the quiz. Fun!
Sometimes lowering prices is a good idea but do it in a way that protects your brand. If you’re a new artist, that may be a way to get your stuff into people’s homes. I’d love to hear what you’ve tried. Go ahead and share it in the comments.
Featured Appraiser: Mayo Tobita
Mayo calls herself a web developer but we like to call her astutely curious. She experiments with design and code to bring beautiful things to life. We picked an object we thought might interest her and asked her to appraise it.
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ARTIST’S DESCRIPTION:
Corezone
“corezone is a closed ceramic space, where one can place their thoughts, feelings, emotions. An attempt to fulfill emotional needs by the means of an object, a try to withhold immaterial being in a material space. every heart is unique, as they are hand made there may be small differences between them”
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MAYO’S RATING (Between 1 and 5 stars)
Originality *****
(Have you seen anything like it before?)
Execution ****
Does it have good craftsmanship and attention to detail?
Talk Value ****
What’s the probability you will share it on facebook?
MAYO’s APPRAISAL: $120
EXPLAIN WHY (TOTALLY OPTIONAL):
I usually like something uncommon and something hard to find. This the heart is def one of them. It’s very visually stimulating.
Is Rails the best framework to build your Web App?
The good news is, nobody cares. At least, not the people you are building your product for.
Not users. Not your girlfriend. Not your mom. Unless you are building a product for engineers. As an engineer, I can say with a great deal of embarrassment that my peers care too much about technology.
Head to the forums, and you will see a vitriolic exchange around what is the ‘best freaking technology!’ Ruby on Rails Vs Django Vs CakePHP vs Emerging Tech.
The problem is, asking what is the best framework (or the best programming language) is like asking “what is the best car?” Not even the opinionated Jeremy Clarkson can answer such an open ended question.
The right question is “What’s your GOAL?” Are you planning on racing the Formula One circuit. Or drive your kids to soccer practice? Or is it for a long commute to work? What exactly do you plan on doing MOST with your car? You can then work backwards and figure our what is the best car for you. You don’t want to be one of those chumps driving a Audi Q5 4WD to drive to pick up groceries.
It’s possible the best car for you is the Subaru Outback. But maybe the Outback doesn’t have a good network of technicians to service it.
Then you might pick your second choice maybe the Toyota 4Runner. And so on.
Based on this logic, we figured the best framework for us would be Ruby on Rails. It does what we need to accomplish and we know a lot of Rails engineers. It’s not because Rails is cool. It does help that Rails creator David Heinhammer Hanson talks common sense. And that there’s a growing community around it.
It’s all good to have. But it’s not what we care about. We care about whether we’re building a product people will want to use. That’s really the answer we are looking for. I’m going to leave you with a quote that sums it all up.
“Do not get sucked into the religion surrounding programming languages as that will only blind you to their true purpose of being your tool for doing interesting things.”
-Zed A Shaw/ Author of Learn Python the Hard Way
Posted by Vinit
A Checklist for Maker Fairs
Our sister initiative, The Whiteout, did a couple of design fairs this year. And each time we didn’t prepare well enough. Or we forgot to bring something.
We needed a checklist.
And we found a great one by Maggie Hurley. We modified it a bit though, inspired by the “Checklist Manifesto”. This is a guide to creating effective checklists by Atul Gawande, a surgeon who dissected checklists used by airline pilots, chefs and structural engineers in order to create one for surgeons. One of the tips is to divide checklists into two parts. The Important Stuff and The Essential Stuff. So here goes.
*IMPORTANT STUFF*
Stuff that creates desire and separates your booth from everyone else
Booth design
Banner
Business card
Price Tags
Flyer
Press releases
Twitter contests
Facebook Promotions
Newsletter
“what’s the story?” 2 minute pitch
*ESSENTIAL STUFF*
Stuff a smart high school kid can take of for some chump change.
Inventory of items
Items & extra inventory
Tables
Tablecloths
Displays & decorations
Chairs
Tables
Receipt book
Square Card Reader
Cash
Forms of payment sign
Calculator
Pens
Custom order forms
Water
Food
Map of fair
Bags or boxes for purchases & tissue paper or protective wrapping
Something to work on if it’s slow
Fix-it tools in case damage occurs to item
Scissors
Tape
Extension cords, power strips, adapters
Lighting (always good to have your own!)
Any other tools you might need (hole punch, stapler, safety pins, etc.)
Camera
Your ride/ car/cab/friend
For Outdoor Shows
Tent or canopy
Panels for sides
Concrete blocks or weights to secure tent; if you bring gallon jugs of water to drink, you can also use those as weights.
Rope
Sunscreen
Comfortable clothes/ extra layers/ blanket
Extra water
Sunglasses
Paperweights to keep business cards/promotional material from blowing awayConcrete blocks or weights to secure tent; if you bring gallon jugs of water to drink, you can also use those as weights.
Of course, there’s a chance we left something out from the important stuff. Feel free to suggest. The best checklists evolve with feedback.
Posted by Vinit
Are you qualified to be an art appraiser?
You never went to photography school. But your photos look great. They have great composition. And people regularly ask you for prints. Can you call yourself a photographer? Why, yes. To the chagrin of all formally trained photographers.
Now let’s say you don’t have a major in art history. Or belong to any appraisal clubs. Or you never set foot in the Guggenhiem. Can you call yourself an art appraiser?
Well, if you have really good taste. And instinct for spotting originality. And curate stuff that people follow on the internet. (Yes, the Internet). Then why, yes.
You CAN call yourself an art appraiser.
First off, not all art is not fine art or modern art or some some art gallery art. Some of it is made by independent artists. They may not even know it’s art because they’re just out making stuff. Someone else may be labeling it as art with terms like ‘subverted’ and ‘paradigms’ and ‘dada-ist’.
I don’t know what art appraiser can tell the value of these boulders.
I don’t think the artist can say as well. So you just have to take a guess. A calculated guess. This is where taste and instinct kick in. And there lie your skills as an appraiser. Taste, instinct and well, perhaps practice.
The qualification for appraising this type of art is what you gained from life experiences (hopefully you went to college) Based on those qualifications, you might say the boulder is worth $2000 dollars. And you’re probably right. Because there is no right answer.
Your judgement counts immensely towards new objects that do not fit into any genre of art, and without any preconceived notions of how it should be valued.
With more DIY on the rise, these uncategorized art genres are multiplying. And they only have YOU to tell what they’re worth.
So yes go ahead and call yourself an appraiser. And we welcome you to The Pricerie.
Posted by Vinit
In the following weeks, we’ll have a section called ‘FEATURED APPRAISER” where we turn to regular folks who appreciate design and creativity and have them appraise cool random stuff.
How to to use pricing data to plan your business
We’re building The Pricerie primarily to help NEW independent artists—the clueless ones like ourselves get help with pricing. Established artists may also find The Pricerie useful while introducing new products.
Lately we’ve been doing some experiments to figure out pricing behavior and started documenting how it can benefit you:
Get an idea of how much your items are worth (It is called The Pricerie :P)
We assume you have certain business goals. Like sales targets for the year 2011. Once you get a feel for how much something is worth, you can automatically work out how many pieces you need to hit your sales target. Whether you can do it all by yourself or need to hire someone. Or make fewer if people are appraising it to be really high in which case you wont have to make as many. But there’s a chance there may be too much labor involved to break even in which case, might just be better to focus on a high margin item.
Gauge interest in what items people are leaning towards
People like to price interesting products. We didn’t make that up. That’s just how people are. If a lot of people are skipping your product it can mean two things. It’s just not interesting. Or it’s too niche. Niche is good. Uninteresting is not. You are better off spending your time and energy making something else.
A niche product however should be presented to a niche audience. That will give you a better understanding of interesting. A Beatles portrait made with a wood router should probably be presented to Beatles fans, an older audience or wood routing enthusiasts.
See which markets are interested in your product
It’s possible that more people from LA are pricing your item versus San Francisco, so it might be a good idea to focus on LA craft fairs. People from different towns have different quirks. And one of a kind things have a habit of appealing to a one of a kind person or even neighborhood.
The underlying business principle here is to focus group. To not only figure out a price point but to also discern interest.
