In article ,
"M.J." wrote:

In the past I received an email from a complete
stranger accusing me of charging too little for some of my turnings and
thereby taking food from the mouths of his children. Obviously he wanted me
to raise my prices to his level so that he could compete "fairly" in the
same market. Interesting that he wants to set the price of my turnings.
Interesting.....maybe a little arrogance here? I don't give a damn what
other turners charge for their turnings. I set what I consider to be a fair
price for my turnings and if that undercuts other turners....... Well...
welcome to a free market world.

My question back to you is whether your prices fit into the ballpark of
other turners in your region producing items requiring similar skills
and time and for sale at similar venues? If you are low on the range,
then you might very well be undercutting others. If on the other hand
you are in the neighborhood then I'd respond that this annonymous
emailer has either unrealistic expectations or else he's not proficient
enough with his skills.

Since we've taken a tangent into pricing fairly, I wonder how many
turners have really examined their prices in realistic terms. If the
turner was forced to live off what he made selling his work, could he?
I'd bet a majority could not due to underpricing and, in my opinion,
that cheapens the value of woodturning in the buyer's mind thus making
the professional turner's struggle to live off his work extremely
difficult. Most turners don't recognize this because they are living off
income from other sources and haven't been forced to examine, in
realistic terms, the amount they are charging in relation to their
living requirements. A side arguement may also be that they, personally,
don't value the craft and/or have little respect for their own skills.

You mention above that $900.00 may not be reasonable but you KNOW that
$100 is not. You fail however, to set for the turning world, an EXACT price
that the turning should be in ALL areas of the globe.

Of course there is no exact price - but there is an acceptible range of
price depending on variables. Two of which are time and skills required.
I've hollowed a few pieces with smallish openings and have a rough idea
of the time and skills required. $100 translates to barely above minimum
wage - if that, if the completed piece is finely finished but that
doesn't even take into account materials, supplies, tools and equipment.
Are the time and skills on the level of Ellsworth (and his imitators)
only worth minimum wage? There are those who claim they are only selling
to augment their tool budget, they're also claiming, though silently,
that their skill and time is worthless.

I have just gone through a week of attempting to come up with a price on
work that will be submitted to a juried show. My final method was to
figure out how many similar pieces I could make in a 50 week year and
divide that into what I felt I wanted for a reasonable (average-ish)
income for my area. That gave me a base value to which I added materials
and supply costs. I considered the venue and a small bit of markup and
established a ballpark figure. Then I asked several other turners - one
who sells turnings regularly though works full time in other pursuits,
one who hasn't looked to sell his work but is in the corporate world and
is comfortable with sales and pricing product, and one who is attempting
to become a full-time turner - to view the work and give their
gut-feeling price range for the venue. Surprisingly, or not, they all
cited a range +/- 10% of what I had ballparked. I'm now pretty
comfortable with the price and I'm confident that if I could sell a
year's worth of production I could make a living off the work. I
challenge all turners reading this to apply your prices and income
requirements to the exercise.

--
"Sure we'll have fascism in America, but it'll come disguised
as 100% Americanism." -- Huey P. Long