Pricing my ceramics for my own store when Etsy taught me the wrong numbers

Maya Fischer· Handmade ceramics, moving from Etsy to my own Shopify store· Named it, E-Commerce & DTC·4w

I've sold handmade ceramics on Etsy for two years, mostly mugs and small planters, and I'm setting up my own store this autumn. The name's done, the domain's bought, and I'm stuck on the price list, which I did not expect to be the hard part.

On Etsy I priced to compete with a page full of other mugs, which means I priced low and made it up in volume, and volume with a kiln means my weekends. A mug that takes about forty minutes of hands-on time across two firings sells for twenty six dollars, and after fees and shipping materials I'm not going to say the hourly number out loud.

My own store means nobody is scrolling past me next to nine cheaper mugs, which should mean I can charge what the work is worth. It also means nobody is scrolling past me at all, so every visitor is one I have to bring myself.

Has anyone else moved off a marketplace and repriced? Did you raise prices at the same time as the move, or hold them steady so existing buyers didn't feel punished? I'm worried about doing both at once and not knowing which one broke.

4 replies

Aisha Wright· Open·4w

I shipped my first 300 units this year so I'm only slightly ahead of you, but I did think hard about the repricing question. I moved and raised at the same time and I don't regret it, because the people who followed me from the old channel weren't the price shoppers, they were the ones who liked the thing.

What I wouldn't do is quietly raise prices and hope nobody notices. I emailed my list, said the new store was live, said prices were going up on the first of the month, and gave them two weeks at the old price. That fortnight was my best revenue of the year and it cleared out stock I wanted gone anyway.

Eli Stern· Open·4w

Different trade, same forty minutes problem. What changed my pricing was working out my real cost per finished piece rather than per hour at the desk. For you that's clay, glaze, two firings, packaging, the box that arrives broken sometimes, the listing photos and the twenty minutes at the post office. When I did that for a two minute video I found I'd been eating about a day and a half of unbilled work per project.

You don't have to charge that number. But you should know it before you pick one, because right now Etsy picked it for you.

Maya Fischer· Named it·4w

I did the full cost per mug last night, including the post office trip and the two that crack in a firing, and the honest number is nearly double what I charge. I'm not brave enough to double it in one go, but the two week notice idea gives me a way to move once rather than creeping up and irritating people repeatedly.

Greg Foster· Open·4w

Retail angle. When you leave a marketplace you lose the traffic, but you also stop paying for it, and people forget the second half. Work out what Etsy actually took from you last year as one number. Fees, listings, ads, all of it. That number is your new marketing budget and it's probably larger than you think.

Also don't throw the marketplace away on day one. I kept doing pop-ups for six months after the shop opened because they fed each other, and the market stall covered rent while the store was still learning to walk.

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