Is my quilt underpriced? Or Overpriced?

A lot of you might be wondering how much should you sell your quilts for.

How much can you sell a quilt for? Here in Sangli, the maximum price I have fetched for a quilt is Rs. 1500. But do you know that the quilt was made from 12 pairs of jeans cut down into 6" squares and measured a whooping 8'6" x 8'6"? It weighed almost 6 kg! Now you think it was underpriced... Don't you?

So what do we do?

Here's how I price mine.

Material Cost 

It is the cost of the fabric, batting etc required for the quilt, simple? 

Not.

You did not produce the fabric, did you? You had to move your butt from your chair, go to the market (either spending time - walking or money - fuel). You had to stock some fabric. You had to bargain for a discount! 

So how do you calculate that?

Add about 15 - 20% of of the cost against all this charges.

So let us say, a baby quilt requires about 4 meters of fabric costing Rs 100 per meter.

Plus a meter of the batting for Rs100 per meter again.

Your total material cost will be 500 + 75 = 575 (considering 15% surcharge)

Labour Cost

Does you bai work at your home for free? 

Does the Dudhwala smile and give you that bottle of milk for free? 

Then why should YOU work for free? The talented, superb quilter like you!

So, how much should you get per hour?

In US the basic hourly labour rate is 5$ for unskilled labour and about 15$ for quilters. In Rs it comes to about 750! But I know we're not going to get paid like that! So how about settling for Rs 100 per hour?

A baby quilt will normally take somewhere between 8 to 10 hours to complete! 

So that makes it Rs. 800 per quilt.

So what do you do? Sell that quilt for 575 + 800 =  1375?

No.

A big NO.

Didn't you not spend time designing it? It took a lot of calculations and working out! Your brain was buzzing beyond those 10 hours, wasn't it? Come on, all of you will agree that you were thinking about how best to quilt it when you were sleeping, weren't you?

Doesn't that count?

Of course that does.

And what about the money you spent to buy that machine ,thread, needles, interfacing and what not! Doent' that count too?

So consider another surcharge of  about 20% - this will also include your profit!

So the final price will be 1375 + 275 = 1650.

And thats just for a baby quilt! About 36" x 42". Considering you are using local material!

Now think twice before you put that price tag on your quilt!

Here are a few more ways to price it.

1. Ink  & Spindle's formula  - did you know that the calculate by this method the cost of the same quilt (as above) will be Rs 5500!

2. If you follow eHow's method it would be priced at about 2650!

3. If you follow Quilting Business' advice you would be selling at about the same as ours. 

We have to be practical too. 

So use whichever formula you want, but dont forget to calculate the time required for you to make it. 

Enjoy Quilting!!!