With the sad news this week that Moorcroft pottery has gone into liquidation after 112years, partly due rising fuel costs (it now costs them £250,000 a year more to fire the kilns), how have rising fuel costs, postage, materials etc impacted your small business? Have you had to change the way you operate?
For me, I have had to cut my kiln firings down from roughly 4 a month, to two. This means that I can’t always say yes to a commission that is needed in a hurry.
Postage costs are becoming a dilemma as I like to post 1st class or 1st class tracked in case a customer needs an item quickly but I am considering changing to 2nd class (I probably won’t though) To ship one small decoration, it is now costing £3.05 for which I charge the customer £3.20 to include the box. I could see how this would be potentially off putting on an item that costs under £5.
The cost of clay and delivery has probably increased by 1/3rd in the last 2 years too.
I’ve had to slowly start increasing my prices.
I am lucky that my material costs are minimal but my problem is more the cost of postage..often being more than the item being purchased and the fact that with the cost of living being so high now…people are just cutting back on their spending…
I fear that a lot of small businesses will fold and many will not see the point in continuing for the small amount of profit made.
Everything has gone up Sarah and it is hard. I send 48 hour tracked and never had a problem, plus charge a flat rate fee. Have decided to swallow the increase atm but that may change in the future.
After my big decluttering, not making as much as I used to. Trying to sell then make so 1 out 1 in. May even cut down my volume of stock even more.
Hi Sarah, that is sad to hear, so many businesses are clòsing their doors. My son worked at a diy store, a small independent family run one that has been in Hedon for 50 years and it has just closed d0wn.
For me personally it has had a big impact, mohair has doubled in price the past few years, brexit was a major factor as Helmbold and Steiff come from Germany. My prices have been climbing the past few years but when I restocked and looked back at previous purchases I am now paying anywhere from 30% to 50% rise. I literally have thousands of pounds on my shelf in mohair and alpaca fabrics but price increases have left me with a lot less customers than I once had so I can either work at a loss to sell them much cheaper and have more customers or lose more customers with price increases. If i sell some of the fabrics off I will lose around 50% of what I paid for them.
I am usually very positive but this past month I got very fed up with everything on here and now I am questioning what to do long term.
Hopefully everything will work out, it usually does, I just need to find my positive head again.
I think everyone will suffer one way or another whether it’s postage costs or materials or less customers buying, it certainly gets harder all the time.
Hi Sarah. Sad to hear that such a long established company is shutting up shop. I truly admire the art of pottery and the skill it takes to create pieces.
As has already been said, it’s postage costs for me. I send my products second class (typically large letter) but I sometimes wonder if that puts potential customers off (even though all of my customers have reported receiving their orders within 2 days of postage - something that even I was surprised at). Thing is, if I change that to first class, it means I have to pass that onto the customer and/or take a hit by sharing the costs and as I mainly make cards, there’s only so much I think you can charge (that people are willing to pay) in such a competitive space, and where any disposable income has to be increasingly spent in a considered way.
stained glass is pretty expensive, particularly the dichroic which can cost upwards of £60 for a medium piece. I don’t fire glass, but I do like using unusual pieces. It was lucky enough to buy about £2K worth of glass supplies from a guy in Bury who was retiring, for £150. I got all his sample boxes from years ago including about 100 sample pieces of really rare glass you can’t get any more, like Uroboros. I should really have catalogued and photographed each piece because it was like a bit of stained glass history.
So, yeah, its hard keeping the prices down when the materials keep going up and up. There is cheaper Chinese glass but it’s inferior and doesn’t have nearly the beauty of the older Spectrums and Uroborus. Also, here in the UK we are very limited to what we can buy compared to the USA.
Silver and gold prices have gone through the roof, and most jewellery tools and gemstones are imported, so my prices have had to go up.
Some galleries I sell through have increased their cut too, making things look very pricey.
I am doing my best to try and use up what I have in my stash, and recycle every scrap of metal.
I’ve never had a problem with using large letter Royal Mail Signed For 2nd class and now changed to tracked 48, as it a better deal, nobody has quibbled the speed. Having said that, I’m primarily a craft fair and gallery seller, not online as much (but not for want of trying!) so postal costs don’t factor in much of what I do.
I’m finding I’m using sheet silver and copper less than I’ve ever done because of the price but also because I’ve changed (subconsciously?) what materials I’m using. I still have to buy the sterling silver findings etc but I’m upcycling alot. I’m working through my grandad’s huge stash of old coins (10 years since I found them!) and people often give me theirs as they don’t know what to do with them; old biscuit tins; and then a friend gave me some of her mother’s cutlery recently which started me learning how to upcycled those too!
I am in the same boat as others have already commented. Everything i use has gone up in price in the past few years. Unfortunately, the general public have no idea of the actual cost small craft businesses have to incure to create genuine hand made goods. Since the terrible mess made by Folksy last month I haven’t made any sales for six weeks which is very unusual for me. Like Debby I am having trouble staying positive and I also have over fourty five thousand pounds approximately invented in materials alone. Quality yarns have increased by over 50% and gemstone strands are at least 120% more than when I first started to purchase them over 10 years ago. Some gemstones are now not even available.
The postage costs are astanomicle, and i have changed from using Signed For to 48 hour tracking.
I just hope we can all keep going, but it isn’t looking good as Folksy are just invisible to the main general public!
Even the second hand spoons I use have on average doubled in price over the past five years or so - I guess everyone’s short of pennies so they are trying to wring as much as possible out of every bit of junk - and it takes me a lot longer now to source suitable items, which is also a cost in terms of my time (although I will admit it doesn’t feel like one, I enjoy the process of hunting for spoons whether on- or offline!). Postage is a real issue for me as most of my items are low-ticket, I try to sweeten it by offering combined postage on multiple purchases but that does mean that sometimes I lose out. Seriously thinking about retiring soon…
It’s mostly the cost of postage I’m struggling with, as the rest of us who sell lower priced items, the cost of postage seems ridiculous, I’ve whittled it down as low as I can realistically go now, so I’ve no where left next time the RM raise prices.
Most people are amazed that any fabric costs more than £10 per metre. Harris tweed is a luxury, handmade, pure wool fabric. Last year it was £48 per metre (plus p&p). Now it is £55. I can’t swallow that kind of rise, so my prices will have to go up as well. Fortunately I have quite a lot in stock already. But where I used to charge the customer the same for a Custom order fabric colour choice as a stock one, that will have to change.
The other big problem is postage, which has doubled during the life of my business. On the other site where such things are easy to implement, I have changed my default posage to Tracked48, with an optional £1 upgrade to Tracked 24. So far all the customers have settled for 48, but that will probably change as Christmas approaches.
Postage is definitely killing off sales for me. It’s not worth doing small items lime gift tags or cards, as the postage can cost more than the product! I do keep some in my shop, as I have a lot of them made, and if purchased with another item the postage wont be any extra.
I’ve had to up my prices, and will have to do it again later this year. A sheet of MDF for my pet signs costs double what it did a few years ago.
I’m beginning to wonder why I’m bothering, since the changes were made on here I have gone from being a top seller to nothing, possibly a coincidence but my shop is super quiet which is not normal for me, I must be doing something wrong. PrIce increases on my newer bears havn’t helped the past few months but most mohair fabrics are now between £120 and £200 per metre, each bears takes Qtr metre so if it means lowering prices again just to use up supplies i would rather not bother, it’s not worth working every waking hour just to recover costs especially as I put off doing everything else including social visits to work. In 11 years of trading I’ve never known it go so quiet but hopefully it will pass, i know we all have quiet periods and quite often it all bounces back again.
I think I will calculate the hours I’ve worked the past year against my profit to see whether it’s been worthwhile thrn make some decisions, do I need to change direction altogether or just open a supplies shop and at least sell off some of the fabrics I’ve recently boùght. …decisions decisions and I’m useless at making them
