Category: Uncategorized

I have been noodling on this blog post for months. A question that’s been weighing heavily on me is how to approach pricing. A kind fellow crocheter who visited my booth recently gave me the nudge I needed to get this thing written.

“You’re way undercharging,” they said. And the truth is, I absolutely had been. This is largely intentional, although not entirely. Here are the issues I’ve been thinking about and what I’m planning to do about them.

Why I try not to price high

I really want my pieces to be accessible and affordable to lots of folks, especially those without a lot of disposable income. Part of my ‘theory of change’ for WAFFLE Studio is producing physical items that remind folks about the ongoing need for farm worker justice. Most of my pieces are tagged with a statement about the donations I make to my partner organizations and the link to this website where people can learn more. (And I’m working to make sure every piece I sell comes with this info.)

My hope is that when people receive gifts from loved ones and/or take home a piece of art that they enjoy, they will feel joyfully welcomed into the movement for a fairer food system. So I don’t want my pricing to be a barrier for folks who might want to participate in this way.

I am also extremely fortunate that my basic needs – food, housing, and healthcare – are securely met. Class privilege plus having an incredibly supportive partner means I don’t need to make much money from the business in order to survive. This work is a labor of love for me that is really fulfilling. And more than that, it feels like a responsibility.

That said, is my consistent undercharging the ‘right’ thing to do? Nope, not necessarily.

The issues with pricing low

First, I eventually have to at least break even in order to sustain this business (a huge revelation, I know). So far, I’ve been relying on savings and the generous financial support of my partner to cover my business expenses. Material costs, overhead costs (like this website and business insurance), steep booth fees (sometimes in the hundreds of dollars to sell at an event), transaction processing and listing fees, and design and organizational software subscriptions very quickly eat up my sales revenue and more. For those who might be curious, I’ve itemized some of these costs at the end of this post. Eventually, I have to grow the business into a self-sustaining operation.

Another issue is that just because I can survive without making a living wage off of this work doesn’t mean that I should. It’s probably not a huge surprise to most folks that it’s tough to make a living as an artisan. And it’s hugely inequitable that following an artistic passion is a career move disproportionately accessible to those with class privilege, like me. Artists and crafters already have to contend with consumers’ low pricing expectations influenced by global capitalism. By relying on other sources of financial support and setting prices that don’t reflect all my production costs (including a living wage), I might contribute to those expectations and unfairly impact other artists with less privilege than me.

And finally, another piece of my theory of change for WAFFLE Studio is generating financial support for my partner organizations and the important work they do. The more sales revenue I generate, the more I am able to donate. I have no illusions that I can single-handedly sustain these organizations through this work. But I believe that every little bit counts, especially in this bigoted political climate that villainizes the migrants who feed this country.

The Trump administration has already slashed federal funding for programs like maternal and child health research and threatens more cuts to programs like the Migrant Education Program. All while dumping a dizzying amount of money into the militarized immigration enforcement and detention system that targets activists and steals people from their homes, jobs, and families. We the people must step up and fill the gaps where we can, as we continue to fight for a government that serves all of us and respects the incredible contributions our immigrant neighbors make to our communities.

Building a mission-based pricing strategy

So what to do about these sometimes conflicting goals and values? The mission of WAFFLE Studio is to raise both funds and awareness to support the farm worker justice movement. An easy answer would be to try to price things right in the ‘middle’ between widely affordable and revenue-generating. But I don’t think that works well either, as everything being in the ‘middle’ serves neither goal especially well. I thought about implementing a sliding scale approach where folks can pay what they can/want within a suggested range. But I don’t want to create a situation where someone might feel obligated to pay the upper limit or feel guilty or embarrassed when they can’t.

And what do ‘low,’ ‘high,’ and ‘affordable’ even mean, anyway? All of this is relative, of course, based on people’s perceptions of what a particular item is worth. That’s going to differ slightly for each person, depending on their income, price comparisons they have already seen, how much they know about the production process, and how much value they place on locally-produced handmade items.

There are a lot of “how-to” guides out there purporting to know the “right” way to calculate pricing. I’ve found them to include some useful tips to start from, but there are always more questions left unanswered. For example, there is widespread agreement that your prices should reflect the time it takes to make the item. But what hourly rate for that labor is fair? And most formulas I’ve encountered include some sort of markup, profit margin, or multiplier. But what number makes sense for this?

Then, there’s the issue of overhead costs for things that don’t go directly into making the product but that are nevertheless important for running the business. Often the how-to guides recommend including a per-item overhead charge that will add up to cover your annual expenses. That requires having an estimate of how many items you will make and sell in a year. I’m just starting out and am learning to manage my newly diagnosed ADHD, so this is next to impossible for me right now.

So here’s what I’m going to do for now. It’s not the “right” thing, nor do I intend to use this approach forever. I’m sure a lot of folks out there will take issue with this plan. But it’s the only way I can think of that I feel okay about for the time being.

Materials

This is the most straightforward thing to determine. I can calculate the material cost by weight (e.g., for fiber and polymer clay) or by unit (e.g., for quilling strips or sheets of cardstock). Some of my materials are premium-quality and expensive (like 100% wool yarn), while others cost much less (like acrylic yarn I buy from secondhand stores or paper pulp that I recycle at home). So I plan to develop some product lines that use higher-quality materials and others that use less-expensive materials for folks on a tight budget.

Labor

I am going to use the minimum wage for where I live (Minneapolis, Minnesota) that takes effect in January of 2026: $16.37 per hour. I am only going to include the labor cost to physically make an item. So that excludes the countless hours I spend on administrative tasks, staffing my market booth, creating product listings, updating this website, and designing and testing new products.

In an ideal world, I would be able to pay myself a fair wage for all of that labor. But this is not an ideal world, and that’s the point. Is this naive? Maybe. Taking too much responsibility for problems I didn’t directly cause? Some people think so. I’m choosing not to care about that.

Multipliers

As I’ve mentioned, there are a lot of costs that I need to cover beyond just labor + materials. And I want to offer product lines that are widely accessible to lots of folks as well as product lines that will (hopefully) pay the bills.

I’m also aware that some of my pieces are more specialized and specific to my artistic style and skills than others. For example, there are lots of amazing fiber artists out there who – if they have the time and materials to do so – have the skills to make my crochet-only pieces. But I’ve got other pieces in the works that incorporate multiple media and techniques. So I think it’s reasonable to ask for a higher price since my mixed-media pieces are much more specialized. Here’s the grid that I’m going to use to determine which multiplier to use to help cover those additional costs so that my pricing reflects both the uniqueness of the item and the goal I hope it will achieve.

So, my base pricing formula going forward is going to be: [ material cost + (labor hours x 16.37) ] x multiplier. I will probably make tweaks up or down based on how sales go, feedback I get from folks at markets, etc. And some pieces I make for specific events like gallery shows have a commission percentage that I’ll need to account for. So I’ll be using this formula as a starting point and adjusting as needed. Is this approach going to turn a profit? Probably not. Is it going to be sustainable? I honestly don’t know yet. But I’m going to give it a try and see how it goes.

2025 Estimated Operational Costs

Projected annual total: $4,086