Dear Design Doctor ‘I’m an embroidery designer. I’ve been a freelancer working in fashion and interiors for about 15 years I have recently started to create and sell my own designs and work. I sell to a London shop who puts their 250% mark up, which makes my work very expensive. If I sell online [...] Read more »
Exclusive Design Trust webinar: ‘Money & Emotions: how feelings & beliefs about money affect the way you do business’ with Pete Mosley
How do you feel about money? Be honest … Do you feel poor or rich? When do you feel particularly poor or rich? Are you comfortable with money, and talk at ease about your income, pricing your work, your hourly rate? Or do you find it hard to put a value on your work, to [...] Read more »
The Design Trust Guide to Start & Run a Successful Craft Business
I wrote this guide to help creative people get clarity and direction in how to start and run their own small craft business. It gives lots of practical advice and information, but also looks at the big picture. Setting up as a freelancer or sole trader can be really daunting. There are so many things [...] Read more »
Are you charging enough? 7 easy steps to calculate how much your product will cost
As a crafts person it is most likely that you sell products and not a service. If you want to know how to cost your design service check out How to calculate my freelance design rate? which are based on billable hours. There are some financial disadvantages of being a maker and selling products (and [...] Read more »
The Design Doctor: Help, a department store wants to place a bulk order
Dear Design Doctor I have a company wanting to take my products to a meeting with a very large department store, and they have requested information from me as below: prices per unit when ordered in batches 25/50/100/200/500/1000? to provide lead times on above amount? can i give Exclusivity? Is this product covered by your [...] Read more »
3 tips to price your crafts from designer silversmith Sidsel Dorph-Jensen
Sidsel Dorph-Jensen is a Danish award-winning designer-silversmith, who studied at the Royal College of London. She designs & makes unique silver tableware, and was awarded Silversmith of the Year 2011. Using her own experiences as a crafter and her love for marketing & running a business, she now [...] Read more »
The Design Doctor: How to write a design brief and design quote?
Dear Design Doctor I am a recent furniture design graduate and a client has approached me to work on a small design project designing and making an outdoor bench. I am really excited, but don’t really know how to go about this. Where do I start? The Design Doctor for this challenge is Patricia van [...] Read more »
How much should I spend on marketing? 8 questions to set your crafts or design marketing budget
A good question! But a difficult question … how long is a piece of string? Firstly I think it is much more important that you invest time in clarifying your marketing goals, and then spend time on doing marketing and selling to achieve these goals. But money obviously does help … so what should your [...] Read more »
What price terminology to use with shops and galleries?
There are a couple of different prices that people refer to, and it is essential for your professionalism that you know exactly what terminology to use. From the lowest price to the highest, there are: The cost price: This is your own calculation of how much it cost you to actually produce your products. It includes [...] Read more »