Tuesday, September 05, 2006

W.T. F.! Its all for sale

Now I don't usually curse on the blog, but truly WTF? I am having such a problem finding a good mill. One that is more predictable than the 3 I've dealt with so far. The latest mill, charged me 2.50 per lb for washing , then charged me another 6.00 per lb for picking/carding. Then I got hit with an 8.00 shipping fee for priority shipping. Standard shipping would have been fine, cost me less, and took a little longer, but I had no choice.
So for 4.5 lbs of wool I had a bill of 45.85.
Now for a Merchant all that cost goes into the selling price plus the purchase price of the fleece.(which I can't find right now but lets say it was 2.00 per lb) so now I have 10.00 in purchase price and 45.85 in processing(yes you HAVE to include shipping)making 55.85 for 4.5 lbs of wool. That averages out to ~ 12.41 per lb which is .77 cents an oz. Selling it at 1.00 per oz would net me .23 per oz profit and 3.68 per lb. W.T.H.?
Now If I spin it and charge 5.00 for an 1.5 oz ball of yarn(like many yarn stores do) when it only takes me an hour to spin 1.5 oz How much money would I be making?
NONE! And I'll tell you why..
You can't put a price on your time, and no one would pay 5.00 for 1.5 oz of plain handspun wool, when they could buy it cheaper somewhere else.
But for all you who would disagree with me I'll tell you what I do: I add 1.00 per oz/hour spin time for wool and 1.50 for harder fibers that have no wool in them. I add 75 cents if I dyed it. That plus the cost of the raw materials is the cost of my yarns.
Really my aim is to move it, not make a fortune off of it.
So if you see anything on the blog you want to buy, e mail me.
I'm gonna go give that new fiber a whirl,
Toodles

1 Comments:

Blogger dragon knitter said...

thanks for the tips for what to charge for handspun. i've been looking to sell it, and while i don't plan on getting rich with it either, at least a modicum of profit would be nice.

as for the upgraded shipping, complain. sometimes they use it because delivery confirmation is either free, or reduced, because of it (mail order broad talking here)

see ya tonight

9/07/2006 7:42 AM  

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