Hedgehogs & pricing

I have finally finished my ten hedgehogs - woohoo!

I've been debating with myself about how to blog them.  On the one hand, I want to show you all ten(!); on the other hand, I don't want to give you hedgehog overload, so you never want to see one again.  I will settle for a group picture, and then some more pictures of just one of them.

The hedgehog below is called Roberta, and she is designed to stand on her hind legs.  It is really sweet: when she is balanced on all four feet, because of her tiptoes and bent forelegs she looks like she's galloping like a horse!

It's been a really long-winded process, trying to make hedgehogs in a group (or an 'array', as they're apparently called), and quite frustrating at times.  Because I was trying to time the process, I couldn't do them in combination with anything that would have slowed me down - no taking them to work to do, or sitting in front of the TV in the evening with them.  So although the time has worked out as much less, per hedgehog, the whole thing has been spread over a much longer period.  However, as you will see below, this method of making them does make a big difference to the price - so hopefully I will get used to doing things this way.

I've had a bit of a debate over whether to put all the gory details of the pricing into a blog post.  My view of the matter is - not only that I want to be open about it - but also that if I can provide any encouragement to someone else trying to run a business selling their handmade products, it's totally worth doing.  Perhaps I should emphasise though, for clarity, that this is the first time I have tried making things in groups.  My previous bears and animals have been made one at a time.

So, in the past, I have charged £38 for a hedgehog.  £13.13 of that is materials - which leaves £24.87 to cover the time they take to make.  I don't believe I can make one hedgehog in one day.  If I really get my head down, I can get him mostly done (that takes me up to about 7pm), but it takes another couple of hours the next day to complete the face.  So I think, in all, one hedgehog takes about 12 hours.  So £38 is about £2 an hour.

It took me 42 hours and 55 minutes to make ten hedgehogs.

That's approximately 4 hours and 20 minutes per hedgehog.  At £7 an hour, the cost for the time would be £30.30.  So my pricing equation now looks like this:

Materials (£13.13)    +    Labour (£30.30)    +    Profit (£4.35)    =    £47.78

I will round that up to £48.  So the price goes up by £10.  However, if I took account of labour costs without making my hedgehogs in an 'array', that would make the cost (£7 x 12 hours = £84 + £13.13 materials = £97.13 + 10%) £106.85.

So it does make a really big difference.  Why didn't I think of this 9 years ago, when I was starting out?  Sheeesh!

Anyway, if you would like to offer Roberta, or any of my hedgehogs a home, you can find them in my Etsy shop.  Now I'm off to get started on this week's Design Challenge (rather belatedly)!