This is Christopher.  He's a new zombie puppet that I plan to try and sell at an upcoming art show.  Only problem is, I don't know how much to sell him for.  So I know this is not an easy question to ask (and one I'm sure has been asked before), but how do you determine a price for a hand-made puppet?  I've had a couple of enquiries but I think I've priced myself out of customers.  I quoted somewhere around $150 for a custom puppet.  This seems rather inexpensive considering it's hand-made and custom built, but I think people who don't see and understand all that is involved in a project like this don't understand how I justify a seemingly steep price point.

So... any pointers?  Hints?  Suggestions?

Thanks folks.

I just had a quick glance on the etsy page (since they put me in as German and in German there is no difference between puppet and doll, both being "Puppe(n)" I searched for muppets which was not to bad a thing, maybe). The more expensive ones range between 116,-€ and 310,-€ (that would be around 153,- US$ to 410,-US$). One or two of the less expensive in this prize range were nowhere near your quality, though. One even had a seam showing on the picture. Of course, this is just what other people charge. On the other hand: if you make your stuff too cheap you are not only cheating yourself but ruin prizes, too...
How many hours did you use up for this puppet (it is great, by the way)? What would you charge for an hour of work? Multiply one by the other, add all material and extra costs and I think you have a starting point...

Yes you are right that this question comes up often but it is not always easy to answer. Fist let me say that your price for a custom built puppet is low.  Yes I said low.  That would be more in line of what you might charge for a mass produced puppet that was not custom built.

Andrew had laid out a price calculator at one time and you can see an idea of what you have to calculate in here. http://puppetsandstuff.com/2008gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=10082&g2_GALLERYSID=adbdb45506d578422a57430afff3ddc4

In short you have to add up the cost of all your supplies for the puppet and on top of that add a price for your time.  If you look at the above link you'll see that Andrew even takes into account expenses like rent, water, phone, hosting fees etc. His calculations treat this as a full time job. Often someone who is doing it as a part time gig or hobby so to speak may be able to get away with not calculating all those things in but do not sell yourself short.  The puppets you see out there in the world of entertainment, and I don't mean just the Muppets, cost thousands of dollars quite often. Don't get too excited... It takes a long time to build your reputation and skills to that level.

yes- i would agree that $150 is way to low. My custom build full body (with full color illustration prior to start) are at $425 right now- which is probably a bit low, but I am early in my selling and trying to build up experience and client base. I sell to professional entertainers (ie. clowns, puppeteers, children's entertainers) you want to price your service/product out for your time and quality. (This needs to be a great quality, and easy to manipulate puppet that they can depend on for use in shows over and over.) Shawn pointed you in a great direction there.
Best wishes to you!
Kimberly

I've quoted similar - low - prices and never gotten a job out of it. I think people expect it to cost $20. I know some of these people go on to commission other puppeteers locally, and I wish I knew what they were charging because it must be much lower than is realistic.

I will add that I low-balled the quotes not just because of low expectations of costs here, but because I was 'starting out' and thought I could build up the prices from there.

Sometimes I think trying to charge a realistic amount is just not possible.

That's exactly how I feel.  Charging what it's worth seems to scare people away.

I think it's partly to do with the fact that puppeteers don't do much open education/discussion of what goes into pricing, plus the myth that there's not much labour going into it.

Part of it I suspect will also have to do with usage: if the puppet is going to their kid or a student, then why pay $500 for a puppet? If it's going to a performer then they don't want to spend half their budget on a single-use item that they'll not ever need again... And other reasons like that.

Part of what I'm doing at the moment is finding new materials which will drop the costs per puppet; I'm currently considering ignoring adding in labour as a cost and simply adjust the profit percentage (see Andrew's calculator) until I get a price which is 'reasonable' in people's eyes. I'm still undercutting myself of course, but selling $100 shadow puppets just won't work.

A lot of it is also to do with us having to compete with toy factories or other puppeteers who can get puppets outsourced/made with production line processes... they can charge less.

Interestingly, when I go to Yahoo Answers, many people want non "cheap looking" puppets, but seem unwilling to actually pony up the dough that makes them look professional. Getting people to part with their money for what amounts to essentially a luxury item is pretty tough.

Poorfishy... I just adore Christopher and I definitely believe you could fetch a higher price. I haven't sold any puppets but I do have business selling cloth dolls and evil creatures. I was notoriously bad at pricing primarily because it felt bad making money from something I do more for fun and because I always see the teeny flaws other people don't notice/don't care about. I was put on the straight and narrow a couple of years ago by a fellow seller and now use a similar calculation to the one Shawn outlined above. I think the key is targeting your product to the right market. There are people out there with ridiculous amounts of money that will pay for a one off deign if you can find them. As an example (and I need to say this is the exception) I created a dragon last year from Calico which I painted. He was cool and all and very large, but nothing I would write home about. I would have priced him at about $200 just to cover my time (materials were next to nothing and internal skeleton was constructed from donated wood) however I chanced upon a gallery owner that wanted some 'different' stuff in her gallery. He sold about 3 months later for $650. I would NEVER have imagined asking that price but she knew her clientele well and what they would part for. Prior to that, I had featured him at a local craft expo and whilst there were plenty of offers, the highest was $150 and I chose not to sell. I guess I had the luxury of declining the offers as the Lair is not my livelihood but a hobby that generates some additional income.

The zombies are so incredibly unique. My dolls and creatures are of a similar dark vein and I've found there's a real marker in dark art forums. It's moving away from your art exhibition but you'd make a killing online and fetch decent prices if you advertised to the dark, twisted gothy emo kids out there!  Believe me, they are cashed up! Just a thought.

Christopher really appeals to me and I would certainly pay more than $150. I hope you find a buyer and a price that recognises the talent and time that went in to creating him.

One thing that got me thinking last year was the idea that corporate commissions may be a way to get a decent bit of money in. I don't know about anyone else, but when I thought of commissions I tended to think film, TV, stage companies, solo performers. But there are plenty of arty firms out there, or corporations, who might be interested in a puppet mascot; display for their front of house; puppet for a big corporate event or party; etc.

I think if an approach were done right, and marketed to the right kind of company - insurers less likely to be interested than your local boutique graphic design firm - then there could be a decent way to earn what's actually a good income. Theoretically...

Pricing is tricky, especially with a creative product like those all of us here tend to produce. Andrew’s calculator is an excellent tool and can help to bring you to a more realistic price. It’s never as simple as looking at the cost of your materials and how long it took you to build a particular puppet. After all it would take a highly trained and experienced crafter much less time to build a puppet than a beginner would take. Does that mean the veteran should get less money? I don’t think so.

Here’s where I see the problem. For starters, we’re dealing with a pretty limited market. There just aren’t that many people out looking for puppets. Of those that are it’s still a smaller percentage that really want the high quality, professional instruments that most of us are building. So our challenge is getting our product in front of that small group of performers who understand the difference between our product and the $20 hand puppets they can pick up at the local teacher’s shop. Your average consumer thinks of puppets strictly as a child’s toy and as such believes it to be of little value. The folks who are most likely to pay a fair price for our puppets are the performers. Whether they’re performing as ventriloquists, or in schools, community theater or churches these are the people who will truly appreciate the higher end product.

As for myself you can see from my Etsy page that I’ve got a range of prices. My portrait puppets are my “entry level” puppet. They’re a much simpler design, built from a modified version of the Project Puppet Simple Series patterns. I can knock one of those out in about a day so that helps to cut the price a bit. My “full featured” puppets I’m selling for $395 - $439. At those prices I’m still low balling but much like Na and others I’m just getting started and trying to build up some clientele.

So if you’re having trouble finding people to go for a price that is fair then I would suggest that you find another venue for your wares rather than lower your prices. Unless of course you don’t really care about money and you’re just in it for the fun of building and the most important thing for you is getting your puppet into someone, ANYONE’S hands. Then you can join the rest of the folks who are out there selling their product at a loss and be happy. Me, I’m hoping to be able to eek out a living at this business so I’m either going to find a way to sell these at a fair price or I’m closing up the shop.

So there’s the opinion of a guy who has yet to sell a puppet. But then I’ve only really been trying for a little over a month and so far only on Etsy. Frankly I don’t believe Etsy is the best venue for our particular kind of product but as I say it’s early. I have yet to really turn up the heat!

Puppetainer brings up a lot of good points. It's interesting in my case that here in Oz we have a very small and not-very-well-publicised community of puppeteers, with roughly the same interest in buying puppets as elsewhere. Considering the size of the group, you'd think that we'd do a better job educating the public about puppetry; but by and large it's so insular that the people who *are* buying puppets are as Puppetainer says, performers and/or parents/teachers. Even then the majority of performers who've approached me about commissions have considerably under-budgeted. (Probably because arts funding is non-existent here. Government funding is pretty much all we get so it means everyone is putting in their own money to produce shows. That equals small budgets)

The other thing I'll add is a bit about what I'm doing now: when I decided I needed to relaunch my shadow puppets, I took a hard look at how I was selling. Mainly I've been selling to online audiences, but with physical products, it's hard going and it's pretty obvious that to get anywhere I need to go into craft/arts markets. But people don't buy puppets - outside of kids stuff, and certainly not shadow puppets - at those markets really. I'm more interested in doing designer art than kids toys, so that's my new target market.

What this has meant is that I'm now doing a short series (no more than 6) shadow puppets specifically designed for performance. They're designed to showcase what I can do and attract performers and commissions. I know there won't be much interest in the 'real world', which is why I won't produce many characters; but it will attract interest in the online world where I can either sell them as generic characters for shows or get people thinking about shadow puppet commissions.

The second thing I'm doing is making other items which will be more palatable to local craft/arts markets. This is including small versions of the puppets which will be more for decoration/play and will have more appeal to your average parent/teacher. They're still technically puppets, so I don't feel like I'm selling out to the kids toy idea either. And I'll be making a range of puppet kits and various accessories for building at home.

That along with the patterns via School of Puppetry, I've found that most of my sales are going to people who want to make their own stuff, not have it made for them. This is not only cheaper for them, but probably about the kind of people puppetry tends to get sold to: teachers, parents, students and performers.

My point in all of this is that pricing as Puppetainer points out is tricky precisely because you have to factor in what you're selling, where and to whom. Most puppeteers I've seen on Etsy for instance, have a line of products specifically for cheap sales/younger audiences, and another for adults and performers. Go into any Australian arts market and finger/glove puppets are all you'll find, if that.

Etsy certainly is more for the crafts people than for puppeteers, but I've found a lot of really amazing and professional stuff there - gems amongst the crap, often enough. But eBay I'd think is worse, because that gets easily flooded with cheap China products.