One time I made a post about how I wanted to charge 80$ for a hoodie. All of a sudden, people who have already gone through the process of making clothes told me my pricing was too high. There was this idea that somehow I was charging an unfair price for a clothing article.
What I can say is, those same hoodies, having gone through the wash like 50 times easily, are in great condition. The logo hasn’t even peeled off a little bit. I found a comfortable hoodie that was built to last, even if you used the dryer.
Still I was baffled on how people would show up and tell me what was a fair thing to charge was, effectively saying they and I had the same circumstances. I remember vividly how two of the people criticizing me had clothing lines they were working on. I know there is an occupation where the clothing line is the focus, I sell merchandise to support my art. Intention is everything.
The price needs to be higher than all the costs
This is going to sound wild, but I need to make some money in order to create art. I am aware of how much money I was spending on each hoodie/shirt. With all due respect, making only 4$ profit on that sale sounds like a real waste of time. The clothing line isn’t the main hustle, it’s something to make some money to support the fact that I’m an artist, who is trying to make some money back.
Now I made sure that the quality of my clothing was nice enough to justify the price, this means right away several articles of clothing were just for me, no money back. It’s not something worth 150$, but with hindsight it’s 100% worth 80$ in 2022’s pricing. I say that because people paid that. I could charge 85 now easily. Inflation is a real thing. These aren’t just the cheapest hoodies I could find marked up. I’m also not buying at scale, I’m basically paying the unit pricing.
I also accept that not everyone will buy the clothing if I keep increasing the price. I’m actually good with that.
The thing is, I’m selling pickle related clothing items. Either you are passionate about pickles, or you are not. You either buy into my whole brand, or you don’t. There are people who love the design (which I did not cheap out on) and want to support. That design was hand drawn by my homie Nuclear Convoy who just self-published his first comic he drew himself. There is a whole story behind the pickles spanning all the way back to 2021 including 2 recorded songs with one in the pipeline.
Another cost is the time it takes to sell these hoodies. There is the backend managing of an online store. There is the time it takes to do personalized deliveries. Or even the time it takes to go to the post office to ship off the inventory, even if the person pays shipping fees. Anyway a lot of people will add 5-10$ to the cost they paid per unit. I don’t think that’s enough of a markup to really make it worth it if you are a musician and clothing is a side side hustle.
I got pins coming in, I’m going to charge 5$ a pin. This will let me give away a bunch and still make back my money for those that really want to support. If you don’t want to spend 5$, you don’t have to.
If something is too expensive, don’t buy it
I think what baffled me the most is how many people seemed to feel I should lower my prices. Let me be more specific, people who never expressed interest in my art or what I do beforehand, had all these opinions about what I should charge. My advice to you, is ignore most of the feedback from people that aren’t really your fans.
It was made clear to me I may have paid too much per unit on my side. That is fair feedback worth investigating further. With some homework,, I like the quality of my shit more than the cheaper options people have shown me since. There is value in being open minded and looking for ways to lower my costs. If I paid 10$ less per unit for the same thing, I’m good to charge 10$ less.
Lets get hypothetical, assume that I did more research and chose the same supplier and pricing. Then my prices are my prices. You either like it enough to buy it, or I’m comfortable holding onto the hoodie until someone who does want to pay that money for it shows up. There will be some pickle merch on deck when we open for Lloyd Banks at Belmont on July 3rd. I am starting to look for more low cost, high sales margin items. If something costs you 2$, I paid 20 cents for it.
I need to be able to give people free things. The only way I can do that is if other people buy enough things that I hit the profit threshold on that batch. Then, if I buy 50 pins, I can give away 5 if I sell the rest and still reup. I’m going to set the prices I think make sense for what my life is. I respect that other people sell things for whatever motivation they have. I just dispute anyone trying to tell me my prices aren’t fair. That comes off like an insult.
Part of my price is my brand
Most of the people who are going to buy my pickle related merch items, either are doing it to support my media enterprise or they understand the passion of the pickle. Either way, part of the price of an item is the perceived value of the brand in and of itself. Quality is part of the price point, and sure if I sold a 80$ hoodie that fell apart after 3 washes, I’d probably have no repeat clients. Instead they said, yeah, if this was sold at a store at this price and I wanted it, I’d buy it.
The other part of the pricing is what this item represents. My original idea was to charge 70$ for the anti-pickle hoodie and then 80$ for the pro-pickle hoodie. You’d pay 10$ more for your preferences. I thought that would be hilarious. The truth is, if you like pickles and want that hoodie, you pay the “I love pickles” tax.
All of this makes sense to my fans. None of this makes sense to the random people, who also make clothes who happened to come and comment on my post with their unsolicited opinions on what fair is. I appreciate the education into sourcing, I just found it weird that people would make my prices sound unethical, thus discouraging sales.
If I just ran some paid ads and A/B tested it all, I could find out exactly what the market would pay. If the market would pay 100$ for my hoodies, like they do for other designs they like, why would I sell them for 80$? The reality is, I’m trying to make moves to live off my art, not to make affordable clothing for the masses. Instead I’ll have affordable items for sales regardless of your budget.
This is all merch to support my music career. If you feel that what I charge is too much, just don’t buy it. I think it’s weird when one entrepreneur cockblocks another’s marketing efforts because they did market research. Especially when these two entrepreneurs don’t do the same thing. To be fair, I’ve acted in ways that have blocked other people’s sales and it pissed them off too.
Such is the circle of life. In some stories we are heroes and in others we are villains.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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