Losing Money On a Crochet Order - Pricing Mistakes

[@codenamebutterfly]

The equivalent to your giant plushie happened to me too. In the end it felt like I was paying the buyer to get my product. Still, I wouldn't change a thing, because how should I have known?! I was happy that I got everything done in time, and then checked the whole situation off as a lesson learned. Thanks for sharing. ❤

[@codenamebutterfly]

For me the product wasn't so much the problem, but the shipping ... the SHIPPING! 😮

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

Pretty much same here. I'm like, "great, I didn't know I was going to be giving them a product for free." haha. But lesson learned, and now we know!

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

The shipping I was quoted was nuts, but I do think $40 for that big of a box is fair on my end, though. But not the $130 that USPS Priority Mail quoted me. That's insane haha.

[@Lauraetcetera]

I've only sold stuffies I've already made, but I'm also a reseller. One of my biggest flips was a mid-century modern chair that I picked up disassembled at goodwill for $3.99. Well my husband assembled it for me, and I flipped it on eBay for over $500. Unfortunately I only charged I think $60 or so for shipping; even disassembled, the lowest quote I got for shipping it ended up being about $250. It was a very hard and expensive lesson learned in the cost of "over sized packages"

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

Ugh, dang! That's the worst! Like maybe we're dumb, but also, who WOULD think it would cost THAT much to ship? Like, that's a new TV, man haha. So expensive lol.

[@maryelgin9919]

Wow! That totally sucks. We all learn through our mistakes. Thanks for sharing. I feel for you.

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

Yes, I have a better gauge to measure future orders off of now though. So small victories at least lol.

[@GalaxyCatStudio-bt1mg]

I know that feeling😭😭😭 I also made a huge plushie and I realized that materials take up half of the price. Luckily the order was local and I could deliver it myself instead of using shipping. I still made some profit.

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

I'm sorry, but I'm glad you made some! I would have delivered it myself if I could. That would have helped some lol. Save me $40 at least haha. But now we know!!!

[@toyamichelle]

I was like Ok... it cant be that bad. Til i saw the picture and my frickin jaw dropped. 🥴

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

Oh yeah, she THIIICK haha. Which, had I known really how thick she was going to actually be in person, I would have charged more. But it's hard, even using a measuring tape, to fully visualize the grandeur of something lol. At least for me haha. But, it's worth noting, I've always been pretty bad about judging size/distance, so perhaps other people won't have as much trouble. BUT just in case, I hope this helps people in gauging their quotes/prices for things. At the very least, I think it's helpful to really see the math in play here... accounting for the materials and the shipping, and not even the time... $125 was clearly not enough and some people really benefit from seeing the full breakdown on things, you know what I mean.

[@thecozybuckeye]

Great video! I have been making custom crocheted character hats for 12 years and I finally started charging a custom order fee in addition to say a hat I’ve already made a bunch. This covers the extra time and work for me to write the pattern. Hope this helps. Love your channel.

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

Omg, thank you so much!!! And yes! Do whatever you can to make sure that your time and effort is accounted for. I really do try because I preach that mentality. We're doing special things here and it's valuable. But I'm not perfect and I'm actually more inexperienced in some areas than people realize, so I wanted to bring attention to this situation because it's good to show that to people. And then, there's the more obvious lesson of really kind of analyzing the situation before quoting a price and using this as a general baseline for larger orders that's definitely going to be helpful to people. At the very least this is a helpful record for me to have for future large orders haha.

[@lindahagen1358]

So sorry this happened to you I would have made the same mistake ! But on the up side it won't happen again thanks for sharing with us so we all learn! It' amazing you did a great job!!!

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

I hope we can all learn for this for sure, because it definitely sucks, from a business stand point, to lose money on an order. ESPECIALLY a big order like this. HOWEVER, it really is an awesome plushie, so I am very proud of it! Thank you for your kind words!

[@zirconium2014]

The only thing i can suggest is making a sample piece of the yarn youre gonna use especially if youre unfamiliar, calculate how many rows that your project will be, that should give you a diameter atleast in length. Do do the same for the stitches to get the diameter in witdth. Also i guess clause that although you charge full price, there may be the rare occasion that you need to charge extra and if they refuse, make the piece anyway and sell it on your etsy as a finished product for how much you think its worth. Someone will buy it. Also im not sure if this is what you do, but buy a vacumme pump, if youre shipping something huge and not vacumed, it will cost heaps.

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

I can't really do the sample piece. At least not for something like this. It was too big to really even guesstimate how many rows or stitches it was going to come out to to get to the diameter the customer requested. But that vacuum pump thing is a good idea. I definitely did not do that lol.

[@storyformi]

That plushie is HUUGE and you did such a good job on it. I know it not the most mathematical way of doing things but when you said a 15in plush was 90-120 I just took the fact that the plushie was twice that and double the price so about 180-240. Again that's not totally accurate but that the best i could come up with. I am sure there is some way to estimate the amount of yarn based on the total number of stitches. I completely agree on the pay first model even though there is processing and its really hard to know what your supposed to charge until you do it and everything comes back. Thank you so much for sharing!

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

I hear your logic, and it does sound helpful. However, I'll tell you why I didn't just double it... and this is me specific, so I maybe should have/could have mentioned this in the video. There are times when the quote I give is for a larger size, but then the item works up so quickly that I almost feel like I've overcharged the customer. Like, in retrospect, I wouldn't have minded doing some orders cheaper. I don't do refunds because I think there's a balance to it. Some orders I make a little more. Some orders I make a little less. So usually it's not an issue, but that's also why I didn't necessarily go the route of double size, double price. And I would love to have a formula for the stitch count situation because THAT actually could be a decent guide. HOWEVER, the issue here is, I free hand a LOT of my custom work. Some orders, I only free hand parts, other orders, I free hand the whole thing. Like for this, I free handed the whole thing so there was no way ahead of time to work out the number of stitches and try to go from there for a quote. But that is helpful for people who may work from patterns more often than I do, so I love that recommendation! As far as stitches are concerned though, this guys got A LOT. Just the straight rounds of the sphere (so you know you have your increase rounds for the bottom of the sphere, then the straight rounds where it's the same number of stitches around to make the middle part of the sphere, then your decrease rounds to close it up) have over 3,000 stitches. The last increase round I did was (18 sc, inc) x 8 so there were 160 in just that round. And then I did 20 rows of 160 stitches, which comes out to 3200 stitches. And again, that's JUST FOR THE MIDDLE OF THE SPHERE. Ain't that crazy haha!?!

[@storyformi]

@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo 160 stitches in round is mind blowing🤯🤯🤯!! Thank you for sharing your thoughts, that does make a lot of sense but it also help us gauge the yarn for a 3 ft project PS the Chenille fallout must have been INSANE

[@LyraStitchery]

I am a slow crocheter. So i charge by the stitch instead of by the hour. If i charge by the hour it would be even more expensive than charging by the stitch.

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

I've never tested this but this at least has a formula so I'm not totally against it. It's much better than pricing by "vibes" because too many people price based on what they THINK someone will pay. But like I said, I've not actually tried this to see if it's comparable price wise to how I normally price. THOUGH, it's also not FULLY practical for my business because sometimes I come up with my own patterns for my customs, it's not something I really write down either. So like, I have no idea how many stitches I'll use before I make the thing, you know what I'm saying.

[@zirconium2014]

Did you vacuum pack this?

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

No, I didn't. I just shipped it whole in a big a$$ box lol. But that's a good idea for future large orders.

[@rebeccapfeifer2376]

Ughhh been there. I don’t do customs anymore. They just take too much of…everything. 😒

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

Yeah, for sure. This situation was less than ideal. I will say though, generally, I don't mind doing custom orders because it's like a game to me. People pick something that I wouldn't have picked myself to make, so I've been able to develop new skills that I wouldn't have otherwise. ON THE OTHER HAND, it's tiring haha. Especially when you're not personally in love with the project. Thankfully, most of the time, I can really get behind someone's concept and get excited about it, but not always, so that does make it tough at times.

[@MoistMage69]

I used to make custom jewellery and I never took part payments and have the custom jewellery still because they never ended up paying for it. So I would never ever do that again ever it’s part payment or no item ever

[@WorksofWhimsyCrochetCo]

I like doing full payments up front for stuff like this for this exact reason. Partial payment does me no good, neither does keeping custom plushies I've made. So all, or I do nothing.