Boxes I have made

[Ed Lang]

This one was sold on ebay.


http://kc4ylx.smugmug.com/photos/15514309-S.jpg
http://kc4ylx.smugmug.com/photos/15514311-S.jpg

This one was given to my wife on you know what day.

http://kc4ylx.smugmug.com/photos/15838277-S.jpg

http://kc4ylx.smugmug.com/photos/15838281-S.jpg

[Frank Pellow]

Very nice Ed. If you don't mind telling us, what did the first box sell for?

[Jim Dunn]

Ed those are very nice boxes!! I'm sure your wife loved it as a V-day present.

[Ed Lang]

It sold for $14.95 which was the starting bid. I only had one bid.

The person that bought it was quite shocked when it was received and emailed to let me now that is was better than expected. I think I will try a few more boxes, and toy trucks that I make on eBay but so far have found it is not the place for this type of woodworking. I have also looked at pens and don't see the hand turned ones selling very well either. My wife has made several attemps to sell some of her scroll saw work and didn't do well at all. We are looking for other methods to see our work but have not come up with anything yet.

No on the other hand, stuff that I was going to throw out has brought some prices on eBay that made my jaw drop!

Here are a few items my wife has made.

http://kc4ylx.smugmug.com/photos/11326748-S-1.jpg
http://kc4ylx.smugmug.com/photos/11326745-S-1.jpg
http://kc4ylx.smugmug.com/photos/12474422-S.jpg
http://kc4ylx.smugmug.com/photos/12474419-S.jpg

I like to do these. In this picture the horses are unfinished. The trucks are of my own design and I started making them for my now 19 year old son when he was little. I have added a new "circus" truck this past Christmas. It has a cage on the back and animals cut on the scroll saw inside. I don't have a picture right now.

http://kc4ylx.smugmug.com/photos/1707426-S.jpg
If you would like to see more you can go to

www.kc4ylx.smugmug.com (http://www.kc4ylx.smugmug.com) and see our pictures.

[Frank Pellow]

I would have thought it would sell for a LOT more than that. My guess was about $100. :o

I like the scroll work in the top pictures and I particularly like the wooden trucks in the bottom picture. :) I have not yet checked the link, but I look forward to doing so.

[Jay Knoll]

Ed

Those are fantastic! If you have time, I am sure all of us would appreciate a "Bob S" type tutorial.

Thanks for posting

Jay

[Jim Becker]

Ed, those are wonderful pieces of workmanship! I hope you can find another outlet for them rather than Ebay...your work is worth a lot more than you got for that first one, IMHO!! Big time.

[Gene Collison]

Ed,

You and your wife's work is beautiful to say the least. I have noticed that fine handcrafted things on ebay don't bring very much. There is a guy that sells high end boxes through dealers and his website. You may want to look him up and see how he does it. His name is Al Ladd and won't be hard to find by doing a google search, if I am not mistaken, he has a dealer in Va. Possibly you could hook up with the same dealer.

Gene

[Ken Gartin]

If you would like to see more you can go to

www.kc4ylx.smugmug.com (http://www.kc4ylx.smugmug.com) and see our pictures. Very nice shop!

[Jeff Sudmeier]

You and your wife both do WONDERFUL work! I have been watching ebay for some time and very rarely does any quality woodworking go for a good price. They are always very low ;(

[Charles McKinley]

Hi Ed,

Those are very nice pieces. I agree that ebay isn't a good place for high quality work. It is too hard to judge the quality and you are competing with the chinese mass produced stuff. If you try again start with a much higher starting price and sneek in a link to your own page as advertsing.

[Michael Stafford]

Ed, your work is worth much more than $15, you are under valuing your work. It is very nice and premium work made with premium materials deserves a premium price. ;) IMHO. Oc course, if you are happy I am happy. :)

[Ed Lang]

Thanks everyone.

Right now I needed a boost and you guys provided it!

I hope something will happen and we find a place or way to sell our wares in the months ahead. I'll check into the suggestions I have received from this thread.

[Norman Hitt]

Thanks everyone.

Right now I needed a boost and you guys provided it!

I hope something will happen and we find a place or way to sell our wares in the months ahead. I'll check into the suggestions I have received from this thread.

Ed, I think you should seriously check into getting a booth at one/some of the area's Arts/Crafts festivals/shows. Check with other artisans as to which shows are the more productive ones, regarding Attendance, and Sale prices vs Booth costs.

Good Luck......Very Nice work.

[Paul Thompson]

This gives me an idea. To bad I'm too much of a bum to try to implement it myself. Perhaps if there is some great interest, or something, I could look into it.

I am sure that many of us would love to be able to sell the fruit of our labor online. As we can see with Ed's work, which is beautiful, eBay is NOT the right place to get the money we deserve for quality work.

However, it's a big deal to put together a decent site for showcasing and selling our work.

So, what if a group of woodworkers got together and put a site up that allowed woodworkers to do exactly that, but on a common site. Probably this is how it might work.

A woodworker is going to sign up to the site, paying some sort of fee for the service. The payment model for that would be up for debate. I could see it include one or more of the following elements:


a monthly service fee for selling via the site
a set fee for each actual sale made
a tiered set fee for each actual sale made ($15 - $30 = $2, $30 - $75 = $4) - something reasonable, theoretically
But anyhow, to be worth the cost, this site would have to provide a decent interface for showcasing ones work, selling. It could manage the receipt of payments so that individual sellers didn't have to setup CC charging ability, etc.

But the point would be that it would (theoretically) make it easy to sell one's work.

I don't know - perhaps there is already something on the web that would work for this. Perhaps it is Amazon.

Perhaps another route would be for an individual to use an existing site - like Amazon - to setup, market, etc, something similar - and to help people get things up for sale. Then that person would take a small fee for sales made, or whatever.

One of the big questions that I would ask is how exactly to get the word out. Locally, people could put the web address on business cards, etc. But beyond that?

Anyone have any thoughts?

If anyone is interested in this enough to actually want some help marketing your stuff on the web, contact me and we can brainstorm some more.

[Frank Pellow]

Paul, I think that your idea is great :) and I don't know of anything like it. Certainly I know of "real" stores that sell crafts on consignment and I have been an appreciative customer. It is likely that I would also be a good customer of an "Internet Crafts on Consignment" store.

[Jim Becker]

So, what if a group of woodworkers got together and put a site up that allowed woodworkers to do exactly that, but on a common site. What you are describing is pretty much similar to arts coops that are sprinkled around in the US and other countries. Technologically, doing it online isn't likely to be a problem. Marketing wise, it's more challenging than a storefront, but not as hard in that respect as it would have been even a year ago. More and more folks are buying online. The legal aspects of such an association/group/cooperative would be something that could not be ignored, especially in today's society. If anyone reading this is an attorney with knowlege of such things, comments would be appreciated.

But it might be a good idea for a new thread to be started to discuss as this one is really to admire those beautiful boxes!

[Frank Pellow]

...
But it might be a good idea for a new thread to be started to discuss as this one is really to admire those beautiful boxes!
Jim is right Paul. This idea merits it's own thread. A lot of folks will miss it here. Please start one and repeat what you said above in the intro to that thread.

[Robby Phelps]

I use a site called Custom Made.com and it has worked wonders for my business. It is very simular to what Paul is describing. Last year alone i recieved over $20,000 in commissions from the site. I am not sure if I can post the site but here it is www.custommade.com (http://www.custommade.com) If I have broken any rules I apologize.

[Kirk (KC) Constable]

Woodcraft has a display and auction (I think) area on their site...

[Frank Pellow]

I use a site called Custom Made.com and it has worked wonders for my business. It is very simular to what Paul is describing. Last year alone i recieved over $20,000 in commissions from the site. I am not sure if I can post the site but here it is www.custommade.com (http://www.custommade.com) If I have broken any rules I apologize.
Thanks for the reference, I have added it to my list of useful sites. I like a lot of what I see there and I am glad to see that there is a Canadian section even though it appears to have been tacked on as an afterthought (we Canadians get kind of used to being an afterthought :D ).

I see that it does not cover the financial end of things. As both a potential buyer and potential seller, I would like to see recommended prices and I would like to be able to handle the sale through the site.

[Bill Arnold]

First off -- Ed, you and your wife do some beautiful work! I love the boxes and want to try something like that myself. I agree the price of your box should have been several times what you got.

On the selling issue, like Robby I am listed on www.custommade.com (http://www.custommade.com). I've been with them for only a couple of weeks and had a few inquiries. So far, nothing has developed but it's another route to guide folks to my website. If you decide to list with them, set up a unique e-mail address. Since I have my own website, I created an e-mail address of custommade@bbarnold.com and have Outlook sort the notes into a seperate folder.

[Renardo Subrosa]

It sold for $14.95 which was the starting bid. I only had one bid. ... We are looking for other methods to see our work but have not come up with anything yet.

Hmmm, eBay huh? I always go to eBay when I want to find something real cheap. Selling quality work for a fair price has always been hard. Trying to compete with the folks who can sell stuff cheaper is no good since there are always others who can sell a LOT cheaper. Who in the US wants to make the wages they pay in India or some such? That just isn't going to work.

When I was a professional woodworker, doing high-end custom work, I did archetectural work because I had a built-in salesman and that is the architect. He has rich clientel and is a great slaesperson (being an artist), but that's the key. To sell something other than for cheap, cheap, cheap, you really need to "sell" your work. That involves a whole other dimension.

First of all, since I have done some sales, the last think you want to do is suggest your work is not so valuable and you did that by allowing a $14.95 price or whatever it was. Maybe it wouldn't sell but if you started at $100, you might have actually gotten an offer at that price range instead of a low end price.

The best way to sell your work is to sell yourself. You need to actively market YOU. I have known woodworkers who went to every show and fair they could to become known. Look at Thos. Mosher's shaker furniture. I personally am not wildly impressed with that stuff but he gets good money for it because he has developed a market where people who can and will pay good money have come to recognize and respect his name.

Now that I've said that, marketing isn't easy and takes a lot of time to build a successful business, and also it is not something I ever personally did. I always had other people doing the business stuff and I worked for them. Still, I've had other experiences other than being a woodworker and when I worked in sales for a while, I came to learn that was the dimension I was missing and what I would have needed to do if I wanted to go on my own as an independent, which I never did.

Good luck and remember, winners in such things are almost always persistent and patient. You'll need to be and once you make it, everyone will call you lucky, not admitting that it takes many years of hard work to become an overnight success.

Best to you and everyone here,
Reny