Cutting Board Business

[Kent Adams]

I've been thinking of starting a secondary job, I work full time in a non-woodworking business. I came across someone at a craft show while at the beach this summer that sold unique cutting boards. I'm sure everyone knows that type of craft booth. I asked him how many he sold during the year and how he sold them. After guessing the average price of one of his cutting boards based on the prices of his various pieces, I figured he made about $13,000 per year gross. He sold his cutting boards primarily at about 20 craft shows a year.

The boards were nice, but not all that unique. His woodworking skills I thought were about average and his routing really below average. He has no webpage and traveling to craft shows to sell seems like an expensive way to sell these items. I can see doing a couple of craft shows a year, but not relying on them solely. I thought to myself, I could do this better and in my spare time. It doesn't take exceptional skills to make a cutting board and I figure, with my equipment, I could probably make 10-20 of them in a weekend once I had a system and workflow down. I would need to do some research on material costs, as most of these cutting boards use "exotic" woods. I can't imagine one can have a very good margin though when you factor in the cost of the wood,time, travel and booth fees.

Here are my questions for those of you in the business of building crafts like the one above.

1. How do you determine your costs per piece (excluding equipment)?
2. How do you set your retail price?
3. If you sell on the web how much time do you devote to marketing your website (luckily, I can build a complicated backend website myself so I can save money there)?
4. If you sell both on the web and at craft shows, which would you choose if you could only have one of those avenues to sell into?
5. Has anyone attempted to become a seller on Amazon?

If there are other considerations I haven't thought of above, please feel free to point them out.