Those of you who sell bowls

[Alex Zeller]

This topic has been addressed multiple times on the Creek. If you will enter this search line in Google, you should get links to many of the threads - how to price bowl site:sawmillcreek.org.

I did try a search but what came up was 5 to 10 years old. 25 years ago I bought a couple bowls as gifts for family. One was 12" and the other 10" made from maple (2" thick glued together). They are probably about a 1/4" thick with a food safe finish. I think I paid $25 for the small one and $40 for the large one. While equipment cost a lot more now I have to believe that it's more popular so more people have taken it up. Seeing those bowls for sale I was wondering if the price had gone up more than I thought it would have and if people's tastes had changed and the asymmetrical look of a distorted bowl actually appeals to buyers?

John, I would have assumed that $40 would have been a fair price for a 12" utilitarian type bowl. I could see the shop adding $20 to $40 to cover their costs. That's why I was kind of shocked at the prices.

Richard, thanks for the detailed reply. I'm not retired so the idea of spending time at a craft show on my days off has little appeal. Being on a 12 hour shift I do have lots of free time but I also work every other weekend which also adds to my desire not to spend it trying to sell bowls on my off weekends. That leaves selling at a craft store. I haven't looked around but there are a number of towns around me that do have pretty good tourist traffic. In the fall leaf peeping season hits hard for about 2 weeks. In winter it's skiing. This time of year there's a little traffic as it's now maple syrup season. I live near an odd place. On one side of the mountain we have the Stowe ski resort and everything is twice what it would cost compared to the Smuggler's Notch side. So I get that pricing will reflect what a shop thinks they can sell a bowl for as well as the shop needs to have a markup. That's the incentive for buying a table at a craft show to sell. I do like the idea of making a few bucks to turn it into a partially self sustaining hobby but I would like to avoid having to produce a number of bowls because there was a run on inventory and risk taking some of the fun out of it. Is that like a crack addict saying they just want to sample?

[Gary Baler]

If you have to make a living selling turnings you will discover that what you think is a profit making price will not yield you a profit in the end. The bowl that you showed in your post would be one that I would put on a blanket on the ground with some others like it and mark $100, put an 80% off sign on it and sell it for $20 ... and be glad to get rid of it. Needless to say, I wouldn't make it in the first place. It is very difficult to sell anything for under $100 and make a house payment, insurance payments, phone bill, and buy groceries. It is one thing to make a few pieces and sell to buy a tool or 2. It is totally different if you have to sell 20-30 pieces a weekend for 30 straight weeks. The production costs are not just a little here and there. They become thousands of dollars. If you are going to make a 12 inch bowl it needs to have enough quality to bring more than $100.

[Pat Scott]

Realize that a bowl you see in a gift shop might be priced high because the shop could be taking 50% of the sale. In the case of your 8" bowl at $60, maybe the artist has decided the least amount HE will take for it is $30. I used to sell in a tourist store where the store took 50% of the sale. The owner wanted bowls with turquoise inlays and other embellishments that take more time to make, yet she didn't want to price them for what I thought they were worth or for the extra amount of time they took to make. This store sold other types of woodturnings that I didn't make, and I was shocked at the poor quality of the other turnings. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and we are our own worst critics. It's easy to spot too thick of walls, too thick of base, tear out, poor sanding, poor finish, etc., but customers may not notice.

I sell 8" bowls starting at $40, but I've seen others sell 8" bowls for $70 to $90. My 12" bowls start around $110 but can go up to over $200 depending on wood, features, inlays, etc. I only sell twice turned bowls, and I will not sacrifice quality for price. For me the way to maintain high quality and be more profitable has been to study production turners and learn from them.

I saw a formula recently where a turner takes the diameter x height x 2.5 and uses that as a baseline for pricing work. Highly figured wood, etc., would be priced higher, but it gives him a consistent pricing structure. So a 10" x 3" salad bowl using the formula is $75, 12" x 4" bowl is $120. The 2.5 is just a number that he uses and can be adjusted up/down for your area or price point.

[Mel Fulks]

At least ten years ago I saw museum shop bowls about 12 inches at $200!

[Kyle Iwamoto]

Yes, I'd sell bowls there too if that's the going prices. The big question is if people actually buy it..... You could price bowls that high and never sell anything. Or you could sell them for less and have them actually move. Out the door.
Warped bowls sell, but personally I'd not buy a 1/2" thick bowl....... Get them thinner, and finish well, and you could get those prices. Your products will be "better". And they would move out the door. Good luck.

[John Sincerbeaux]

I got into woodturning for the sole purpose to make money. And the only product I turn is large hollow forms. They require large tooling, large effort, and large amounts of time. Most woodturners have no desire to venture down this path but in my experience, this is where you can make (and charge) appreciable money in woodturning. Prices for large, perfectly finished Hollow forms are in the thousands not hundreds. 7D5D8190-CD42-4070-9F33-AB9E704EEEE7.jpg

[daryl moses]

I am picky about what craft fairs I sell at. When I first started we went to 4-5 a year. It didn't take long to weed out the good ones from the not so good. The "not so good" weren't craft fairs at all. Most of the vendors were re-selling items made overseas, jewelry, clothing etc. The people attending these weren't looking for handmade craft items.
The wife and I only attend three a year now, two are at the same venue, one in the Spring and one in the Fall. Most of the Vendors are truly craftsmen and women and the people attending them are for the most part looking for "handmade" and are willing to pay for them. The other one is a juried show at an Arts studio. What we sell and the prices we charge are different from one to the other. We show our best pieces, Urns, hollow forms, vases, bowls with a lot of figure etc at the juried show. At the two others we sell [what I consider] pieces that are nice but not the "artsy" type that the clientele at the Arts center will purchase.
Still, in our area we are hard pressed to sell a 10-12" bowl for $50.00. 8-10" bowls go for $20-$45. And they won't sell at all unless they are well done and are either Walnut, Flame Box Elder, or have some nice figure to them. We don't waste our time with Poplar, pine, or any of the other species that don't show well.
We don't go to make a ton of money nor is it a way to make a living, it's just a way for us to sell some of our surplus items and make enough money for tools, and recoup some of the money we spend on materials etc. Luckily we live on a farm so wood is abundant and I have never purchased the first piece of "turning" wood. In fact most of the wood I turn has fallen naturally or is diseased and needs to be cut down. We let our customers know that and they seem to appreciate the fact that "no tree was harmed" lol.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

A turner acquaintance told me that items bring prices that bare little semblence to reality. Items he was tempted to throw in the trash have sold quickly, and items he thought of value languished on the shelf for a year. We as turners see the product in our sense as turners. We can immediately notice the scratches we yearn for a finish that just glows. We judge items in the context of what we know and do as turners, which usually is not how the lay person sees the item. He tells me he can't give black walnut pieces away. Yet plain jane wood brings more. We appreciate a well executed swirly segmented design, yet a lay person might ask, "why didn't the turner just buy a bigger piece of wood?" Same goes for some "Art" pieces.Some lay folk appreciate the natural edge of the void in a piece, Some ask why the artist did not use a better piece of wood. At the monthly club meetings "show and tell" sessions, I see items I am almost afraid to touch, because they are of such exquisite fine turning with a wonderful finish, I am afraid simply handling it will detract from the piece. I see simple shapes turned from segmented blocks,this piece has 512 pieces, doesn't impress as much as the near glass finish the next guy achieved on a plain cherry bowl. The fact that the guy who made the segmented piece did so so well that I can't see any voids between joints, is remarkable, but almost seems like mowing the lawn with a nail clipper. Some folks act like it is a crime to paint a turning. I see stains, paint isn't much different depending on the effect wanted. Don't get me wrong, all these guys are far beyond my skill set. It gives me something to aspire to. To learn from, but I can easily understand why some pieces would not sell and others would. Bowls can be rather mundane or quite spectacular. The shapes are normally fairly uniform and frankly can be pretty boring. An odd shape helps, grain helps, color helps, even the finish. Decades ago , I turned teak bowls from cut offs from a furniture factory. They were small, and mundane but they sold. The wood was a novelty and there were not many turners selling their wares. I got $ 8-10 per bowl in 1970, for a 6 inch diameter 3 high inch bowl A few years ago, Mrs and I were in an antique shop and I saw one of my bowls on the shelf. It was marked $20. The shop keeper said it was made by a now deceased local artist. It still had my initials on the bottom. $20 was too much.
Bigger is not always better, but just the scarcity of the wood and the lack of equipment to turn such bowls make the very large bowls have some value. I had a black walnut bowl from an unknown turner. It was graceful and finely done with good proportion for it's 14 inch size and 8 inch depth. No figure, but it was lighter than expected for it's size. I got it at a flea market for $8. To the seller it was just a wooden bowl, in a pile with some monkey pod salad bowls and other junk bowls. I wish I could turn something that delicate and sturdy. The other thing is what the market will bear, An artist with a following can certainly demand higher prices. Are the pieces unique in some way? Some folks will pay an extra, just because they met the turner or witnessed the product being made. Or because it was made locally of local wood. I had been away from turning for 40 years and happened upon a guy turning little Christmas trees at a Christmas fair. I watched and it brought back memories of when I made bowls and other items to earn money for college. Except that I could see where he made minor errors, where he was inefficient in his use of time and materials. That he really did not have the right tool for what he was doing. So I got a lathe and got back into it. A few hours here and a few there, and my skills are better than they were years ago. But I am still a beginner. Much of what I make is donated to charity and sold by them to raise funds. Two days ago, I was asked about making a run of 72 special Christmas ornaments for a business. I can get pretty close to a standard by turning free hand, but should probably get/use a copy attachment. I am trying to make a few just to see if I can make this work and to figure a price.

[John Keeton]

Everyone should keep in mind there are literally thousands of folks just in this country turning hemispherical bowls and that doesn’t count the off shore products coming in. When Glenn Lucas talks about his contracts with Williams Sonoma and others, he is dealing with thousands of bowls annually. If you want to compete in that arena you are going to have to price competitively and aggressively. I sell my work, and have sold a few standard bowls. In the right circumstances they sell for $150 - 200 in a gallery, but that is a rare thing. If one wants to sell turnings, it either needs to be production work or find a niche for more artsy work. If artsy is the choice, the quality (form, finish and aesthetics) need to be at high standards and even then, sales are spotty and I wouldn’t want to have to eat out of the proceeds. Finding a venue to sell art is challenging and uniqueness is required.