Pen selling / pricing

[Jerald Maxcy]

Hi everyone,

First post and I'm sure this topic has been posted in the past, so sorry for any duplication.
I'm relatively new to wood turning. I bought a small lathe in the midst of COVID as a way to stay busy and keep my mind occupied. My plan was to start with pens as they seem a little easier to make and once I got the hang of it, move on to bigger items like pepper mills. I'm on my 20th pen and I'm completely hooked. There is something certainly therapeutic that happens when turning on the lathe, and definitely something gratifying when finishing up a piece.

Now on to my dilemma. I would like to start selling my pens, certainly not with the intention of making a living, or even really making a decent profit. I'd like to sell enough to recoup my investments (lathe, drill chuck, Drill bits, finishing materials) and maybe fund more wood and kit purchases so I can keep turning. In essence I would like to avoid this ob turning into just an expensive hobby (I have enough of those already!)

My question is what have you found are the best avenues to sell? Etsy seems to have some demand however a lot of supply as well. I'm sure it's challenging to get product to appear on a search. Are there pen specific exchanges you might be aware of? Are there certain types of pens that seem to sell faster?

Also, posting a couple of my pens below (and one seam ripper) would love any input / Feedback on finished product (even if critical).

thanks everyone!

 

[John Torchick]

I suggest first you look at Etsy and see how many pen turners are there. I started turning pens and found there are those who sell cheap. Suggest you also look at www.penturners.org on this.

 

[Brian Gustin]

That is just why I won't buy pen kits.. I opted instead to just use bic (and papermate) pens and turn bodies for them.. (I have several boxes of bic promo pens from my old lawnmower shop) here's my first ones.. (I screwed up the cuts in the celtic knot design ones)

 

[Jerald Maxcy]

I suggest first you look at Etsy and see how many pen turners are there. I started turning pens and found there are those who sell cheap. Suggest you also look at www.penturners.org on this.

Thanks John

I have done some homework on Etsy but it is challenging because of the variation in pricing. I have noticed slim lines selling for $20 range. I've also noticed cigar and fountain pens listed for anywhere from $30 - $90. I was going to try to list my pens in the $25 - $30 range. More concerned my page simply won't be visited if I can't manage a way to climb the search results.

I just registered on penturner.org they seem to have a lot of good info on marketing and selling on different venues. Thanks for the reply!

 

[hockenbery]

Thanks John

I have done some homework on Etsy but it is challenging because of the variation in pricing. I have noticed slim lines selling for $20 range. I've also noticed cigar and fountain pens listed for anywhere from $30 - $90. I was going to try to list my pens in the $25 - $30 range. More concerned my page simply won't be visited if I can't manage a way to climb the search results.

I just registered on penturner.org they seem to have a lot of good info on marketing and selling on different venues. Thanks for the reply!

You are on the right track. every sale will make 2 people happy - you and the new owner

you’ll also find a high end market where limited editions sell for thousands.
these pens use fewer kit parts and feature creative elements in castings. Often fountain pens.

you may be able develop a gallery or wholesale market.
gift shops in museums, zoos, botanical gardens etc often carry wooden pens. Providing a small display stand will help.
galleries and craft stores often carry pens.
the agreement with the seller is either sell to them wholesale or pay them a commission on the sales.

I made my first pen sales by accident. In the late 80s I was making a few pens. When we went to someone’s home we give the host & hostess a pen. After a two dinner parties The phone started ringing - “Bruce had this neat wooden pen can you make one for me one?” Then people that bought one would call wanting pens to gift to people.

 

[John Torchick]

Jerold, the pen site will be a great resource! hoxkenbery has some good information. One needs to find the niche. BTW, the local museum gift shop said that fountain pens were a good seller as the younger generations are ignoring the word processor and actually writing notes, letters, etc.
FWIW, I was in a gift shop several years ago that had pens by a well-known wood turner. Taking into consideration the cost of the blanks, kit, etc. and the cut for the shop, they were waaay overpriced IMHO. The owner said the turner was well-known. OK, unless you were a turner, the name was insignificant. I have a bunch of kits that I need to unload. Trying to think of a venue to do it.

 

[Jerald Maxcy]

Jerold, the pen site will be a great resource! hoxkenbery has some good information. One needs to find the niche. BTW, the local museum gift shop said that fountain pens were a good seller as the younger generations are ignoring the word processor and actually writing notes, letters, etc.
FWIW, I was in a gift shop several years ago that had pens by a well-known wood turner. Taking into consideration the cost of the blanks, kit, etc. and the cut for the shop, they were waaay overpriced IMHO. The owner said the turner was well-known. OK, unless you were a turner, the name was insignificant. I have a bunch of kits that I need to unload. Trying to think of a venue to do it.

Thanks John

I'll try out some museum gift shops to see if there's any possibility there. When you say you have a bunch of kits you are trying to unload, do you mean unfinished kits, or finished pens?

 

[John Torchick]

Jerald, I have several small containers with the kit components. Just need to take time to select the material, turn and then decide what to do.

 

[Robert D Evans]

The craft shows I've been to sell the pens for about $20 each. You get to pick the one you like. Then they offer to sell you a nice wooden box to put the pen in for another $7.00. I don't see how they make much money after paying for a table but that's the market.

 

[John Torchick]

When I started turning pens a few years ago, it was mentioned that one could buy the Slimline pens in bulk at a couple of bucks each. Nice if you feel you can sell 50 or 100 pens. Obviously, the $20 pens would have some profit. But you would have to sell a lot of pens at some flea markets. Looked at a festival in North Georgia. 10X10 space was $350!!!!!

 

[Roger Wiegand]

Full disclosure, I've never sold a pen.

But, looking at what does sell at our fair booth and in the local craft shops, it seems that there is substantial benefit to using the best quality kits available, by which I mean the ones that make a somewhat more substantial pen, with high quality plating, thicker materials, and a "classy" appearance. Well made pens using interesting wood with quality kits and refills that write smoothly and well sell for $60-80 quite well, with an all-in material cost of ~$20 (assuming you use, say a nice, purchased, resin-impregnated dyed burl blank. The slimline pens can be made for under $5 in materials but I don't see them selling for more than $20-25. The labor in making each is similar. So while the "profit margin" based on material cost is better for the slim line pens, the dollars per hour invested is better for the better quality kits. Your local market will, of course, vary. Perhaps a lot.

 

[John Torchick]

Roger, well said. We are aware that there are some quality kits on the market with some rather exotic mateials, synthetic and natural, available. My grandson made pens for his parents; Mom got a kaleidoscope pen with pink acrylic, Dad got a wrench pen with arbor vita wood. The wood took forever to drill, like drilling tool steel!
We have a chapter member that does a good business in pens. The market in one place gets $XXX for a pen. Another market gets more for the same pen.

 

[Jerald Maxcy]

Full disclosure, I've never sold a pen.

But, looking at what does sell at our fair booth and in the local craft shops, it seems that there is substantial benefit to using the best quality kits available, by which I mean the ones that make a somewhat more substantial pen, with high quality plating, thicker materials, and a "classy" appearance. Well made pens using interesting wood with quality kits and refills that write smoothly and well sell for $60-80 quite well, with an all-in material cost of ~$20 (assuming you use, say a nice, purchased, resin-impregnated dyed burl blank. The slimline pens can be made for under $5 in materials but I don't see them selling for more than $20-25. The labor in making each is similar. So while the "profit margin" based on material cost is better for the slim line pens, the dollars per hour invested is better for the better quality kits. Your local market will, of course, vary. Perhaps a lot.

Thanks Roger

I agree it seems like slimlines don't exceed $20-$25 even on a venue like Etsy. I wouldn't consider my pens high end enough to warrant the $60-$80 range, but I would like to think they could sell for the high range of a slimline, maybe possibly slightly higher. I do try to use nicer wood (cocobolo, bocote, etc) and mid range kits (cigar, executive, a couple fountains). I think my pens look OK but I'm under the impression as my own critic that they aren't quality enough to warrant anything far exceeding $30. Then again I really have no idea haha so I guess the only way to tell is to put them up for sale in whatever venue and see what happens!
I appreciate all the advice

Jerald

 

[John Torchick]

One thing that I was told in the beginning was to check to see if the blank/blanks are even with the kit parts, that is, the turned blank is the same diameter as the band, nib, etc. Too many time there is a "raised" feel when running your fingers over the finished pen.
Jerald, good luck in this venture.

 

[Odie]

I have done some homework on Etsy but it is challenging because of the variation in pricing. More concerned my page simply won't be visited if I can't manage a way to climb the search results.

Jerald.....I've had an Etsy shop for about 8 years, now.

I just ran a search on Etsy for "handmade pens" and "handmade bowls"......and was quite surprised to see there were less pens than bowls offered! 53,000 pens vs 75,000 bowls. I'd have thought it would be the other way around! The market for these products is very competitive, and you're right that you'll have to get to the top of the search results, if you have any hope of making sales. Etsy has a handbook that gives some tips, and if you search, there are plenty of opinions on how to manage Etsy shops competitively, so they get some good search results.

I do feel that Etsy gives shops that have fewer sales a bit of advantage over the more established shops in the search results, though. It's my opinion that Etsy stands to make more overall profit by having millions of individual shops paying for listings and services, than to direct search traffic towards the more successful shops. Etsy is a corporation listed on the stock market, so the bottom line is more important than giving the best artists and craftsmen any advantage. The more successful shops will still be in the algorithm, but it seems it becomes more on a limited basis, the more successful the shop is, in order to keep the less successful shops from losing hope. The only way to overcome the handicaps, is to establish a clientele base of satisfied customers who will become repeat buyers.....and, that is much easier said, than done!

-----odie-----

 

[Rusty Nesmith]

It starts with pens. When you finally turn a bowl you will turn into a junky and never leave the shop.

 

[R Henrickson]

It starts with pens. When you finally turn a bowl you will turn into a junky and never leave the shop.

Not necessarily does it begin with pens. In 14 years, I've turned one and don't plan to do another. I've done several hundred bowls, but almost none in the last few years.

 

[Jeremy Christian]

I'm a weirdo... I did bowls before pens. Love them both!

 

[Lou Jacobs]

I just ran a search on Etsy for "handmade pens" and "handmade bowls"......and was quite surprised to see there were less pens than bowls offered! 53,000 pens vs 75,000 bowls.

Odie, I wonder if the count on Etsy includes pottery bowls? I’d think your hunch about more pens than bowls would be true if you narrowed it to wooden bowls.

 

[Michael Lamka]

There are a number of platforms for opening an online outlet. Shopify is very popular, Amazon is, I've heard, very expensive and restrictive for handmade items. Square, one of the first affordable methods of accepting credit/debit cards available to "the masses", is becoming popular, too.

One of the most important things to learn about online selling is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It is, without doubt, the true black art of the internet. It is how to get found when someone types handmade pen (or cute puppy, or best ice cream cone, etc. in the search box). If there are 50,000 handmade pens for sale on Etsy, imagine how many there are on the internet as a whole (I got 43,000,000 hits from Google), so it's easy to see how much competition there is.

Pricing? Costs + margin (profit) = price. I think it really is that simple.

 

[Odie]

Odie, I wonder if the count on Etsy includes pottery bowls? I’d think your hunch about more pens than bowls would be true if you narrowed it to wooden bowls.

Lou......You could be right.

I'm now running searches for handmade pens, handmade bowls, and wood handmade bowls......results posted here in a couple minutes.

handmade pens..........................52,158
handmade bowls........................75,227
wooden handmade bowls......11,021

Looks like you are right......good catch!

edit: "wood bowl" shows 68,114 hits.....hmmmm!

-----odie-----

 

[Lou Jacobs]

I think “wood bowls” includes lots of crap. I did a quick look and saw lots of coconut half bowls. BTW, you sure are doing something right on Etsy. When I searched wood bowls, a couple of yours were on the first page of results. Beauties!

 

[Odie]

I think “wood bowls” includes lots of crap. I did a quick look and saw lots of coconut half bowls. BTW, you sure are doing something right on Etsy. When I searched wood bowls, a couple of yours were on the first page of results. Beauties!

Hard to say just exactly how the Etsy algorithm is set up to work. I just ran the same search for wood bowls, and none of mine were on the first couple pages!

Etsy has informed me that they've been paying for "offsite ads" using some of my bowls as "clickbait". Etsy pays for the ads if I don't make a sale, and charges me if I make a sale as a result of one of these ads. I sold one bowl last month from one of these ads, and the charge was about $13 if I recall correctly.

With all of the thousands of handmade wooden bowls on Etsy, it's hard to get a prospective buyer to take a look at one of my bowls. The real problem, as I see it, is any search comes up with thousands of little "thumbnail" photos, and it's difficult to see the fine details I put into my bowls from that tiny little photo. Also, my bowls tend to be more expensive than most, but I put way more time in producing my bowls, because my techniques are very time consuming. I doubt that I'm even making minimum wage, but my real purposes don't have anything to do with money. For sure, I want to make sales, but this is more of an artistic pursuit, and not a business venture!

Excuse me for rambling on........

-----odie-----

 

[Rusty Nesmith]

A friend of mine sells on Etsy and when he does a narrow search sometimes his stuff won’t come up for 15 pages.

 

[Odie]

A friend of mine sells on Etsy and when he does a narrow search sometimes his stuff won’t come up for 15 pages.

One thing about it, is if you run a search where Etsy can identify the source, the search will be different than if you run an "incognito" search. My conclusion is Etsy often wants a shop owner to think they're doing better in the algorithm than they actually are...

If there are any Etsy shop owners reading this, you should do this comparison of search results. If you are a new shop, or have limited record of sales, I suspect you will have a better incognito search results, than the more established shops with a good sales record.

-----odie-----

 

[Mike Johnson]

Coming up with a unique feature or design will help differentiate yourself from the rest of the market. Turned pens are a very trendy business, finishes and designs come into and go out of fashion every couple of years. I once made a batch of pens for some engineers at work that had a carbide scribe and a reversable cushioned stylus insert on top of the pen. There are plenty of small turned items that a person can branch out into over time.
Seam Rippers, Shaving Brushes, Letter Openers, Magic Wands, Ornaments, Whistles, Spinning Tops, Jewelry, Rings, Ring Dishes, Bangles, Bottle Stoppers, Tooth Pick Holders, Pill Holders, Cigar Humidors, Knitting Needles, Rolling Pens, Candle Holders, Vases. Wood Mallets, Salt & Pepper Shakers and Grinders, Small Vases and Bowls the list goes on and on.

 

[Marvin Jones]

My first turnings were tiny goblets on an old harbor freight lathe, something about a piece of wood and a machine to spin it. Tiny chisels none over 12" long, don't remember how I hollowed them with what I had, just fascinated me...addiction is a terrible thing

I have never turned a pen, but see them more and more in restaurants, quick stops. I think a gift shop would be a potential consignment seller. Don't know who the turner is or is he/ she local, I need to ask...whoever it is has a circuit they make in town to restock.