Underpricing is the craft fair’s oldest injury. Enter your materials, your hours, and an hourly rate you can live on; the price comes back with overhead counted and the wholesale and retail steps shown.
Your Costs
Charge at Least
$125
materials $18.00 + 6 h × $15.00 + 15% overhead
Selling direct at a fair or online, the wholesale figure is your floor; anything above it pays for the risk and the table fee.
- Labor$90.00
- Materials$18.00
- Overhead$16.20
- Wholesale (to a shop)$125
- Retail (shop resells at)$249
- Your effective wage$20.70/hr
The Formula
base price = (materials + hours × rate) × (1 + overhead %)wholesale ≈ base · retail ≈ base × 2 when a shop resells your workThe base is your cost of existing as a maker, paid in full. Selling to a shop at wholesale, the shop doubles it to retail, which is why a base that skips your hours can’t survive wholesale at all.
Worked Example
An amigurumi fox: $18 of yarn, stuffing, and safety eyes; 6 hours of hooking and finishing; $15 an hour; 15% overhead:
- Labor: 6 × 15 = $90. With materials: $108.
- Overhead: × 1.15 → $124.20: call it $125.
- The market gasps? That’s the real cost of a 6-hour fox. The answer is a 2-hour pattern or a higher-value design, never a $40 price that pays you $3.70 an hour.
Where the Time Goes
| Project | Typical hours | At $15/hr + materials |
|---|---|---|
| Beanie, worsted | 2–3 | $40–65 |
| Amigurumi, small | 3–5 | $60–95 |
| Baby blanket | 8–15 | $150–260 |
| Throw blanket | 20–40 | $350–700 |
| Adult sweater | 25–45 | $420–780 |
Hours from your own log beat every table: time two projects and your numbers replace these.
How to Measure Your Inputs
- Materials at replacement cost: what the yarn costs to buy again today, not the sale price you happened to catch. Partial skeins count by weight.
- Hours include finishing: weaving ends, blocking, sewing on parts, photographing. Time one project honestly and keep the number.
- Rate: your local minimum wage is the floor, not the target. Experienced makers bill $20–30.
Assumptions and Defaults
- Overhead is a percentage on top of materials plus labor, covering fees, packaging, tools wearing out, and the table at the fair.
- Platform fees change the math per venue, Etsy’s cut, a gallery’s 40%: apply them after this price, not instead of your labor.
- The table’s dollar ranges follow the formula at $15/hr with typical materials; they are arithmetic, not market quotes.
Pricing Questions, Answered
How much should I charge for crochet?
A fair crochet price is materials plus your hours at a real hourly rate, plus overhead, which is the formula above. A $40 blanket that took 20 hours paid its maker $1 an hour after yarn, so price from your costs first and check the market second.
What if nobody will pay $125 for an amigurumi?
If nobody will pay $125 for an amigurumi, there are three honest options: design faster pieces such as the 2-hour fox, raise the perceived value with custom colors, gift boxing, or a story, or sell patterns instead of pieces, since a pattern can sell a hundred times with no extra crochet hours. Cutting the price below cost is the one option that never works twice.
Does the “3 times materials” pricing rule work?
The 3 times materials rule pays a fair wage only by accident: tripling $18 of yarn prices the 6-hour fox at $54, which works out to $6 an hour. Multiplier rules reward expensive yarn and penalize slow, skilled work, because they leave out the hours times rate that a real price needs.
Do I charge for the pattern I bought?
Yes, fold the pattern’s price into the materials for your first piece, and respect its license: many patterns allow sales of finished items, some ask for credit, and a few forbid sales. Your own designs deserve a design premium on top, which multiplier pricing never accounts for.