|
12-11-2006 11:36pm
Subject:
Increases, Yugos, Toilet paper, Stinky shirttails.
Skutt
announces price increase!
Shimpo
announces price increase!
Kemper
announces price increase!
UPS
announces price increase!
Everyone
announces price increases!
It
must be December.
As
January comes around, so does the price increases. It happens
every year. Nothing new, same stories, inflation, fuel, chinese
buying all of the raw materials to make steel, company CEOs
buying new Jets, etc, etc, etc.
What
does it all mean to us in the pottery world? Not much. So
clay goes up 2 cents a pound, raw materials go up a few percentage
points. That doesn't add much to the cost of our pottery.
Just a quick guess, but I would say the material cost of a
coffee cup is much less than a dollar. Divide the cost of
a bisque and glaze firing by the number of cups we can get
in a kiln and then figure the per firing cost of replacing
a kiln after a few hundred firings and I bet we would have
to stretch it to get to $1 per cup. So what. Most potters
get from $12 to $25 per cup. Don't roll your eyes at me! Do
the math, material cost of pottery is nothing. Double the
current cost of materials and firing and you still don't have
10% of the selling price. That's better than the Moonshine
business, corn and copper are up. We scraped our copper still
for more money than we made last year! Not to mention all
of the paranoia that went away. Anyway, back to the topic.
There
is a trend of:
"Consolidation
(that's another word for going broke) i.e. Laguna buys Axner,
Standard buys Ceramic Supply.
"Cost
Reductions" (that's a phrase for replacing good help
with cheap help).
"Wholesale
to the Public" (that means NO customer service or, at
the most, when things go south you will get to speak to someone
that has not yet mastered the english language)
"New
economy priced wheel" (means that you would be better
off with a cheap banding wheel hooked up to a old washing
machine motor)
and
last but not least
"Handling
Fees" (that means the price is too cheap, so let's get'em
on the shipping).
How
do they get away with it? They know a potters' weakness. It's
called "Potters' Poverty". No that's not a social
class, and it's not a judgment of potters. It's a phrase describing
the way we as potters look at our value. Most of us don't
give credit where it is due. In ourselves. A potters' time
is the most valuable thing that we have, but for whatever
reason, we spend most of it trying to figure out how to get
our materials and equipment cheaper. Or, trying to find a
way to make our job harder by "Building it Ourselves".
Sometimes that does save us a little money, but most of the
time it just causes problems. I don't know why you are reading
this, but I bet it has something to do with sale prices, bargains
etc. That's fine, but if you had been sitting at your
wheel for the time it has taken you to read this far, how
many coffee cups could you have made? Take the test below
and then follow the suggestions.
Five Coffee Cups in 30 minutes •
You're good, that's about $50 in profit. If that's you, go
back to work. Quit looking for bargains at the expense of
your time, you're losing money just by reading this.
Three
Coffee Cups in 30 minutes • Still pretty
good, $30 profit. But you will have to find a really good
deal to come out ahead. Flip a coin, heads go back to work,
tails keep looking for a bargain.
One Coffee Cup in 30 minutes
• One coffee cup? That's all you can make in
30 minutes, one coffee cup? Let me guess, your a Newbe to
making pottery, you asked for an inexpensive "Beginners
Wheel" and some cheap clay to play with. NO Wait! I got
it, you found the "Beginners Kit" that came with
the free shipping and the 25lbs of clay and the tool kit and
video. Right? Cheap CeramicJunk.com. You just fell for what
I like to call the "Yugo Syndrome". For those of
you who don't remember the Yugo, that was a car made just
to take advantage of people who were "Thrifty".
It sold for 1/2 of what a Ford Escort did. It came with a
free air freshener (to hide the smell of burning oil) and
a full tank of gas (to get you as far away as possible). They
sold a bunch of them for about a year and a half. Then everyone
found out that you had to call Yugoslavia to get parts, and
they needed a lot of parts. They didn't build these to drive,
they built them to sell. When the Yugoslavian government found
out what was going on, they put the CEOs of the company in
front of a firing squad and promised everyone a refund. I'm
still waiting for my check.
If
that's the case, don't worry, we can fix the problem.
First,
sell that piece of junk wheel they sold you to a friend (best
if it's not a close friend). Throw in any clay you have left,
and just for giggles, glue the needle back in the needle tool,
put it back in the package along with the rest of the dull
tools that chatter when you trim. Then say something like
"Act Within the next five minutes and receive this tool
kit with your purchase for only $5". Only take cash and
write NO REFUNDS on the receipt. Keep the Video.
Come
see me. Don't call and ask me which wheel you need; that's
how you got in this mess in the first place. Get in your car
and drive here. Take a look at the wheels in our showroom,
take a test drive of those in our classroom. While you're
here try a couple of the clay bodies we have in stock. Need
a kiln too? They all look the same on the web. They're not!
There
is a reason some things cost less than others.
Trying
to center on a junk wheel is not easy. Yeah, I know, you've
seen Hamada throw pots on a round rock in the ground that
he spun with a stick. But at $3000 or $4000 a pot he didn't
have to make very many a day, and after 10 or 12 thousand
pots it gets easy. Save yourself some grief and invest in
quality equipment and materials. Then work on improving your
skills in the studio. Make some pots. That's what I should
be doing instead of typing this. But Kelley is having a "Girls
Night Out" party in the studio so I'm hiding.
If
you're still looking for a bargain then try the sale
page, you'll find good stuff at fair prices. No $500 wheels.
It costs more than that to make a good wheel. Period. If you
don't have enough to buy a good wheel, get more money. If
you're not getting what I'm trying to say here, then could
I interest you in a low mileage, one owner Yugo? 350 miles
per gallon (20 miles running and 330 behind a wrecker). Value
and Cheap are two different things. Think 39cent a roll toilet
paper. If you have to use your shirttail, you didn't save
any money!
Keep
your hands muddy, and your shirttails dry. Till next time,
Mike
|
