With the pandemic all but behind us at the writing of this post, and all of us experiencing prices being raised on everything from milk to cars. It made me think that it may be time to discuss the issue as it relates to the retail airbrush industry.
Basic designs from circa 1992
Basic designs from circa 1992
These are a few of our standard name designs as of 2022 with prices ranging from $12-$15.00
As with many of the other topics on this blog. This subject is a little touchy because “artists” hate the ”business” aspect of airbrushing, and controlling your prices when it comes to the market, your competition and your own financial prosperity is a big part of running your business.
We are going to focus mostly on prices of “standard designs” and “Semi-Custom” designs like Birthday shirts, memorial shirts and all those simple shirts that customers want done. We are not going to focus on the larger “Custom” work like portraits, helmets, automotive…etc. Although it still applies to these items.
When we (Anything Airbrushed plus) started in 1991 and still to this day, we charge for the artwork and the item separately. You can read more about this pricing in our “Why not just one Price” post.
But as for this discussion, our prices back in 1991 were $5.00-$10.00 for a basic name design(as pictured) and $5.00 for the blank t-shirt and $14.00 for the blank hoodie. Today the price of the basic name design(as pictured) goes from $12-$20.00 and our shirt prices are now $9.00 for a t-shirt and $25 for a hoodie.
There are a number of reasons why you should be keeping track of your prices and raising them every so often. Not the least of which is simple inflation which at the writing of this post in February of 2022 was running about 7.5%
However, probably the most common argument we hear against raising prices has to do with the “Competition” …. “If I raise my prices the competition will under cut me and I will lose business”. So let’s focus on that for this post.
Let’s clear the air right now before we start...The above statement is BULL$**T!….you will NOT lose business! You may lose some of the most ungrateful, cheap customers who have been coming to you for years BECAUSE of your PRICES and NOT because of your actual talent, hard work and final product. I’m here to tell you that it is well past time to say good riddance to these customers. If they can’t afford $2-$5 extra for the same beautiful work or more importantly, if they can’t RESPECT the fact that you DESERVE more for your work…then it’s time to let the door hit them in the a$$ on their way out and let them run to your competition and let your competition deal with their cheap, ungrateful a$$es.
What we have learned is that “Competition” can be one of the driving forces behind whether to raise your prices or not….but it’s not the ONLY reason. So let me break it down to one simple question that you have to ask yourself.
“Are you(your artwork) better than your competitions artwork?”
The answer to this question should pretty much help you decide whether you should raise your prices or not.
”But what about my competition?…they just keep under cutting me”. “They are going to put me out of business”. Hence the reason you need to ask yourself the hard question….”is my competition better than me?”
Before we give you the solution to “is my competition better than me?, let me point out that for the most part, as with ALL THINGS ART RELATED…the answer is subjective….we have all heard the phrase “art is subjective” …which means the answer is subject to personal opinion. Some people will like your lettering better than your competitions and some will like theirs. Some may like your competitions “custom work” better than yours and vise versa. It all comes down to personal opinion. Quite frankly, there will never be anything you can do about peoples “personal taste”. If they like your competitions work better, then they will always shop at your competition first…but that doesn’t mean you can’t win them over later. But you DON’T try to win them over with lower prices.
There are two factors that will go into the final solution of raising your prices. First you need to see who is charging more….you or your competition….and second, who’s work is better.
Let’s be real, even though “Art is Subjective”…there are still some very basic principles that can help you decide when looking at your work and your competitions work that can tell you who’s work is better…..or “more appealing to the general public”
These things are definite red flags that tell you how good somebody’s art is… Including but not limited to…
LETTERING: look for letter spacing, letter consistency, thick and thin consistency, word spacing, general layout, positive/negative space.
PORTRAITS: look for facial shape, likeness, feature distortion, use of color/skin tone, is the face pleasing to look at?
GENERAL CUSTOM ARTWORK: look for spacing, layout, use of color….is the overall design pleasing?
One dead give away is the use of BLACK….you can easily spot a beginner or someone who is “self taught” by their use of the color BLACK. They use black in shading, in drop shadows, as backgrounds they use black in every situation where shading is needed. This tells you right off if the persons work is generally good or not.
However, even with all the above taken into consideration, people(the general public) will still spend money with artists who actually suck because it’s all a matter of personal opinion.
So with the basic information above it is now time to look at your work and compare it to the competition. The “Competition can be the guy down the street or other artists from online. You have to be honest with yourself. This will be hard, if you doubt yourself then ask someone really close to you as well as someone not so close to you to compare your work with the competition’s work. If it’s possible to just show someone pictures so they don’t know who’s is who’s that’s even better. But you are looking for an honest, blunt answer. You do not need anything sugar coated by someone who does not want to hurt your feelings.
So what are the answers to the question at hand “Do I raise my prices”?
If you have decided that your competitions work is better and they are charging more, then hey!….this is the easiest answer because all you have to do is practice more and get better and aim to be as good as them. However, that does NOT mean you can’t afford to raise your prices just a little bit. Simply because you have obviously been in business for (however long) and you obviously have customers who like your work and are spending money with you. But you do not want to be known as the “Cheap artist”…you still have the right to earn more for your hard work….maybe not as much as your competition’s work who you have decided is better than you, but still you deserve more.
If you have decided that you are fairly equal with your competition as far as quality of your work. Or even if you feel your work is even a little better than your competition but they are charging less, then this is where something needs to change.
This can be handled two ways.
1.) The first and BEST thing to do is simply go talk to your competition. I know, I know…your an artist…you don’t like dealing with people, you don’t like “confrontation”,…you just want to show up at your little store and hide behind a counter and paint and only deal with people when you have to….well…tough $h**T!…grow up and go have a pleasant conversation with your competition. The worst thing they can say is NO, they do not want to raise their prices.
2.) The second thing you can do is more drastic. If your competition is so inexpensive and they just won’t listen to reason or if there is A LOT of competition around you then it may be time to re-locate to a new place where you will be able to command the prices you deserve. This is a hard decision to make and is one that people just don’t want to think about. However if you take a real honest look at your business(this includes your talent) then this needs to be an option that you have to consider.
However, I am pretty confident that if you do your homework, gather evidence of other artists prices, and present the facts in a clear, precise manner….even show them this blog. Then I truly believe that you can come to an understanding about pricing that will benefit both of you. It’s about first educating yourself so you can then share what you have learned with your competition for the betterment of both your businesses as well as the airbrush community as a whole. We have done this twice in the 30 years we have been in business and if ever another shop opens, we will immediately go talk to them, bring our basic price list and discuss with them what will work best for both of us. Remember, they(your competition) want to make as much as they can also and possibly they may not know what prices they can get until you sit down and show them.
I think the most common “competition” that is the biggest problem are the artists who only do airbrushing part time. These are the ones who sell shirts for extremely low prices simply because they have very little over head and mostly because it’s ALL extra money to them. So they don’t really care if they buy a shirt for $2.00 and put an hours worth of work into it and sell it for $20.00….to them they made $18.00 an hour and feel really good about themselves. However those of us that are actually doing this for a living would have charged $50 for the same shirt….because that is what we actually deserve for the work we put into it. These are the artists that ruin it for the rest of us. These are the artists that give airbrushing a bad name because they “can’t see the forest because of the trees”…they can’t see how much money they are actually losing and how bad they are actually damaging the airbrush industry because they are to focused on themselves and the “extra money” they are making…regardless whether that could be a whole lot more “extra money” if they just charged a little more comparatively to artists that do it for a living.
But let’s be clear, you are not aiming for your prices to be the “EXACT SAME”, you are simply aiming for your prices to be just a little more “COMPARABLE” so that the customers choices are based more on what you each are offering and NOT just what your price is. This is why its important to get a good handle on exactly how good you actually are compared to your competition. It is also why you should also look at what you each offer for your price. For example, cleaner work, cleaner store, more professional and better customer service, better location, more inventory…all these things and more play into why a businesses can and should raise prices.
Having prices that are comparable to your competition is a benefit for the entire airbrush community and it helps ALL of us. We are not trying to gouge our customers with extremely high, unreasonable prices or make them have to decide between food on the table of buying this airbrushed shirt. But the plain truth is that if you haven’t raised your prices in a few years then you are simply hurting yourself. You are working HARDER and not SMARTER.
There are two rules taught in businesses 101 classes.
1.) You can make money by selling MORE for LESS… or
2.) you can sell LESS for MORE.
Both of these selling methods are going to make money when it comes to airbrushing. In simple math terms, you can paint 10 shirts in an hour for $10.00 each and make $100.00(working more for less)… or… you can paint 5 shirts in an hour for $20.00 and make the same $100.00(working less for more)
Of these two rules, the second one(work less for more) works best for most airbrush artists because of the specialized nature of the business. The reason is because you are only human, you can only paint a certain number of things in any given amount of time. So instead of killing yourself by painting tons of items for really cheap, paint less but charge more. For example, if a shirt becomes really popular and people just keep buying and buying, you have made MORE money at $20.00 then you would have at $10.00 simply because regardless how much you are charging, you can still only paint a limited number of shirts in a given period. So charging $20 for painting the same amount of shirts that you would have painted at $10.00 is making you twice the profit.
The first rule(work more for less) works great for things that are already created. Things that just get put out on the shelf and nothing has to be done except ring up the customer and put their item in a bag. But when you have to actually hand make everything right then and there….why kill yourself. Charge a little more, make a little more and work a whole lot less. This is what you explain to your competition.
Raising your prices is also a way that businesses deal with supply and demand. When demand is high then prices can be high to help deal with the demand. When demand is low than prices become low to create a demand. This is why prices for even the most basic of things are higher in “Tourist Traps” and Amusement parks etc…because they only have a short “Seasonal window” of opportunity or “Demand”. Once the season is over…Demand is over.
But what does supply and demand have to do with every day business for an airbrush shop? I’m not in a “Tourist area” so there really is no “peak season?…Because, while you may not have a “peak season” in a standard airbrush mall store or flea market store or free standing store, you do have busier times like Holidays…Christmas, Valentines Day etc.. Which are times of the year where you may have an increase in sales due to the holiday and have to decide on how to handle pricing for things related to these “seasons”. In other words do you try to sell MORE Christmas shirts for Less or do you sell LESS Christmas shirts for MORE? This decision comes from experience from year to year. In previous years, have you experienced selling an overwhelming number of “Christmas related designs” that keep you from doing the quicker everyday stuff? If so you may decide to raise the prices on Christmas stuff to make up for the volume of work that may be suffering because of the demand.…or do you not do that many “Christmas related designs”? In which case you may lower the price of Christmas designs to help CREATE a demand and therefore increase sales. This tells you about your supply and demand for those items during those times of the year.
Airbrush shops can generally stay busy all year long if you are smart and have learned to be diverse and paint more than just names on shirts. With airbrush being such a specialized industry, there are many other types of things that keep us busy. For example, those that do helmets will find an increase in business for softball season, or motorcycle riding season etc…Everyday stuff that keeps us busy like Birthday shirts, memorial shirts, sports competitions, special events etc…never go away.
Therefore, an airbrush business not located in a “tourist area” it’s not ALWAYS about the “season” it’s about the product or service you are offering all year long which is a “Specialized” product/service which by nature should NOT be all that inexpensive….it should not be cheap! However, when a “season” like Christmas or Valentines day come along, you can handle your prices one of two ways. You can charge more for “Christmas shirts” because you will only be selling them for a short time so you are getting the most you can(selling less for more)….but you can also choose to “put them on sale” because they will only be popular for a short time and therefore go for the QUANTITY(more for less). It benefits you and your competition to be comparable because you should already be experiencing the same busy times. This also goes for “sales” and “specials”. Why do you think all stores have “Black Friday” sales, or “Presidents Day” sales…they all put things on sale at the same time. Because they know people will be out shopping. You should be doing this along with your competition.
So now that we have given you a few good explanations as to why you should keep track of raising your prices, you are probably wondering how much. This isn’t a very difficult question to answer. Simple math, if you bought your shirt for $1.00 last year and sell it for $10.00 that is a $9.00 profit, If you are now buying your shirts for $2.00 and still selling them for $10.00….that’s a profit of $8.00….$1.00 less then last year. While you can sustain this loss for a little while, you can’t sustain it forever. So you have to decide how much of that $1.00 each year are you willing to keep losing.
In general, we suggest starting small. So for example, if you sell your art and your items separately, then try raising the price of your designs by $1.00-$2.00 and the price of your items $1.00-$4.00. So maybe raise the t-shirts by $1.00 and the Hoodies by $4.00 keeping in mind that the prices of the higher priced items should increase by more than your lower priced items mainly because these items probably cost you more to purchase. If you sell your items as one price(art and item together) then try raising your prices $2.00-$5.00. Your increase will be determined by how much your expenses have increased….because your expenses are ALWAYS increasing whether you pay attention to it or not. This goes for everything from your rent to a bottle of paint. The more these things go up in price and you do not raise your prices, the more money you are losing each year.
The easiest way to figure out how much to raise your prices is to figure out how much more are your supplies/expenses costing. So for example, as above, if you bought your shirts for $1.00 last year now they are $2.00 what % did they go up?…this answer is easy, it’s 100% increase.. If you bought paint at $10.00 a bottle last year and it is now $15.00 a bottle…that is a 50% increase. If your rent was $1000 a month last year and it is now $1200.00 that is a 20% increase. This is just 3 things. You can check on as many things as you want…how about utilities, cell phone, office supplies?…etc…But for this example we will just stick with these 3 (shirts, paint, rent) …Now, take the percentage that each of these things has gone up, add them together and then divide by how many you included…So 100+50+20=170. So now divide that by the 3 things you included 170(divided by)3=56…56% is the AVERAGE your overall costs/supples have increased in a year.….so you need to raise your prices by 56% just to keep up with the inflation of the cost of your expenses. I know that seems like a lot….that means a $10.00 design comes up to be over $15.00….this may be a little much but math does not lie. But you do need to keep things in perspective. You do need to see that by NOT raising your prices at some point, you will actually be losing money in the long run.
But, who wants to do all that math?…lol…just raise your prices by a few bucks and see what happens…lol
Believe us when we tell you that out of 100 customers only 1 will notice and actually complain about a $1.00 increase in your prices and as we said above, that person isn’t worth having as a customer.
So go out there, increase your prices and by doing so increase your profits.