I feel like crying into my cereal..

[Andrew]

I agree that at that level its possible to tick over and make a little money - the problem arises when you run out of ink, the printer or press breaks, or the letter arrives on your doorstep from the inland revenue. :biggrin:



That's the problem though Andrew - Qty/timings seem to be out by either you, or Harry - he was running 2 presses and an oven but only turned 100 mugs over in 8 hours.

I can sell mugs quite a bit cheaper than what the OP mentions and make a profit. I've personally timed and tested everything. Costed every single element into it....... big accountants bill, tax, manpower etc. I'm set-up this way which is how I can run and make an okay profit at the end of every month. It's just different ways of operating. Some will make high profits per small runs and we work the opposite angle.

[colglyn]

nope i have an accountant to do all my paperwork cause there are other factors taken into account and that order of 100 mugs is only a small part of what i do i sell on ebay and i do ok on ebay and it ticks over nicely and it has a profit but im happy with what i did a lot of people may think i undersold the items and yeah i do agree but what i sold them for and at the end of the day i was ok with it, i don't have many orders like that at all

[gazza]

I have just recently started to make mugs,I can easily cost the mugs and paper but I am a bit unsure on the price of the ink.
I have just bought a Ricoh GXe3300n if anyone else on here is using 1 could they give me a rough estimate on how much to
print a mug?

Thanks in advance
Gaz

[mrs maggot]

gaz, have a read through the printer section, the costings are on there, i also believe they are on some of the suppliers websites for the ricoh

[pisquee]

Weigh your carts before you do a print run, and then after the print run, and then you know precisely how much ink you have used per job/product. Obviously you need decent/accurate scales to do this.

[ASLCreative]

Interesting read about the ebay mug sales and profit margins.

One has to remember it takes everybody the same amount of time to heat press a mug no matter who you are.

The real profits are made in the back office; processing orders, answering emails, downloading images, processing images and packing/dispatching orders. Streamline this and you will increase your profits. Every minute shaved off the overall processing of an order is extra profit.

Larger runs of the same design do not involve the same back office routines; so the unit cost of production can be reduced.

I always look at the bigger players in the market and see what they charge - going rate for a personalised mug is around £9.99. These guys work on a large scale, buying in bulk, automated order processing systems, negotiated courier rates - their unit cost of production is lower than a small business could achieve, yet they still charge circa £9.99 PLUS postage.

I would say a price for a personalised mug from a small retailer should be around £7.99-£8.99 plus postage - just slightly under the larger players.

[WorthDoingRight]

I would say a price for a personalised mug from a small retailer should be around £7.99-£8.99 plus postage - just slightly under the larger players.

After reading this I am now choking on my cereal :rolleyes:

I think it is hard enough to get people to pay more than £5 these days without much deliberation. I sell my mugs for £6.50 and those that place an order love them but I can tell they consider this amount to be high for an 'ordinary' mug although they are personalised and take time to produce.

For example I was asked to photoshop remove a head from one photograph and use it to replace a head on another photograph and then print it onto a t-shirt from pictures taken on a low res camera phone. When I asked them how much they thought the t-shirt would cost them they said about £5! I said that would barely cover the cost of the sublimation t-shirt without the other work!

Everyone loves the quality of my stuff, they just want to pay discount shop prices. I am currently experimenting with sublimating onto 15cm x 15cm tiles with variable success and making a few homemade frames to mount them on. Again people love them but think they should cost them no more than my mugs cost them as they see them as just another ceramic product.

Well after starting this reply by choking on my cereal I am now so depressed I will have to cry over the remnants in the bowl lol

[ASLCreative]

Everyone loves the quality of my stuff, they just want to pay discount shop prices.

You have to stress that they are not getting "mass produced designs" from China - they are getting a personalised product made specifically for them, that is a quality product that will last.

People will pay - People send flowers as gifts; the flowers die after 2 weeks, yet they cost £10-20 to send. Look at a helium balloon in a box - they retail on the internet at £13-£14, yet thousands are sold every day, after 14 days the balloon stops floating.

At least with a mug, the recipient gets to keep it and use it.

You just have to ignore those people who want something for nothing.



With regard to pricing look at this example.

Say you make a widget that costs £2 to make and you sell it for £4 - you make £2 profit per widget.

To make £100 profit you need to sell 1 widget to 50 customers.

Now sell the widgets for £8 - you make £6 profit per widget.

To make £100 profit you only need to sell 1 widget to 17 customers.


Which would you prefer to have 50 customers who always haggle on price or 17 customers who appreciate your work and will pay a reasonable price for it.


I hope you managed to finish your cereal

[WorthDoingRight]

@ASLCreative I know what you mean, so does anyone here want to buy a personalised mug at £20 each? If so send me a PM as I am your man :rolleyes:

Sometimes it is hard though. I produced some mugs for a trade customer urgently with a company logo on and charged little for them. They then inquired about some iphone cases so I just added on the difference in cost between what the blank phone cases cost and my blank mugs cost (which was just more than £1.50 extra. Needless to say the trade customer did not give me the business. I am glad really as if I had ruined a case or two then I would have been working for nothing.

I think that the biggest stumbling block we face with sublimation is the fact that people think that all ink is the same and that ink costs almost nothing.

Well I plod on knowing that a quality job will always cost more than a botch job.

[TonyMast]

It's interesting seeing the various ways everyone is looking at this problem, and while I may be new to this particular field I am not new to the business world.

Several points seem to be repeated on several threads in different ways. These being:

Price of resale
Quality of product
Markets of selling

From my perspective, trying to be objective, irrespective personal opinion and chosen market/s of operation/s, colgyn's Ebay business model seems to be one that most people appear not to condone. I wonder if this is because of a comprehension that it :

1. Undercuts everyone's desired pricing.
2. Flood the market and in turn drives down prices.
3. Becomes a catalyst for driving people out of business.

This is not a comprehensive list but I think covers the main points of worry.


I would certainly think the above points can be outcomes, but looking at it from a realistic stance, as he states himself he is making enough to continue to use this model, and the main advantage will be to eliminate competition driving more custom to him and others operating in this market. The long and short of it is that they will be the last suppliers operating once big business manages to overcome the problems of being able to supply at colgyn's price rate to drive him and others that operate in this manner out of the market as well.

This may all sound doom & gloom, but the reality of it is this will be a long time coming, if at all. In the mean time I would think there is a lot of business to be had and many methods of getting sales for small operators like most people on this forum, including myself.

ASLCreative has to my mind, pointed out one of the most significant issues for small business who look to work in the main arena that exists today and that is to undercut the big operators by a small margin, which in turn shows the potential customer "value for money" as opposed to being "cheap".

Just a quick thought on the issue, and as it is written in the quick reply box, and to much like hard work keep going back and forth to see what I have written, I'll stop here.

Tony