New prices!

I am going to let you have a glimpse of the plushmaking- and small business owner-life!

Sewing plushies is something I have been doing for a long time, and also as a full-time job for about a year now. Even after all this time, I still have to improve and learn new things in all areas! Today’s post is about my experiences with prices for custom plush orders.

There are new prices for the “any plush shape” commission category from now on!

I had used the previous prices for many commissions, and noticed time and time again that they did not match up with the time and effort I put into most of them.

The main reason for this is the time it takes to complete a plush pattern! No matter whether the final plush is going to be 20cm or 50cm tall, the pattern still takes the same amount of effort.

Especially after I had finished the Marshadow plush, it was clear that something needed to be changed. Marshadows’ pattern alone took around 36 hours to make! And at that point, the actual plush is not even started yet.

Now if you look at it from a financial perspective, which I have to do in order to make a living and to be able to continue making plushies full-time:

If I was paid in US minimum wage (7.25 USD per hour according to Google), 36 hours would already amount to 261 dollars. And this is not where it ends, the plush took a total of 68.32 hours to complete!

The artworks I create are unique and nobody else can make them exactly like I do, since every artist has their own style. Work like this is definitely not worth minimum wage or less. On top of that: I do not live in the US! The average living cost in Sweden and also buying materials for plushmaking are much higher. And on top of the top: This specific plush took about half a month to make, meaning I can make a maximum of two plushies like this each month. With the old prices, that would not even cover rent and food expenses.

Taking all of this into account, I arrived at the conclusion that I have to raise the prices in order to be able to make ends meet.

The prices for plushies I already have a pattern for remain the same. I am going to work on adding more “Your character here” commission options after the april orders are complete!

Also, I have added the new price category “advanced” to differentiate better between complexity levels. Any price quotes for new plushies you have received before this update are not valid for the next round of commissions.

In all honesty, the new prices are still not completely adequate. I will keep them for now as a test to see how close they can be to compensating for the effort that is in each plush, and might make changes again once I know better.

No matter which plush I am making, I always aim to put the maximum effort into making it turn out exactly the way the new owner imagined it to be - and that has to be reflected in the prices to make it possible. Thank you for understanding! <3