Selling Pipes

[NathanA]

This might be a taboo topic and if so, I apologize. Let me first say that I realize that I am very much a beginner and that a real business venture (website, shows, etc.) is several years away, at least. However, I am getting more orders than I can handle at my current rate of output from friends, friends of friends and word of mouth from those friends of friends. Would any of the pros or those who are beginning to sell care to give any advice as to what they think would be a fair price for this pipe, my most recent post to the gallery. Because I am so new, my gut says $50, but I have little to no business sense. I don't know if this is too high, too low or just right. I can say that from the feedback I have gotten from the ones I have given away and from smoking this very pipe, the mechanics do seem to be good. They have all been good smokers. Thanks guys, your advice is much appreciated.

[KurtHuhn]

Nathan, if you sell that for $50, I swear to whatever diety you believe in, I will come to your house and smack you silly.

Yes, I sold pipes for $45, but that was almost 10 years ago, and none of them looked that good. Based on the single photo, that appears to be a very well executed billiard, with a great stain job. Even despite the use of a pre-mold stem, that is a very good looking pipe that anyone should be happy to have in their collection.

Consider this: How many hours did you work on that pipe? What are your material costs? Subtract your asking price from your materials costs, divide by your time investment, and what you end up with is your hourly rate. If it only took you an hour to make that pipe (and God bless you if it did), $50 might be a reasonable asking price - maybe.

My gut tells me that you've paid attention, you've asked the right questions, and you've focused on the basics. That being said we can pretty much rest assured that the pipe is going to smoke wonderfully. Beyond that, people tend to pay for name and artistic interpretation. Since you're name isn't quite out there yet, a lower asking price is certainly fair - but not $50.

[Sasquatch]

Is that a hand cut stem, Nathan?

To me, 50 bucks is about right for a beginning carver who is using pre-fab stems. That covers briar, stem, some tooling, lets a guy make a little progress in his setup - buy stain etc.

If you are doing handcut stems and getting a comfy bit with a nice finish, and making pipes that look half decent, which that one does, then I think you push toward a hunny.

Think about what a pipe retails for. For 57 bucks, I can get a rusticated Peterson Kapet, with a vulcanite stem. Your pipe seems nicer than that to me.

I sold about a dozen pipes for around 60 bucks as soon as they were even close to looking like pipes, and what I found was that a lot of guys sent me 75, probably because they felt sorry for me. I moved up to 100 bucks when I felt like I was making pipes that would smoke good, and not be obviously inferior to other "production" pipes on people's racks.

I now sell between 150 and 200 depending on the shape, finish, materials, etc. I look at other amateur carvers and see what they do for that kind of money, I look at "mid grade" pipes in that range - look at Radice for a guideline for instance, or some other 200 dollarish brand.

If people are excited to buy your pipes, then sell the damn things! You'll find out very quickly what your pipes are worth when you go public, and list a pipe for 300 bucks and no one buys it or even looks at it. So there are definite walls that present themselves, and you'll just have to sort of judge as you go. If you sell a pipe for 200 bucks to a guy, and he thinks it's a piece of crap, you are gonna hear it, and so is the whole rest of the internet pipe community, possibly. So it's strategically reasonable to slightly under value your own work. The flip side is that if you make a really wicked looking pipe and only ask 75 bucks for it time and time again, the "serious" pipe collectors may not think its any good.

I'm in a position where I do this for fun, to keep out of my wife's hair, and if I can make a little "fun money" at it, that's cool. I'd rather sell a pipe for 25 bucks less than asking price than not sell it. And as a new maker, you do have to sell a few pipes and get a few "strangers" to vouch for your work.

I intentionally cultivated close relationships with a half dozen or so people, who helped me with "R+D" sorta stuff, and have always demanded from anyone who bought my pipes that if there was something they didn't like, I had to know. Anything at all. That's been tremendously valuable to me. From people saying "I'd like a wider slot" or "this is a bit too big/too small for comfort" or whatever.

I don't think anyone buys a pipe from a totally unknown carver in hopes of getting a museum piece. A lot of guys just want to smoke a new pipe, made in a way they haven't seen before, and as long as you aren't greedy, it's fun all around.

[Traderbob]

Nathan,

I have not sold a pipe yet and it will most likely be a while before I do. From a marketing standpoint - i agree with Kurt. If you consider the time you spent you will realize that you have more than $50.00 in the pipe. You also want to start with a price that establishes a standard for what you want for a pipe and relflects the quality you think the pipe holds. I would suggest you start at $ 100.00 + shipping. You can always drop the price on a pipe if you need to move some to get operating capital. I believe that most customers will pay more for a custom built pipe compared to a brand name factory made pipe.

All that being said if $50.00 is your price consider it sold.

Bob

[Tyler]

I think we need more information to give you the best answer.

What are your goals? Do you want to be the neighborhood pipe maker for your friends? Do you want to try to someday compete for the attention of top-dollar collectors? Or, are you happy somewhere in the middle? All are perfectly fine choices, obviously, but what do you WANT?

While the price for that pipe probably doesn't matter too much, you might as well start thinking about where you hope to go. Additionally, I think there are some other considerations besides price that are good to think through for your early pipes, and those also are dependent upon your goals.

So waddaya want?

[NathanA]

Thanks or the feedback, everyone.

Kurt, that was very kind, I hope that wasn't just smoke-blowing, if you catch my meaning.

Bob, I appreciate the offer, but I already smoked this one. This was the first one I made with myself specifically in mind.

Sas, it is a pre fab stem, but this will likely be the last one for me (at least on most pipes). Thanks to the advice you gave me I have got my stem drilling down and am going to concentrate on hand cuts.

Tyler, great questions that forced me to self evaluate a little bit. I think my ultimate goal would be somewhere in the middle of the neighborhood pipe guy and the wonderpipes of , say, our own Mr. Johnson. I don't really feel that I have the artistic vision to create one-off masterpieces. When I look at a block of briar, I tend to think more in terms of classical shapes and what I could loosely change to make it my own. Maybe that will change over time, I have only been doing this for a year.

Realistically, at my current place in life, I only have the time to make 20-30 pipes a year. Certainly not enough to ever think I could make it my primary job. I know I have much learning still to do and I have kind of loosely set the goal that if, in 2 more years, my pipes look pretty good I will try to take them to some shows and start a website.

In the meantime, the only people I know who smoke pipes are a few friends and now the people they have told about them. None of them could be considered collectors and know relatively little about pipes. They just know that tobacco goes in one end, smoke out the other and briar has really interesting grain patterns. I am considering taking some to my local pipe shop and seeing if he would maybe like to consign a few and help build up the local pipe guy. The shop is really not much, in addition to basket pipes just a few Petersons and Savinellis and meerschaums, and I doubt there are too many serious pipe guys in my area.

I guess all that is to say that I want to keep learning because I absolutely love the process of making pipes. As every little step takes shape I get excited about the process all over again. I want to keep learning and improving. I want to make enough money now to at least cover the hobby (I think I am on a similar path as Sasquatch) and maybe eventually make pipes that guys like the pros on this forum wouldn't be embarrassed to smoke. If collectors someday, ten years from now, are looking for my pipes, that is great but I am not emotionally invested in that as an outcome of my pipemaking. Thanks for your time everyone.

[Sasquatch]

That's a very reasonable approach, imho.

Gunnar (Totem Star) kind of re-aligned me at some point along the way, by saying something to the effect of "just make each pipe as good as you can". That's the short-term goal. And if you make good pipes, other things take care of themselves.