Following on from an excellent blog post about Pattern Pricing by my friend Ruth Brasch, it got me thinking about pattern pricing and the way the industry is moving. I’ll add links for Ruth’s post and also a post she references which goes through survey results of how long it takes to carry out each part of the pattern development and it’s a scary number. (links to all sources below on this page).
Like Ruth, I’m against the pay what you can model. Why? Because it appears in many cases to be a stealth method to up the lowest price (which is higher than the norm) and then add more expensive options. I like that it gives people choice, but 𝗶𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝘂𝘁 𝘂𝗽 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀, 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗼 𝗶𝘁. I’ve put my prices up and I’m happy to have made that choice. My work has value, I have value and if you want the pattern, then buy it. If you don’t, that’s cool too. I’m not out to please everyone, it’s not possible.
I’m all for being flexible, but I did have someone give me a sob story about not being able to afford the pattern, gifted it to them and saw photos of them knitting it while on holiday in Barbados. I sat at home in Cumbria with no holiday. Did I get some exposure? I suppose I did, but not from anyone who buys patterns.
Looking at the figures in the article by Thread and Ladle, the minimum number of hours involved in creating a good quality knitting pattern for a sweater is 53.1 hrs, the maximum in her survey being 113.65 hrs. That’s NOT including yarn, the cost of Tech Editing, needles, notions, tools, website, email service, marketing the pattern, graphics, Ravelry fees, Paypal fees, models, schematics, time spent testing and answering testers questions.
To cover all that, and have some actual income for me, that means a minimum number of pattern sales of 350 to 760 per sweater pattern.
Sari Nordlund has an interesting chat about pattern pricing on her YouTube channel, what income she makes and what patterns are worth designing for her.
She’s very open and honest about it, so give it a look. Link below.
I appreciate money is tight for many people, but designers also need to make a living and cover their actual costs. There are lots of free patterns, sales and other promotions and we always discount a pattern on it’s launch with a bigger discount for email subscribers.
The amount of work is considerably more than most people think and to market your pattern effectively, you should spend double the time it took to create it. Adding more time to the calculations.
As someone who loves to knit garments, to wear and for pattern designing, it’s a sobering thought.
It’s not like I take the easy route out, I always go up to the larger plus sizes and add tips on how to upsize even more. It doubles the Tech Editing costs because there are more numbers, measurements and stitch counts to be checked. As a curvy woman, it’s important to me that I produce patterns that a woman of any size can wear, but it comes at a price.
Do I stick to accessories for a quicker win, or plod on with garments and hope that at some point, more of them will reach that magic number of sales?
What do you think?
Thread and Ladle article http://www.threadandladle.com/blog/2018/4/23/the-true-cost-of-a-knitting-pattern
Ruth’s Blog Post https://ruthbrasch.com/2021/02/20/knitting-and-crochet-pattern-pricing/
Ruth’s pattern portfolio on Ravelry https://www.ravelry.com/designers/ruth-brasch
Sari Nordlund’s YouTube on pattern income https://youtu.be/s5q-djBq0bM
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I think my patterns are among the higher priced on Ravelry (or anywhere). I’ve written about what it costs me to create a pattern and why I can’t afford to sell for any less. I actually have not raised my prices for several years–and have lowered some that seemed like they didn’t require enough work to justify the original price. I usually regret that because it doesn’t actually garner more sales.
I am not a knitwear designer for everyone. I tend to use expensive yarns, I spend dozens of hours creating each pattern, which is more of a tutorial in structure and design. I don’t do extra large sizes usually because I think it is different body that requires a different pattern. So I do each design in the size range I feel is appropriate.
I haven’t made money on patterns since 2008. Fact. I do them because I cannot stop. I am a designer and an artist.
I’m all for higher pricing and I love your designs. Are you planning another increase? I think if your patterns are as a much a tutorial as they are a pattern to knit something, they have a great deal of added value compared to others.
As a curvy person, I try and go to plus size on everything but haven’t decided yet if I should be separating those into different patterns, or whether I should go so far as to recommend certain styles for particular body shapes. I’m still mulling that over.
I think this is a really interesting discussion. I do find though that a lot of designers approach it from the point of view of ‘I want to design X, which takes me this much time and these additional costs, and I should be paid fairly, so the patterns should cost Y’. As you are aware my business is nothing to do with yarn but our approach is the market price for X is Y, can we produce X for Y- required profit, or can we add enough value to X that the market will sustain Y+profit. If the answer to both is no, we don’t do it. The difference for me is that there is no emotional involvement so it is easy to make decisions purely based on predicted profits.
Knitwear patterns are also a very interesting market. Ravelry effectively means there are minimal barriers to entry, and the digital nature means it is a highly international market place, in the way that physical products never will be. A fair wage looks very different in the UK or US than it does in India or most African Countries. There is also the fact that the vast majority of the costs involved are fixed and up front. If you assume you need to recoup £1000 to cover the cost of producing the pattern, there are a number of different ways to achieve this, at its simplest do you price at £10 and hope to sell 100 plus or do price at £20 because you feel you are only likely to sell around fifty copies. If the market price is around £12, will you even sell that if you are significantly higher? How do you demonstrate to customers the added value?
Discounting is also an interesting one, I have just checked and I have 2173 patterns in my rav library, allowing for the fact there are a few free ones and books I will have paid for at least 1500 of them. A lot of the projects I have paid full price for the patterns because I know I want to make them and often will have bought yarn specifically. The ones that are sitting in my library, I will probably realistically make a couple of hundred before I die, the rest are there because they are designers I like and wanted to support, or something that caught my eye during gal or similar. I doubt I would have bought them if they weren’t discounted though. I don’t know how typical that is for other punters though.
I do agree with Ruth about the pay what you can model though, I too have observed that some designers do seem to up the price above the market norm in order to then discount it.
In terms of sizing, I too am ‘cuddly’ and I accept that there are garments that will look pretty appalling on me. I don’t particularly feel that designers should need to go to the trouble of grading everything for every size but there does seem to be an increasing back lash in the sewing community against brands that don’t. On the other side of that I have bought several patterns simply because they do go to larger sizes and there are photos of them on larger sized models and they look good.
I’m just going to throw this out there, as a business if you are choosing to produce product lines that you know are unlikely to be profitable rather than ones that probably will, that is going to limit the profitability of your business and you may have to accept that it will never be enough to be your main source of income.
All meant in the nicest possible way 🙂
If I had a crystal ball to tell what was popular that might help 🙂 In reality, I should probably shut up shop. I have one pattern that consistently sells well and earns it’s keep. Nothing else has even covered it’s costs. If I sold 100 I’d be happy, but it’s rare to do that even in a year. I don’t have a big enough audience to generate that.
“can we produce X for Y- required profit, or can we add enough value to X that the market will sustain Y+profit. If the answer to both is no, we don’t do it.”
I think a lot of it comes down to a couple of things…(a) in the past yarn companies provided free patterns to sell yarn (but paid designers to create the pattern with or without credit). So we, people in general, set up an expectation that the pattern is less a tangible item than the yarn needed to make it and in many cases (b) the people who are trying to make a living on writing patterns have absolutely no business sense at all! They read an article that said a way to make a “passive” income was to write a diy article, put it up for a price and sit back and watch the money roll in.
I watched a couple of people who put up the “pay what you can” system and with a few exceptions every one of them increased their “base” price before putting up the discount codes.
While I would never stop designing for my own personal knitting time, if I can’t make back my costs to commercially produce a pattern (tech editing being the biggest hurdle as I only design things I have a reason to use the finished object for) it would make business sense to say…find another job! (And is probably why the cynic in me says so many knitting designers are also tech editors, have their own yarn lines or offer paid coaching on how to make money as a designer!)