# Pen Making - Profitable Hobby???



## CraigyCraigo (19 Feb 2013)

Evening all,

Hope everyone is ok???

Does anyone make a decent profit from pen making on here??? Is it really something that the average hobbyist can make money from and still do a 50hr week else where???

I really enjoy it and am getting to a point where i'm making several a week with no way of getting money back etc........ yes all hobby's cost money however it soon adds up and the enjoyable bit is also giving them people (or hoping to sell them to people).

If anyone does and doesn't mind giving any advise on outlets etc it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Craig


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## Tazmaniandevil (20 Feb 2013)

I make pens as gifts for friends & family. I have sold a few too, but just to recoup the production costs. I usually charge £12 + P&P for the standard slimline kit based pens. I think you would need to shift a fair few to make any serious profit though.
Try your local sub-post office for an outlet. Ours allows local artists and crafts people to advertise their stuff in return for a donation to charity. All they do is put a sample in a case or on the wall with a name & phone number.


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## bugbear (20 Feb 2013)

CraigyCraigo":3ra8isz0 said:


> Evening all,
> 
> Hope everyone is ok???
> 
> ...



I'd do a back-of-the-envelope calculation; material cost, labour (in hours), sale price, sales overhead (retail margin, table rents, travel to crafts fairs etc), and see that the profit-per-hour worked is.

Two key guesses are (of cost) how many you could sell, and how much for.

No need to be exact, but it should give you an idea.

BugBear


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## CHJ (20 Feb 2013)

To me, having dabbled with pen making for gifts and a few against specific orders the words Hobby and Pen Marketing are an oxymoron.

Doing them as a Hobby and the feeling of pleasure or even pride at doing a good job on items as gifts etc. and the recipients reactions can be very satisfying. Profit or even breaking even on that score never comes near, at least it never has for me.

To produce them and sell for a sensible profit puts a whole different spin on things, the work content involved in laying out your business plan and the marketing becomes 98 % of the work load and time, not exactly my personal idea of Hobby.

A Hobby to me is when I can go into the shed and produce something when I want to, not when I have to produce a given quantity to clear the capital outlay for components or meet the demand of a particular outlet or event.

Yes it's possible to make money selling Pens, many do, many enjoy the pleasure they experience spending time at craft fairs etc. or making them part of their income stream by providing high cost items to gallery type outlets but to me that level of financial and time commitment would cease to be a Hobby as I personally perceive the word.


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## nev (20 Feb 2013)




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## stevenw1963 (20 Feb 2013)

I've got to agree with CHJ, but I know where you are coming from.

Turn for a hobby so it doesn't become a chore, but, let it be known to family / friends / work colleagues that you sell them too.
Basically I charge 3 x the cost of the pen kit - so a Sierra which cost me a fiver goes for £15 etc. 
I'm not in it to make a fortune but, as you say, just recoup some cash to carry on turning.
I've done a couple of Christmas / craft fayres with mixed results as well.
If I get some cash in, I keep it to one side to spend on more kits / blanks / tools etc.
At the end of last year I had done a couple of fairs etc & had enough to upgrade my bandsaw etc.

Word of mouth is the key - if you want something bigger, Neil Farrer is the man to ask, he does the big exhibitions but be warned, they are expensive, you need a lot of stock for your stall & the goods you want to sell have to be top notch, like Neils.


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## NikNak (21 Feb 2013)

I too ditto Nev & Stevenw's 'comment'


I also sell for roughly 3x's cost of kits....

so slimlines are around the £7.50 mark
while top end Gents (and Classic) fountain & rollerball kits in a presentation box are around the £100 mark

Friends and family & people at work know that i do turning for a hobby, and i get quite a few commissions.
I get asked (a lot) why haven't i got a website.... because its a hobby.... NOT a business. 

I think the cross-over point of hobby into business i.e. _having_ to make money would then turn an otherwise enjoyable pass time into a chore. But i do make sufficient to fund my hobby.


Nick


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## boysie39 (21 Feb 2013)

CHJ":2ybgjo0x said:


> To me, having dabbled with pen making for gifts and a few against specific orders the words Hobby and Pen Marketing are an oxymoron.
> 
> Doing them as a Hobby and the feeling of pleasure or even pride at doing a good job on items as gifts etc. and the recipients reactions can be very satisfying. Profit or even breaking even on that score never comes near, at least it never has for me.
> 
> ...



Could not have put it any better than that Chas. I never tried to sell on anything I made partly because I didn't have to and partly because family and friends wanted all I made . But good luck to anyone who can get some of their outlay back .


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## stevebuk (21 Feb 2013)

i hope the hobbiest's out there still realise that selling as a hobby still needs tax paying out the profits..


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## Gary Morris (21 Feb 2013)

I'm sure anyone selling their wares would adhere to the tax laws. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: 

Gary


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## Neil Farrer (21 Feb 2013)

Thanks for your kind comments Steven. As he says I have been known to sell quite a lot of pens. And yes there is always the tax man keeping his beady unwelcome eye on the hole thing, but he will be as disapointed as the turner at year end when you manage to factor in all those little things that you normally take for granted. Three times the cost of a kit, hmm, my guess would be that you will be losing money. Talk about the consumables first, there's the bandsaw blades to cut your wood (OK so you buy blanks and pay over the odds, the sums are the same) factor in 5p, that'll let you cut about 160-200 blanks per blade, can you get more, probably but don't forget the waste and the cross cuts so its no so far off the mark, dont factor in the replacement cost as it gets depressing. The paper, five or six grits, if you use abranet at £13.00 a box of fifty, I reckon you can get about twenty five pens from each sheet, so thats 6p per pen, sanding sealer, £11.00 a bottle which will get about 500 pens 2p, friction polish, good quality £17.00 a bottle that does 400 pens 4.25p, sandpaper consumables for trimming the ends, 1p, glue, Zap £14.00 ish a bottle that does 150, 9p each, the blank itself say a quid for decent wood, a box to put it in, a quid, 

So far we're up to £127.5, call it £1.30 with a drill bit cost.

You haven't been to the shop to buy this lot yet or paid postage on ebay, nor have you factored in wastage at at least 10% so we're up to £1.30, p and p at 20p, £1.50 plus 10% £1.65.

I haven't factored in the cost of replacement pen mandrels, live centres, turning tools ( I ground two continental spindle gouges to nothing last year, Cost £12 each from Ashley Isles)

Depressed yet?

Marketing costs, what are you going to do, chuck your stuff on a table? That's why it doesn't sell. Build a stand, get some leaflets printed on pen maintenance, run a website.

Oh, we haven't turned up at a fayre yet, small ones are great, cost little but you will sell little. The bigger fayres are expensive but you will sell many more if you are prepared to do the marketing properly. In an average year it costs me £5 to "take a pen to market", or more bluntly, the cost of sale including fuel, stall cost and accommodation.

So a slim line kit at £2.50 plus wastage, because face it you will cock up one or two, the mechanism won't work on another and you'll lose a component on another when the phone rings. plus p and p, It'll cost £3, plus £5 cost of sale, plus £1.65, the cost of that slimline is actually not too short of £10.

My time is deadtime that I chose to use turning so I don't factor that in otherwise I'd be phoning the Samaritans. Then there's the credit card machine that is a must, about 75% of my sales are made this way, that'll cost you £350 pa plus commission a year, Public liability insurance, Pat testing, 

Damn, knew I was going wrong somewhere, I'm taking up knitting.


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## CHJ (21 Feb 2013)

Neil Farrer":2k8ojgu2 said:


> ....Damn, knew I was going wrong somewhere, I'm taking up knitting.




You definitely need to find a Hobby. :lol:


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## sammo (21 Feb 2013)

Neil has quite nicely summed up the difference between a hobbyist and a professional - a professional has to recoup all costs and make a profit to feed him / herself, dog children etc etc.... 

A hobbyist simply doesn't

That said as a hobbyist myself if I felt that I made something worth selling then I would look to re-coup the obvious costs; the main problem is that most hobbyists - IN GENERAL - tend to be overly critical of their work and significantly underestimate the value - which in turns leads to the contentious issue (there have been a number of threads on this site and many others on this subject) of unfairly under cutting the professional and artificially lowering the price - personally I think that there is some truth in the debate but the net effect on market values is often overstated.

Chris


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## Neil Farrer (21 Feb 2013)

Chris,

I wholeheartedly agree with almost everything you say. Perhaps the only area that I would seek to differ is of a slightly pedantic nature in that you differentiate between a hobbyist and a professional. In respect of what has been said a more flippant differential might be between a realist and a hopeful. Selling pens as a hobbyist is to acquire some return almost regardless of the initial cost, whereas, and I swop terms deliberately, the realist is being just that about the financial return that he is achieving reagrdless of whether it is for pure financial reward or not.

In terms of underestimating the quality of ones work, I wholeheartedly agree. I sell slimline pens at much more than has been stated here and very rarely lost a sale on cost. Bizarrely if the cost of a slimline is an issue, the client will often think the Sierra is a better value pen, be it more expensive, and buy one of those and part with more cash at the end of the purchase! Ironically in terms of hard cash, as opposed to percentages, the sierra will sell for more profit than a slimline anyway. (I'll qualify this - I hate the slimline and I think its a terrible shape pen, particularly for someone like me who has mild arthiritis through getting mashed on the rugby field. I use a comfort centre band on a slimline and get a much better shape pen. Something practical rather than what Walter calls a string of sausages which, in my opinion, and it is that, only my opinion, the bulbous slimline looks like some penetrative medical device).

In terms of underestimating the value of your work, if you think its not worth it then you have no hope of selling it for the price it truly deserves and your time and dedication decrees, and that is only doing a disservice to yourself, undervaluing your skills. I don't think it is about undercutting "professionals", more about a lack of respect for ones own skills and effort.


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## sammo (21 Feb 2013)

Take the point about the realist, and indeed that approach has merit. In my experience (not woodwork related) the hobbyist, or a more accurate word the amateur, generally underestimates the value of time, especially those (and I count myself in this group) who are salaried. 

For my part I am new to wood turning and hope to get to a point where I can sell some of my work at l local craft fair, other wise I am going to end up with a house full of bowls....


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## Paul Hannaby (22 Feb 2013)

sammo":313psirs said:


> Neil has quite nicely summed up the difference between a hobbyist and a professional -
> 
> Chris



I think Neil has only given you half the story - he hasn't allowed for equipment (lathe, bandsaw etc), accommodation (workshop), heating, lighting, phone, tax, national insurance and most important of all - labour! Remember that if you spend 10 hours travelling to a craft fair, setting up, selling, packing up and going home and you sell 50 pens during the day, that's another 12 minutes per pen in labour costs, which at a reasonable £30 hourly rate is another £6 on the cost per pen!

By the time you factor all that in, your £10 slimline is probably closer to £20.


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## graduate_owner (22 Feb 2013)

Without going into detail regarding precise cost breakdowns etc (or nervous breakdowns), does anyone actually make a profit out of their woodturning hobby in general - not just making pens? As we're talking hobby here, I'm not looking at the time spent in making turned items, just the materials.

So, anyone actually making a few bob? And if so, it would be interesting to know what items give the best return?

K


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## boysie39 (22 Feb 2013)

Well having read Neil's, Paul's,and Sammo;s summing up TG for Emails I don't need a pen . :lol: :lol:


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## loz (22 Feb 2013)

Neil Farrer":a3b1cj54 said:


> ( I ground two continental spindle gouges to nothing last year)



You're doing it wrong !


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## Neil Farrer (23 Feb 2013)

loz":17ryrz8q said:


> Neil Farrer":17ryrz8q said:
> 
> 
> > ( I ground two continental spindle gouges to nothing last year)
> ...



They were Ashley Isles Mini continental spindle gouges!


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