do you sell much through it Malcolm, or just a few bits here and there?
Not related to Malcolm's products in any way...
I have not looked in detail, but I have found the opposite of LancsRick- the prices seem too cheap to be viable, unless you have something that is not directly comparable. (Malcolm's boxes probably fall into the latter category)
Taking a search for an oak pen. I know a bit more about pens than I do about other items, but I am sure that there are similar examples with other products. There is 24 pages, each of 40 odd products. This includes some that are just blanks, and no doubt other that are not relevant to buying a pen. There is a lot of competition. The cheapest ones on there are modelled around a slimline pen- there is probably £3.50 of materials in these, and 3/4 to 1 hour of time. There is somebody selling them at £8. another seller at £10. That is on the first page, and I doubt that anybody searching for an oak pen would bother going beyond page 2 or 3. The quality of the turning doesn't look great, but the general public probably don't know where to look to see this- only after turning a few do you know how it should look.
Another example listed on that page is an omega pen. A £7 kit (excluding a share of postage from the supplier), plus a box (£1), bit of finish and wax, bit of sandpaper (another £2), best part of an hours labour. Selling price £15.
Even if I turn slowly, and there is only half an hour drilling, squaring, turning, assembling, buffing etc I could not make it pay. I would rather make them as gifts than work for nothing.
There is one seller on the first page that seems to be selling a good product at what I consider to be the right retail price. Member since 2016, no sales. This is selling a pen with a cost to the maker of approx £30 (including a margin for the maker) for in the region of £60, which represents the margin that a retailer/gallery would take.
I like the idea of easy, but I think in many cases, it makes a commodity of hand crafted items, and drives the price down to the lowest point possible- below economical break even.
Another point is that Easy could also ruin the opportunity for selling through a retail outlet- if you are offering the same product directly to the public at half the price of the gallery, it is going to be a short relationship with the retailer!
