This is why it is hard to make a living being a maker. The amount if work required to make just a 'simple' chair is disproportionately high, in comparison to the value the customer ascribs to it. Quite often a dining table and chairs set will be priced so that the table, ( high perceived value) makes up for the poor price the customer is willing to pay for the chairs. It is quite easy to make a loss on chairs and have to make up for it on the table, which might have taken less than half the time to make than the chairs, but people will pay five times more for!
Yes, that's about the shape of it. I can make a piece like the Shaker cabinet-on-cabinet in five or six weeks, and as long as it's made in some drop dead gorgeous timber that you'll never see on the High Street it'll sell for between £5,500 and £7,000. From a commercial perspective that works. However, I can't make a chair (or at least the kind of chairs I want to make) in under two weeks, if I'm really honest it's usually closer to three, and I can't get more than £1,000 or £1,200. So pretty much the only time the numbers work out is if the chair is a companion piece to a desk or a dressing table, and they're both made in some really distinctive timber so that it would be impossible to match it with a High Street bought chair. After you factor in overheads I still end up making the chair for minimum wage, but I enjoy it so much I'm generally happy to take on the commission!