Start With What Each Piece Actually Costs You

Before you think about profit, you need to know the bare cost of getting a pot off the shelf and into a box. This is the bit most home potters skip, because it feels fiddly and a bit dull. Do it once properly, though, and pricing stops being a guessing game.

Take a simple stoneware mug. A 12.5kg bag of clay runs somewhere between £18 and £30, so call it £2 per kilo. That mug might use 500g of clay, which is £1. But you also lose clay to trimming, failed pulls, dried-out scraps and the bit left welded to the wheel head. Add 10–15% for wastage and you are nearer £1.20.

Then there is glaze. If you mix your own from raw materials, a 5-litre bucket often costs £15–£40 and will glaze dozens of mugs, so a few pence each. A bought brush-on glaze works out far more expensive per piece — sometimes £1 or more. Be honest about which you are using.

Add slip, oxides, wax resist, sandpaper, sponges, batt pins, kiln wash, gloves and the glue on your packaging tape. It adds up faster than you think. A sensible rule is to add 10% to your raw material total for consumables you never quite account for.

Firing Is a Real Cost, Not a Freebie

Your kiln drinks electricity. A small electric kiln might use 20–35 kWh for a bisque firing and similar for glaze, depending on size, insulation and how full it is. At around 25p per kWh, that is roughly £5–£9 per firing. Add the standing charge, the wear on elements, and the cost of replacing them every year or two — an element set can be £60–£200, and a kiln service is not cheap.

Now work out how many pieces fit in a load. If you can stack 40 mugs, and you fire twice (bisque and glaze), your firing cost per mug is roughly £1–£1.50 once you include element wear and the odd failed firing. That is a genuine cost, and it belongs in your price.

Two practical tips: always fire a full kiln — a half-empty load costs nearly the same as a full one — and keep a note of how many firings you get from a set of elements. That figure will change how you price larger pieces.

Pay Yourself for the Hours

This is where home potters most often undercharge. Throwing a mug might take you six minutes. Trimming, attaching a handle, glazing, loading, unloading, photographing, listing, packing and answering emails do not. Realistically, a mug is 30–45 minutes of your time across its whole life.

Decide on an hourly rate and stick to it. The National Living Wage is a floor, not a target — a skilled maker should be charging £15–£25 an hour minimum, and more once you have a waiting list. At £18 an hour, that mug carries £9–£13.50 of labour.

So your mug now costs roughly £12–£16 to make before a penny of profit. That is why a genuinely handmade mug in the UK sells for £24–£38, not £12. Anyone selling below that is either subsidising their hobby or not counting their time.

Overheads, Breakage and the Hidden Extras

Home studios still have costs. List them and divide by your realistic annual output:

• Studio rent, or a fair share of household bills if you work from home
• Public liability insurance and any craft fair memberships
• Wheel servicing, kiln repairs, replacement tools
• Packaging: double-wall boxes, bubble wrap, tape — often £1.50–£3 per parcel
• Payment processing, online shop fees, website hosting
• Market stall fees, often £30–£80 for a day
• Breakage in transit, seconds, and the pots that simply do not work

Allow 5–10% of your selling price for breakage and replacements. Customers expect a refund when a bowl arrives in three pieces, and that is not the courier's fault alone.

Choose a Pricing Method and Be Consistent

The simplest approach is cost-plus: total your materials, firing, labour and overheads per piece, then add your profit margin — typically 30–50% for direct sales.

The multiplier method is quicker: retail price = material cost × 4 to 6, adjusted once you know your hourly rate covers you. If a mug's materials and firing come to £3, that gives £12–£18 — which is too low. This is exactly why you must check it against your labour figure and let the higher number win.

For wholesale, the trade standard is roughly half your retail price, minus VAT considerations. If you cannot make a decent living selling at half price, wholesale is not right for you yet, and that is a perfectly fine decision.

Hold Your Prices With Confidence

Round your prices to neat numbers — £28, £34, £42 — and stop apologising for them. Charge the same in person as you do online, and avoid discounting your own work; a sale that trains customers to wait for reductions is a slow death for a small business.

Review your prices once a year, or whenever clay, glaze or electricity goes up. Build in a small annual increase rather than one painful jump, and tell your mailing list before it happens. Keep a costed sheet for your ten best-selling lines, note how long each really takes, and revisit it after every kiln load. Your prices are not vanity — they are the honest reflection of the skill in your hands and the heat in your kiln.