Recently, I surveyed my Facebook friends for pricing thoughts on a new product I’m adding to my craft show table sales inventory.

Tips On Hive-Mind

Like many social media concepts, the hive-mind can be both a great way to access community ideas or virtually useless.  Here are some ways that seemed to have helped me garner the information I was looking for.

1. Be as specific in your question as possible.  I was trying to figure out how to price hand-knit coffee cozies (see below).  I specifically wanted to know what a purchasers expectation of price would be.  I didn’t ask for pricing strategies, or for praise or critique of my work, or ways that I could market the product better, so I specifically asked what a prospective buyer would hope to see on the price tag when they looked at this product on my table.
2. Be open to all answers.  People won’t always respond with what you ask for.  Despite not looking for pricing strategies, a number of people responded with how they price items.  I wasn’t looking for what people thought should be a fair price for my efforts, but there was a lot of that too.  I even garnered some useful marketing advice.  I also never take any responses personally…either as praise or as criticism.  My sister responded with my worst fear, that no one wants these items and I should spend my time on scarves.  She may well be right and I’ll adjust accordingly after my first craft show.
3. Take into consideration the fact that people might be afraid to insult you with their answer or may try to be ingratiating with their answer.  Reading responses carefully to try and assess this is probably impossible, but I tried anyway.
4. Be appreciative of all answers.  When people take the time to give their feedback on anything, I am very grateful.  They are offering their insight, expertise and thoughts and I consider myself lucky to have access to that.  I always at least “like” the comments.
5. Let people know what you’ve decided based on their feedback.  Whenever I provide feedback to hive-mind requests, I want to know what was finally decided.

There were some factors I didn’t include in my communal question, such as both of the craft shows/fairs I’m scheduled to do are nicer, higher-end shows where people are looking for nicer gifts and have a bit more disposable income than in some other areas of the country.  Again, I wasn’t looking for a pricing strategy…I already have that…I wanted to gather pricing expectations so that when a potential buyer sees the price for one of these, they don’t immediately think my items are out of their price range.

The majority of replies seemed to indicate $5 was the price they would be hoping to see.  There were prices below that and above it, but my general sense was folks saw this as a $5 item.  Despite that, I’ve decided I will price them at $7 (or 3 for $16).

Thank you all for your thoughts and comments…I am very grateful and will post the results to my Facebook page as well.

Current Knitting

Since I’m hoping to bang out a total of 50 Coffee Cozies, I decided to focus my efforts on that this past weekend.

I ended up finishing 7 more cozies, with only 32 more to go.  I also finalized the display card.

They are printed on card stock and have my designer logo and web site at the bottom.  I’ll have signage with the prices for these instead of printing them on the packaging in case I have to change the price.