Hi hi, just thought I'd poke my nose in here a moment and break down the custom pricing, as a semi-professional plush maker.
Let's say we're making a 1 foot long Twilight Sparkle plush, just because.
We're going to need fabric- about a yard of lavender minky will do, plus some fur for the mane in purple and pink, a half yard of each is as little as can be ordered off most sites.
So the minky plus fur plus shipping and we're already out about $45 for these fabrics + shipping (based on real orders I've placed in the past).
Then let's say I already have a pattern made up, don't need to factor that time into production. Just cutting, marking, and sewing the plush will take about 5 hours if you've gotten pretty good at it and have a streamlined process and don't make mistakes. Then detail work like cutie marks, eyes, etc can add on a couple hours at least.
Then if you want to use really good stuffing, it can be up to $9 per bag, so your total materials cost is about $54 USD and time taken is about 7 hours. Your labor is worth money, and this is skilled labor- as evidenced by DA and whatnot, not everyone can do this well, so give yourself $10 an hour if you're pretty good, $15 if you're better than good, $20+ if you're legendary.
The total price would end up being about $124-159 before you factor in shipping, eBay fees, and actual profit.
The reason we're so used to low prices on plush in stores is because:
1. They buy materials in EXTREME bulk, as in thousands of BOLTS of fabric
2. They outsource to China and other countries where workers are willing to accept much lower wages than stateside
3. They work assembly-line style, highly efficiently. Each person does the same task all day- this might not be great for job satisfaction, but it's amazing for productivity in a mass-production environment.
A hand-crafted toy is a work of art in of itself, and is definitely a luxury item. It's not something you can afford to impulse buy, and if it is important to you, you will find ways to save up for a custom plush over time.
You can ferret away money for fun things even with the smallest of salaries- it just might take a little longer.
Auctions are tricky things... on one hand, they theoretically give everybody a chance at the item- no chance of it suddenly going up for sale and getting sold out before you even have a chance to look at the computer (I hate it when that happens! Stupid sleep). But as you said, the prices can skyrocket, limiting who is able to buy it. There's no real solution except either save your pennies where you can, learn to make it yourself, or go without.
I recommend anybody remotely interested in plushmaking give it a try.
Who knows? You might discover you have a hidden talent! And if nothing else, you did something new and interesting.
Post Merge: May 01, 2012, 07:34:07 PMDid you guys see the queen chrysalis that went for over 3,000 dollars? :O
I kick myself every time for seeing these things go for as much as they do. Honestly, I cannot bring myself to making some myself and selling them. I have this weird thing about profiting off of something that I don't own the copyright to. I used to make those perler bead sprites of video game characters a few years ago, and people would offer me money for them. I would not take it.
I'm not saying that you guys that are making the plushies are doing anything wrong, I'm just saying that I'm too morally stupid to get into the game myself.
The way I see it, we custom artists are not directly competing with Hasbro at all. The demographic of who buys their stuff and who buys custom work is different, plus they only have plushies of a few FiM characters.
Every custom artist has their own unique style, too.
It would be wrong to take an official plushie and make a million copies of it, that's what bootleggers do. But what we are doing is creating something unique and special that you'll never be able to buy in stores. Even if Hasbro did for instance, create an official large-size Queen Chrysalis plush, it wouldn't look a thing like the fanmade ones.
Plus I hear tell Hasbro's pretty much given us their blessing, so yay there.
I get you're not bashing custom artists, I just feel the need to explain the reasoning. I guess I'm talky today!