Considerations in pricing a sustainable piece of jewellery 💵

There are two comments I hear the most when I do markets: 1) “omg, this is so cute” and 2) “oh no, it’s really expensive”. I am obviously always overjoyed upon hearing the first one, but the second one makes me feel a mixed bag of wanting to cry/vomit, plus feeling helpless at capitalism.

Real talk: I need money to pay rent, bills, and enjoy myself in order to live a fulfilling life — just like everyone else. I love making upcycled jewellery and saving vintage beads from the landfill, however, this is still work, and I deserve to be paid fairly for any work I provide — just like everyone else.

Let’s dive into the pricing breakdown of one of the necklaces in my most recent drop, the Peach Flower Necklace.

Pricing breakdown of the Peach Flower Necklace

The end price of this piece is £95. Over 1/3 of that is to pay for the materials, i.e. all the vintage beads, the silk thread and the gold-filled hardware I used to make it. Vintage beads, as a scarce material, are usually more expensive than new beads, and I invest in quality hardware made of gold fill (as opposed to gold plate) to ensure my pieces last as long as possible. Gold fill has 100x more gold than gold plate equivalents, so the pieces stay like new for much longer.

The next big chunk of the price, at almost 1/3 of the final price as well, is labour. Between sourcing these vintage beads, taking apart the necklace the floral ones came from, cleaning the beads; then designing/making this one-off piece, which included creating charms out of the 1950s lucite leaves; taking product photos, creating a listing and uploading it to my website, I calculated (lowballed) 2.2 hours of labour. This only involves the actual making of this necklace, it doesn’t include the time I spend doing admin work, posting on social media, writing this blog post, etc. Starting in this last drop, I raised my wages to the London living wage, which is £13.15 per hour (I used to calculate prices paying myself £11/hour).

Next, we have packaging fees of £2.59. This includes a gift box, postcard and postage box, which are all recyclable and sourced from ethical companies.

Finally, we get the payment processing fees. To be as inclusive as possible, I offer Clearpay as a payment method on my website, through which customers can pay in 4 installments. Clearpay’s processing fees are super high (6% of what the customer pays plus £0.30 fee), so I use it as the cap for payment fees.

This leaves me with £22.47 in profit, 23.65% of the price. I used to feel really icky including profits into my prices, but when I took a pricing course with Small Biz Big Pic (which I strongly recommend to any small business owners, specially upcyclers or vintage sellers), I learnt that the profit margin is necessary to have a sustainable business (i.e. not go out of business). It’s meant to cover all overhead costs, or costs unrelated to the direct making of pieces, e.g.: Squarespace, Gmail, Photoshop, Canva, Ecologi, market fees, my time doing markets, creating social media posts, doing admin, marketing expenses, the list goes on. Obviously, actually being able to afford these at the end of the month depends on how many sales I make overall, so I also have a couple of part-time jobs that help me finance these costs. Theoretically, the margin should also be high enough to allow money left to reinvest into the business and save for emergencies/slower months. So yes, a lot rides on this profit margin 😅

Upcycling and the Lack of Economies of Scale

As I use vintage beads to make my designs, there is little to no economy of scale. Economy of scale is a concept that states that the more you produce of something, the cheaper it is to produce it. It’s a similar reasoning to girl maths… You’ve probably seen videos saying “girl maths, this purse is $360, but if I wear it once a month for a year it’s only $30 per wear, and if I wear it every day for a year it’s only $1 per wear, etc”. With economies of scale it’s kinda the same, but on the production side: when you produce something for sale, there are some steps you only have to do once, regardless of how many units of that product you sell. For me, for example, to sell this necklace, I had to design and make it, then take photos of it, then create a listing for it on my website. So if I sold a thousand units of this necklace, the cost of these steps of production would be 1000 cheaper than if I sold only 1 of it!

Sadly, if you’re using second-hand materials, this inherently means you don’t have a lot of it. I can usually only make 1 or 2 units of each of my designs, leading to very little economy of scale :/ not to mention that by using second-hand necklaces I also have to clean them and take them apart before I can use them, which I wouldn’t have to do if I bought new beads.

This is why Zara, Urban Outfitters, Shein etc don’t use second-hand materials! If it was cheaper, then they’d be all over it! Of course, this doesn’t mean I plan on stopping using second-hand materials for my creations. I love how unique my beads are and how I’m doing less harm to the environment by not using more resources to make new beads, as there’s so much already of everything around.

So are my creations really that expensive?

I would say no. They cost more money than jewellery you’d purchase from Shein, Boohoo, Primark and Temu, for sure; and they cost about the same as the jewellery from fast fashion companies like Anthropologie and Zara (which sell basically the same products as the previously mentioned companies but with a bigger profit margin). All these companies have demonstrated again and again to have no regard for the workers in their supply chains, with evidence of forced labour, horrible working conditions, still not having paid for cancelled orders during Covid. The materials they use are chosen to keep costs as low as possible, with no intention of making sure they last and fit well.

I took a quick look at Anthropologie’s website and saw them selling a beaded bracelet for £38. It’s made of gold-plated brass beads and elastic, which will eventually either break or stop being elastic — so not fit to stand the test of time. For comparison, one of my latest bracelets costs £45, but is made of silk and salvaged vintage beads and closes with a sterling silver clasp, ensuring it will last for decades to come.

My creations, which are handmade responsibly in London, using upcycled materials, will always cost more than their fast fashion counterparts (unless their margins are insanely high). But I disagree that this makes them expensive: It simply makes them cost enough to ensure sustainable production methods and ethical business practices.

As always, I’m still learning how to have a sustainable business, so if you have any feedback or questions, feel free to contact me at hi@lunetacreations.com or via direct messages on instagram @lunetacreations.

If you’d like to support our small sustainable business, please take a look at our shop to see the jewellery we make with rare vintage beads.
- Marianna, founder of Luneta x