About $10 per seems to be the average rate that people are willing to pay for a single custom patch(preparation included). However, almost every seller ends up with incremental volume discounts due to the easy repeatability of cnc lasers. So approximately $11 each (before design fees) for a volume run is definitely on the steeper side of things.
There has been a large discussion in the glowforge community about pricing and being undersold by larger providers on Etsy, Ebay, and such. If the product you are selling is not - in itself- markedly unique, you have to make a choice. Do you want to hopefully sell a lot, and make a little profit on each? Or probably not sell many, but be better compensated for the time you do spend in production. Unfortunately, most of that decision has to be personal because it depends on how much your time is worth to you, more than anything else.
If you want to stick with your proposed pricing scheme, I would suggest trying to find ways to make yourself stand out as a more premium option for those who are willing to pay more. ( cruelty free leather, free design help, etc) Best of luck with your sales!
I totally get your point, I did some research on the forum and on the web and found that $1 per engraved square inch but also I’m not a massive manufacturer. I’ll dial it down some notches and consider your ideas.
As a consumer, I’d think it was a fair price. I don’t think I’d see it as a bargain though and would expect good product for that price. File and art prep is always the bugger for me. People never understand how time consuming it is and how bad art=bad product. They send you a picture from the internet and don’t know why it took four hours for you to prep it it. If you don’t have to do any art prep, as a maker I’d be fine with getting that price for my product.
1$ per engraved inch is fine I think.
Leather cost is just leather cost… No way around it.
Editing, 30$ sounds reasonable if it took you less than 30 minutes.
If they go for a larger batch, 12 is really nothing. You can drop the price to 0.75$ per inch or 0.5$. But that’s for a batch of 500 or more I think.
The diameter diameter is roughly 3", which is then rougly 7 square inches. 7x0.5x500=1.750$
Not bad if you ask me, then you can drop in an extra 10-20% for cleaning the parts, which would just be brushing them before packaging