To price a handmade mug you add up its full cost first: the clay, glaze and kiln firings by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the tag and packing paper, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one mug costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a 12-ounce wheel-thrown mug that costs $13.78 to make, a 50% margin after 3% fees means $29.31, rounded up to $29.50. Time is most of a mug's cost: throwing, trimming, a handle and glazing come to about 25 minutes each, and some pieces crack or warp in the kiln. Wholesale to shops is a different price, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, a Vermont potter prices its mugs for the studio and a shop.
The short version
- Full cost = supplies a mug + your time + tag and packing + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Count time per piece; it's most of the cost.
- Add the pieces lost in the kiln to the cost of the ones that sell.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack keeps clay, glaze and finished pieces counted and costs every batch. More below.
What goes into a mug's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Supplies | The batch's cost ÷ mugs a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ mugs × your hourly rate |
| Tag and packing | Per mug |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the mugs you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
What a pottery business looks like over a year is in pottery business plan, and pricing for shops in how to price handmade items for wholesale.
An example: a 12-ounce mug
Mad River Pottery, a made-up potter in Waitsfield, Vermont, throws 24 mugs for a kiln load:
| Supply | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Clay | 25 lb | $25.00 |
| Glaze | 24 | $36.00 |
| Firing, two kiln loads | 2 | $24.00 |
| A batch | $85.00 |
| A mug | Cost |
|---|---|
| Supplies, $85.00 ÷ 24 | $3.54 |
| Time, 600 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 24 | $8.33 |
| Tag and packing | $0.40 |
| Overhead | $1.50 |
| Full cost | $13.78 |
At a 50% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $13.78 ÷ 0.47 = $29.31, so $29.50. At $29.50 a mug, each leaves $14.84. It had been asking $32, which leaves $17.27, and kept $32 at the studio. A shop asked for mugs at $18.00, which leaves $3.69 each: thin for ten hours of work, so the potter offered $20 for a dozen, which leaves $5.63. About two mugs in a load of 24 crack or warp; with them lost, the 22 that survive carry the load's clay, glaze and firing, about 32 cents more each. Pricing other handmade work is in how to price handmade items.
Get the calculator
Download the pottery price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's supplies, amounts and costs, the mugs it makes, the hands-on minutes, the packing and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices a mug on paper. A kiln load that comes out with a run glaze, or clay bought at a new price, changes what the shelf of mugs really cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps clay, glaze and finished pieces counted, and costs every batch.
Supplies in their units. Clay bought by the 50-pound box is used by the pound, and glaze bought by the gallon is counted by the piece it covers.
Designs as recipes. Each mug is a recipe of its supplies, so a batch takes them off stock and is costed from what they cost, and good and rejected pieces are recorded.
Reordering. Supplies come up on a reorder list in days of cover, worked out from how fast they're used.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Supplies on hand | Count the shelf | Stock in its own units |
| What a batch cost | Prices you type | Costed from what you paid |
| Pieces lost in the kiln | Not counted | Good and rejected on each batch |
| When to reorder | When it's low | Reorder list in days of cover |
Recipes, units, costing and reorder lists are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.