How To Price Crystals For Resale-Part 2

How to price crystals for resale? whether you already have a crystal shop, or you are thinking of starting a crystal shop, I believe this article will be helpful to you.

When you are buying crystals you are likely going to be buying them by the kilo or by the pound, sometimes by individual piece so you will get a wholesale price.you typically buy weight, you are buying like one kilo of crystals you can expect to pay anywhere from like twenty dollars a kilo to like a thousand dollars a kilo, it's like a huge range depending on the material, the supplier, the shape of the crystal, the quality, so many things factor into this.

Let's just take a typical example, about fifty dollars a kilo is like kind of an average amount to pay for something like one kilo of towers, so say you paid fifty dollars and got one kilo of lepidolite towers.

You just got these and you got ten of these towers,because most of the towers are the pretty much exact same size very similar looking in color,they're all kind of the same value. what i will do is i will divide that price up evenly between the towers so i will do an intuitive pick which means they are all in one listing i will select one randomly when the customer orders one,and they are all the same price so the wholesale price that i paid for each tower is five dollars per tower.this is where you are going to decide what your markup is going to be so i think a pretty standard markup would be around three times.

So you would do the fifty dollars that you paid times three which is your markup and you get a hundred and fifty dollars, if you sell all the towers you will have a hundred and fifty dollars which means you will make a hundred dollars in profit,
$150 divided by the 10 of how many towers you have,will make each tower $15.

Towers tumbles raw pieces like palm stones that all look pretty much the same listing and pricing things individually.especially if you have a big stock and all the pieces look really similar it's just easier for everyone to do an intuitive pick that way.

Priced based on its weight.

You also can price things individually where each piece will be priced based on its weight so let's use carnelian flames and fifty dollars as an example again, what you'll do is you'll get your markup so we're at 150, and then you will weigh the crystals i don't know how to explain math, but i'm just going to assume you're with me right your markup price is 150 for one kilo, 150 times the weight in grams,weight is 164 grams as an example so you will multiply 150 times 0.164 to get the price for the weight of this crystal, so using like proportions.

You can also tweak this a little bit, if you notice some of the pieces in the back are not nice if there's a chip you can bump it down a little(like 140 or 130), if you notice some of the pieces very nice very beautiful,you can bump it up a little(like 160 or 170).just tweak it for whatever works for you, that is how to price your pieces based on weight, please also remember consider the quality of individual crystals.

sometimes,things get a little more complicated and you might get a batch of something, the pieces are extremely different within this batch.

For example, you had bought a ton of rainbow moonstone because it was like really amazing quality, some of them were really really flashy and really beautiful and other ones were like they were still nice but they just didn't have the same amount of flash as the other ones did,those are not going to be worth the same amount of money,because some of them are really high quality and some of them are just standard quality.

What you can do is do different markups within the same lot,for example the lower quality ones you might do the three times markup, in the higher quality ones, you might do a five times markup.

How to price crystals if you paid shipping fees?

A really important thing to remember when calculating your prices is that you are paying for shipping to ship the crystals to you.

If you are shipping overseas,you could pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to ship these crystals to you, if you don't incorporate that shipping cost back into your prices then that's just coming out of your pocket, you have to incorporate that back into your price, typically do this if get a big order.

If the shipping cost is 300 and buy 300pcs crystals,just add like one dollar to every piece.

If you get 10 kilos of material and you paid 100 in shipping, you paid an extra 10 for every  kilo,add that into your wholesale price,so if you paid 50 for every kilo now you paid 60. so that's a way to incorporate that shipping cost back into your prices.

It's really important as a crystal seller to be educated on what is considered a high quality piece versus a low quality piece so that you can price accordingly, because not everything has the same value, it's really important to not use labels such as like"high quality gem grade triple a grade" in your listings,if that is not accurate to the crystal that you're selling because those terms really do have meaning like they are significant so it is important not to mislabel things in your listings and mislead your customers.you can use terms like "amazing beautiful stunning vibrant flashy" in your listings,but if something is not high quality,don't tell your customers that it is high quality, don't call something gemmy if it's not actually like gem grade.

Pricing Strategies for Crystal Sellers

If you're first starting to buy crystals,a lot of people are wondering am i getting a good price or not like, how do i even know what i should expect to pay for one kilo of something, like what's a good price versus what isn't, it's all about trial and error look around to different suppliers and see what they are offering and the qualities and prices.sometimes after you've bought something you may realize that the price you got maybe wasn't very good, maybe the wholesale price that you paid is what other shops are selling as their markup price, it's like you won't be able to sell it at a markup.

Because it will be overpriced for the market and that definitely happens.it's good to keep track of what you paid for a material and found to be a good price and what price was too high just keep a good like mental note of like what is an appropriate price to be paying for each material, keep in mind that you can get a huge variety in wholesale prices based on many different factors such as the supplier the quality and even the shape of the crystal makes a big difference in the price.

For example

Spheres are typically more expensive than something like a tower would be because spheres require more rough material to make into a sphere,it takes five kilos of material to make one kilo of spheres,because you have to cut it into cubes and then polish it into a sphere,so a lot of material is lost in that process.

(yellow calcite spheres)

Carvings are also going to cost significantly more than other shapes,because they are being carved by hand that takes a lot of work and the person who's carving it of course deserves to be paid for that time.if you get like a really intricate carving even if it's tiny it's still going to cost more than a tumble of the same size.if you want to make sure that the price that you got is a decent price, the way you have priced crystals is within the range of what customers expect to pay for that material.

 

(labradorite ganesha carving)

Of course you should not going to want to copy someone's prices exactly because you don't know what they paid for that material and every business is going to be a little bit different.it's a good way to get like a ballpark range of what people expect to pay for something, but if your prices are lower than that and you're still profiting, if your prices are higher than that but you feel that's a good price, then don't worry about what other people are charging.everyone's going to be a little bit different,it's okay if yours are higher or lower than what is on the market right now.

If you are selling something and it sells out like so fast,and everyone like it, oh my god that's an amazing price,then it might be a little on the cheap side, which maybe you like but make sure you're making a profit, that's very important.

If you have something sitting on your website for like a year,things in your shop that don't sell, so you should gotta lower the price and that happens see what sells what doesn't and adjust your prices accordingly.

An important thing to do when you are starting your business is to keep a detailed record of what you are paying for your materials and all your other business expenses versus your sales to see like if you making a profit at the end of the month.

If you just started your shop and you are spending way more than you're making then that's totally normal, like a beginning business is definitely going to have to invest some money to get the business going, but if you are regularly making sales and getting orders and product is flying off the shelves.but at the end of the month you are not making a profit that reflects how much work you've put in, then your prices are probably not what they should be because at the end of the day you should be making a profit.

Every business wants to make profit people who run businesses whether they are spiritual artistic or not deserve to be paid for their time businesses wouldn't exist, if you are not getting paid for that time then you probably won't be able to run that business.

If you are making your prices as low as they can possibly be you won't be able to run any sales in the future without either just breaking even or losing money, so it's important to make sure that your prices have some wiggle room, you still will be making money. 

The last important thing to remember when pricing your crystals is that some materials are just going to be very expensive, there's no way around it, some material is rare hard to mine people really like to give their customers a good price and like as cheap as it can be, sometimes things just can't be cheap there's just no way around it unless you want to take on that cost and lose the money.

Things like raw pieces that don't require any labor aside,from the mining they don't require carving,those can be pretty cheap paying like forty dollars a kilo for something like raw clear quartz points that are they're not polished in any way and they're really really common that's a not an unheard of price some things can be cheap but things can also go up in price as much as a thousand dollars a kilo wholesale price.

Natural citrine wholesale go for a thousand dollars a kilo, it is really important to price these things accordingly, because those are high quality pieces, they are rare and hard to mine.

 

(natural citrine)

They are priced that way for a reason prices of crystals are not something that small businesses themselves just make up, these materials are like from the earth, they actually have a value there is so much labor that goes into the process of getting the crystal from the earth to the customer, every person along the way needs to be paid for their time, it is very important these numbers aren't just made up, it's just really important to respect the crystals value and worth that the people who put work into mining it.

 

Not all crystals can be cheap and affordable, it is unrealistic to expect that just every material can be one dollar, not everything can be under five dollars, crystals are not just like toys that can be easily manufactured, you can make more money or making crystals inaccessible to everybody, there are crystals that are super cheap and accessible to everybody but some are not, and that's just how it always will be if every single shop just keeps lowering and lowering their prices, because that's what the buyers want, then it is going to lead people to start supporting cheaper and more unethical suppliers, and increase the demand for cheap low quality crystals.

Lots of cheap fake crystals from China are making the other shops look bad,especially on tiktok, In the next blog, I will introduce and identify crystals, as well as many common splicing and dyeing crystal identification methods.

When it comes to pricing your products for your business, it is important to remember all of the other expenses that you pay to keep your business going, not just the cost of the material, there are so so many costs associated with running a business, processing fees to paypal or whatever credit card processing company is on your website that's a big fee on every order that you get you have to pay for business cards thank you cards boxes, bubble wrap tape a printer paper, the website fees and especially your time, there are so many different expenses that go into running a business.

Physical Stores

Especially in an expensive area or a touristy area, their crystals are
probably going to be overpriced compared to an online small business, not all the time, there are a lot of affordable in-person shops, there are a lot more expenses that go into running a physical store because they have to pay the rent, the lights, all sorts of things that go into running a physical store, so just because the prices are higher in a physical store does not mean they're just like scanning people and ripping people off.every business big or small deserves to be making a profit for their time and their work, especially when it comes to someone's artwork that takes so much time effort creativity skill passion.

Some crystals genuinely are quite cheap very accessible very abundant in the earth,my opinion is that i don't think over pricing is really a thing at all.

People forget when it comes to small businesses and crystals is that not every single buyer is looking for something cheap, not every single buyer wants the best deal that they can get,not every customer has a budget of ten dollars,some people are looking for more high-end things, some people are looking for the best quality they can get and aren't concerned about the price,think about like luxury fashion brands,they're really expensive and people will call them overpriced but there is still a market for that people still want to pay those prices because they want that brand, it's the same with small businesses, some small businesses want to have a more luxury expensive high-end feel and aren't trying to target a cheaper audience(every business is going to be).

A lot of people focus on having the most affordable crystals but that is not what everybody wants, it's interesting that people will support designer fashion brands but tell small businesses that they're overpriced if you want to be a more high-end small business and sell more like more of a boutique vibe or only sell super high quality rare crystals, there is a market for everything, small businesses should not be obligated to make their prices as low as they possibly can just because people want things to be cheap.

At the end of the day it is all about what works for you and your business and if you feel that you are charging adequately for your time and your work in your products, that is really what is important.

Hopefully you could learn something

Feel free to ask me questions about crystal business or anything you have, l am happy to answer your questions