Friday Factory - An Entrepreneurs Insight

How To Price Your 3D Prints

04 August 2023

In this week’s Friday Factory I’m going to show you the no.1 thing that is holding back the amount of money you can make in your business.

But before that, and to illustrate the point, I’m going to talk about candles - so bare with me...

A few years ago I was looking for a gift for a friend of mine. I knew she liked candles, so that seemed a logical place to start.

Now candles to me, have always been a bit pointless. Call me a regular ol’ guy, but I just don’t appreciate literally burning my money, while smelling of a flower show.

So safe to say I would never really expect to spend any money on a candle for myself. So to me, on face value, they are next to worthless.

But you can’t deny that to some people, they love the calming nature of them. For these people, they clearly have some value.

In fact, the only time I will ever buy a candle is if it’s for someone else. So in that moment, now I had switched into being the target market for these premium candles.

Through my requirement to find a friend a gift, I’d gone from someone who would at maximum spend about 50p on a candle (you know, in case of a power cut or something) to someone who was now willing to pay up to about £30 for a smelly, overtly packaged glass jar of coloured wax.

But here’s the thing; to me £30 for a candle is a lot. But for some people, this is nothing.

Believe it or not, there are several widely available candles on the market for multiple hundreds of pounds / dollars.

I found one for $550 for one candle.

Yes, one candle...

A night without power or torches is now suddenly looking like an expensive inconvenience...

So how do they “get away with” that I hear you ask?!? Shocked, and probably a little disgusted.

Well, clearly they’re selling to a specific segment of the market with a lot of money, that much is true. And it’s not that these people are stupid, there are clearly reasons they’re buying these candles.

To some, they are statement pieces, others they’re very special gifts to impress, some because they collect candles, some just because they genuinely have expensive tastes and truly appreciate the subtle smells / ambience burning a $100 / hour candle (or whatever the economy is).

So how does this apply to your 3D printed product business?

A conversation I was having the other day with a client shows how we need to change how we think about pricing 3D printed items - she was having her world opened up to what we call Value Based Pricing. She said that coming from her previous industry, they simply added 30-34% standard profit margin on each product.

That means something that cost £10 to make, sells for a little over £13

Now this is a huge waste of potential. Because you might make several products for different niches all costing £10 (for example) but the value those products create to the end user could vary wildly. Some might only be worth £13, some might be worth £85.

And some might be worth in excess of $500 depending on the market, use cases, and competitive options available.

For more information on learning about value based pricing, check out this training. Where we talk about pricing for 3D printed products.

The point is, you don’t need to BE the person who would spend $500+ on a candle, to create that kind of “value” and charge that price.

You just need to fully understand the market, who they are and their reasons…

But most importantly, you need to be un-tethered to your own limiting beliefs about price.

And that is the mistake most people make when pricing their prints. They think, because they “would never pay that much” that no one else would.

So instead start thinking about the price of your prints in relation to what the customer is getting for the product, not based on some approximation of what you think it’s worth based on the cost of printing.

When you do that, instead of selling £5 cost of prints for £10, you can sell £2.50 cost of prints for £25+. You’ve literally 5x’d the amount of profit you can make in your business.

So, is 3D printing profitable? Absolutely, but it's about recognizing value and seizing opportunities.

Untill next time...

Founder of The Institute of 3D Printing

"We Make 3D Printing Simple"

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Ed Tyson

Having successfully scaled multiple ecommerce businesses on a variety of platforms & been featured in online 3D printing publications, he's now looking to help you increase sales of your 3D printed products and identify higher-margin product opportunities to build your wealth.