I have a hard time understanding their perspective... did they think
that being vocal would make you lower your prices to a point that was
unprofitable for you? How would they benefit from you being unable to
profit? You would eventually go out of business, and they wouldn't be
able to get the merchandise they seem to have coveted.

They don't sound like very good businesspeople. I had an inquiry a while
back, from a shopkeeper who wanted my beads for wholesale prices. I've
scoped out other US lampworkers, and am well aware that my beads are
already priced at or below wholesale, so I priced out the beads she was
interested in and told her that I would do a 30% discount on orders over
$300 (seems to be a popular discount!) and I never heard back from her.
That was before I raised my prices, about six months ago. I can respect
never having heard back from her... artisan lampwork probably didn't fit
into her budget. That was far more professional than if she had
contacted me again to complain about my prices!

-Kalera

Karen_AZ wrote:

"Christina Peterson" wrote in message
news:1076469073.78773@prawn...

Am I the only person who works with lampwork beads who faces this problem?

Tina



It's interesting, my show partner and I had a run-in with some small store
owners over the weekend. We both had our beads priced for wholesale since it
was primarily a wholesale show. I was willing to take a deeper discount for
a reasonable quantity, and said so (30% off $300 purchase). These ladies
were very unhappy with this and quite vocal about it, saying we were
obviously unwilling to work with them. Well, yes, we were. I'm not
cutthroating my own income to make their store sales easier. Nobody else
complained, and I came home to 3 large orders, so obviously I'm doing
something right. I do appreciate their position, but I think they had
difficulty in even perceiving mine. I politely told them I had beads in
several stores already, sold at the same prices. If their local market can't
handle that, there's not much I can do about it.