Prices for Freestyle Bags

[jaust]

Hey people!

Since I've started to play Footbag, something like 5 years ago, the prices for handstitched Footbags (especially 32's) have not increased a bit. So it is still around 20€ in average per Bag.

My first thought as a Beginner was "damn that's pretty expensive". So this was also a reason for me to start stitching my own Bags. Soon I realized that this will be quite a journey until I would be able to stitch a Bag which size, weight, roundness, fill-ratio and so on, are good to create a well playable Footbag.
So my thoughts turned out to be true, it took me something like a year and stitching about 100+ Bags until I could truly figure out what makes a good Footbag.

Today I am definitively able to make a Bag exactly as I want it to be, round, soft and playable. But I hardly never sold my Bags, I mostly have traded with other stitchers.
If it ever occurred that somebody was really interested to buy a Bag from me I've mostly tended to give it away for a low price (like 10 or 15€), since I wasn't interested in selling my Bags to many people. To me stitching was always a Hobby which I did for the joy of it and as a kind of meditation.

So lately I've been trying to sell a bunch of my Bags at a tournament, I only sold 3 or 4 (but that doesn't matter), my price was 20€ per Bag.

When I've heard "oh man seriously? 20€ is really expensive!" for only a couple of times it did not bother me. But when I've heard "I can buy a good Footbag for like 12€, why should I spent so much on yours?" I was quite shocked.
I think it's o.k. to offer your Bags for a lower price than the average when your new to stitching and trying to sell some of your Bags to the Footbag world.

But in my honest opinion it is fucking bold to say a nicely handstitched Footbag is not worth at least 20€!

Seriously People it takes so much to make a good Footbag:

- ordering Fabric, Ultra Suede from the U.S. in most cases, so depending on your location it's pretty expensive and elaborate
- choosing Fabric, it takes some time until you figure out which Fabrics last and play well
- Filler, finding the right stuff and/or mixture and a place where you can buy small amounts
- Stitching (as mentioned in the text above)
- gaining reputation in the scene, making your "product" attractive to people
- TIME


If taking all this in account a realistic price for a Footbag would be something around 35€ or more. But since this might be way to much to afford for lots of people we end up in a discrepancy.

I have a couple of suggestions how to work this out, but I'd love to hear some other opinions about this topic first. Especially from people who sell lots of Footbags.


Regards
Michael

[Strix]

I like to make bags as a means of relaxation as well. Personally I would have to agree that, 35 is a reasonable price for a quality hand crafted bag.

Honestly though the only way a stitcher can bring down the price of the bags is lower the cost of material, and lower the amount of time it takes to make one. Time may be the only thing that can be controlled. If a person could throw a bag together in say 2 hours, you are still looking at a bag costing $10-$15 minimum. Thats still sweat shop wages for the stitcher. Filler and Fabric are not items that prices can be easily lowered, one would be required to purchase bulk of both in order to lower individual item cost per bag.

For instance you can get "wire cut shot" of stainless steel for $3.50 a pound. Or you can buy stainless steel "shot" for $0.98 a pound but in 50 lbs. sacks. This material choice would bring down the cost of a bag. As would purchasing full rolls or even yards of USL at a time, rather than 1/8th yards. But thats an expensive overhead to afford. In the end, the prices most good stitchers charge for their bags is a fair and reasonable price. In fact just for the time it takes to stitch them let alone the cost of material I think the bags are worth more than $35 from a great stitcher.

Thats just my opinion. Im more inclined to search for the hand made version of a product rather than a factory born item. And I will pay what its worth for the quality it brings...

[brianbear]

interesting topic, been meaning to post on it for a while.
of course hand-stitched quality bags are worth a good $40.
I have personally spent countless hours...months...years... figuring out every little nuance of bag creation (won't go into details, one day I will write a small book on this shit though, lol).

This has led to an extremely efficient method, in which I can stitch a 32 in an hour and a half with consistency. My 32's are $30, so i figure I am making close to $15/hour (typically $1 a bag for materials). I don't report my sales so its tax free for now lol. That is actually a huge factor, considering minimum wage/sweat shop workers are getting taxed quite a bit in comparison.

The biggest reason prices are low is the market. Very low demand, plus a decent supply = lowered price. I believe it is that simple.
Get this sport popular, and the 10 or so active top stitchers would get swamped with demand = higher price. basic economics.

[Muffinman]

The reason I started to stitch my own bags was because they were more than I was really willing to pay, averaging $30-$40 at the time. I started making my own so that I didn't have to pay anything at all. But I also sold for a year-ish at $20 (about 14 Euro) for the specific reason that I understood that other people were in a similar situation where they couldn't afford to buy bags. I didn't care what others were charging or if I was making any money from it. I wanted to give something to others than I really wanted myself.

[jaust]

The biggest reason prices are low is the market. Very low demand, plus a decent supply = lowered price. I believe it is that simple.
Get this sport popular, and the 10 or so active top stitchers would get swamped with demand = higher price. basic economics.

Sure, the reason is that simple. but i was hoping for a more constructive suggestion to solve that "problem" than using basic economics. since our sport is so small and everybody is saying "i'm doing it for fun and it is nice that there's no money involved and the community is so nice"- we should definitively be able to generate a fair trade system.

for example, we use a certain platform to sell our bags, let's say planetfootbag or freedomfootbags, but instead of selling the bags for a fix price we could set just a minimum price and everybody can pay as much as he/she likes. so if you think a nice footbag is worth more than that and you could afford to pay more you are more than welcome to do so. after a certain amount of bags has been sold the sum will be divided and the stitchers get paid equally.

[janis]

I think that if people are really interested in utility maximization then the minimum price idea is a really good one. I know that when I was a student and had very little money that it was hard to afford prices for footbags and other things. For a while I had a well paying job and all of a sudden footbag related things were really cheap relatively speaking. I personally wouldn't mind paying a bit extra to support a top quality footbag maker given my current situation. One other thing I was thinking was that if I knew someone locally that made really good footbags and was busy enough to get the economy of scale from buying bulk materials but couldn't afford to buy bulk at that moment in time I'd certainly do my best to help out there. Essentially this would let the stitcher get the benefits of bulk materials and they could pay me back later when they recoup the costs of the materials. This would ultimately allow a (much deserved) greater profit margin for them. I would more than happily do this without needing "economic incentives" in the traditional sense of the word because I really like the sport and would like better quality footbags to be more available.

[jaust]

ohh wow janis, actually i wanted to wait for some responses until i would post exactly that thought you've mentioned.

having a platform (or two) where we could sell our bags is one thing. gathering our money to buy materials in bulk is another thought.
especially here in europe it's hard to get your hands on some proper fabric.

i've once been lucky to get a good amount of "amaretta" directly from the source for a good price. but actually they wouldn't sell small amounts of this material.

so another thought of mine would have been to keep the stitchers' money and buy fabric and filler from it in bulk and divide it through all participants.
another option would also be to find some people willing to invest...