In a previous post I talked about how my truck pulls double duty as my family vehicle and my business vehicle. One of the perks to this is the free dresser I picked up a few weeks ago. My son and I were headed home and I decided on a whim to drive through the neighborhood instead of taking the main roads. I pulled up to a stop sign and out of the corner of my eye I saw this dresser sitting on the curb a block away.
I put on my blinker and went to take a look. It was missing all the hardware and a few drawers. The top wasn’t in great shape with some water damage. But it had good enough bones to make it something worth selling. I see the owner of the house and make sure it’s OK to take. So I put it in park and loaded it into the back of my truck. They didn’t understand why anyone would want it and said that the city was going to haul it off.
This “trash” is the perfect type of furniture to “flip” and resell. I took off the ruined top and the top row of drawers (two were missing and turned it into a nice window seat.
The way I price this type of work is like this: My hourly rate times the total time (Rate X Hours), plus the total cost of materials, then a 50% Markup for profit. The formula works like this [(Rate*Time)+Materials]*50%. If I had $50 in labor plus $50 in materials my cost would be $100. I mark up 50% for profit so my list price would be $150.00.
This is the best I have right now, so please critique and share your pricing formulas.
To deal with haggling I make my hourly rate the variable. This keeps everything covered and makes sure I’m left with a profit for reinvesting. I’ve made lower than minimum wage at times. I do this because my primary goal at this time is building up the business, not bringing home an income. Once I make that change my percentage of profit will be the variable.
I have a spread sheet with all the formulas plugged in so I can quickly price a new project. This also helps with estimating but I always under estimate the amount of time it will take to complete a project. I can also change the variables so I know what I’m really making once a project is sold.
My estimate that my list price for this dresser window seat would be around $450. With time and materials it was closer to $495, but I ended up lowering the price to $420 due to lack of interest.
What was involved in this process; cut down the dresser to it’s new size, repair a drawer slide, fill all the drawer holes, sand the dresser, paint it slate blue with paint+primer, attach the new hardware. For the top I have some 40 year old salvaged pine that I’m going to size for a nice lightly stained top. My only real costs are five drawer pulls, sandpaper, paint, stain and poly.
Here’s the video from my Youtube Channel. Be sure to subscribe to it also.
Now that this project is complete it is time to sell it. This is honestly my least favorite part I always include an hour in my pricing for all the time I spend trying to get it out of my storeroom. I do offer free delivery to my area, and have Paypal Here so I can take credit/debit cards.
For items of this size shipping is too expensive to try and sell on Etsy. So I list things on my website, craigslist, and a few Facebook Buy/Sell groups. So far I’ve sold most things in about a month.
Blue Collar Start-Up 