31/07/2026
🔥Important message - please take the time to read. It would be greatly appreciated 🙏 but sorry! It’s a long one!
I’m always trying to think of ways where I can minimise the cost of products for sale in the studio. From when I started this nearly 4 years ago furniture was cheaper to buy, rents and rates were cheaper and overall on-costs hadn’t reached the prices they are today.
Trying to run a small business has never been easy and it seems to only be getting harder, more expensive for both the business and the customers.
That being said I felt the need to give some clarification into a breakdown of costs from source to product to show that sometimes our mark ups - aren’t always as profitable as they appear!.
🔴Let’s say I buy a chest of drawers for £25. And I list it for sale once painted / refinished / restored for £150 - seems like a pretty sweet profit margin right?
Not necessarily.
First we need to deduct the cost of purchase from the sale price -
£150-£25 = £125.00
Out of that £125 ‘profit’ as registered businesses we owe the government 20%
This takes the £125 down to £100.
Out of that £100 we need to deduct the cost for time and materials spent on the drawers. Let’s say they took 3 hours to paint/restore. Including the materials let’s be ambitious and say total costs for 3 hours time, materials, sundries came to £70.
That leaves us with £30 ‘profit’ out of that £150.
That £30 before it can even go into my own pocket first needs to reimburse the cost of running the business and premises.
Rent, rates, insurance, maintenance fees on the premises. As a general number let’s say these monthly costs equate to £1000 a month - every month!
What this means is that £30 goes towards paying for the space that allows for the furniture to be created, a place to store a larger number of items for more choice and diversity and also a place where you can come and browse and see the products in person without obligation to buy and perhaps get ideas and inspiration!
Therefore I would need to sell a considerable amount of drawers with a £30 ‘profit’ each month before I even begin to see the profit in my own pocket.
Running a small business is hard, it’s not always easy and it certainly isn’t always profitable - but for me personally - furniture is what I love. Having the studio has been my peace and sanity on so many days!.
All of this being said - I do often wonder whether having the studio space is worth it and sustainable in today’s market. My aim was always to provide unusual, bespoke and curated furniture at affordable prices. Yet I find myself some days weighing up whether the costs of having a premises and somewhere for you all to come and browse / buy is worth having over being able to produce furniture for sale at lower prices if I was to work from home and sell only online - all be it a much much smaller scale due to the space limitations.
I think the point of my post is to get the most important opinions on this - the most important being the opinions of you all - the lovely followers who have supported me from day one and even the new followers who have come to join the page more recently.
What’s more preferable to you?
Lower priced furniture available only online…
Or somewhere local to come and view, browse and shop in person?
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post and I’m excited to hear your feedback!