The Ravn Leather Fair Price Promise!

We’ve blogged in the past about why leather is such a luxury, costly product. And we did a short: “Can you do it any cheaper mate?” But believe me, we agonise over the price of every product! We’ve never had a surplus of cash. We know first hand the unfairness of being unable to afford the option that lasts longer but is more expensive! So as a business we promise to price our goods fairly! This is the Ravn Leather Fair Price Promise!

Leather is a luxury product, but it is often the cost effective option long term. And why shouldn’t everyone enjoy a little luxury in their every day life? (Especially when you can justify it as cost effective! You’re welcome!) Here is an insight into our price promise process.

Time

We have two tiers for charging time. We don’t include initial creating time – every pattern created has the potential to be a new product!

We charge basic minimum wage for the “basic” work, cutting, hole punching etc. We charge double for the carving time, as it’s a much more skilled job.

Any products in our shop are priced this way. Our daily rate is a bit of a mix, taking into account travel where applicable.

Material

We use the best quality materials we can find, because we want our products to last!

It takes a lot of time, resources and money to raise calves into fully grown cattle! See this blog for more. This means our primary material is expensive. We buy from a UK supplier who provides top quality hides. Their hides have fewer scars and flaws from processing.

Our hardware is solid brass where possible. So before we’ve started our material cost are high. And because brass and leather is heavy, our usual carriage costs are £10-£15 per order!

Fair Price Calculations

Knowing our time / effort and material costs we explored some stock formulae for calculating fair profit. These take into consideration overheads such as the work shop rent. (A dry shed with electric and plenty of storage.

We quickly put those calculations aside! Using these formulae would price all but the “elite” out of our market!

We looked at Etsy equivalents, knowing that Etsy sellers have to massively under price in order to be competitive. We pretty much decided to go somewhere between the two, adding in our “fairness calculator” as explained below.

I’ve never been rich, personally, or as a business. Odd for someone who doesn’t like spending money on herself! I have painful personal experience of being able to only afford boots that I know will last weeks not years! The boots pictured lasted me 6 weeks!It’s not cost effective to buy disposables in the long term.

But for this reason we like to price everything as cheaply as possible.

On the other hand, we need to eat. And it’s nice to be able to treat ourselves with a protein (bacon and egg) bap on a road trip. Yes – that’s a luxury for us!

So, as a rule, kinda like VAT, our “logic and fairness” question is, “Is it an every day essential?”

As above, we know it makes sense to buy good quality every day essentials that will last. It feels unfair that someone with less money can only afford the less cost effective option. It’s a horrible self feeding cycle! So if the answer is yes, then the item is automatically placed at the lower end of the scale. We want everyone to be able to afford high quality, lasting, every day essentials!

Naturally, if the answer is no, we price our “non essentials” at the proper,”Luxury” end of the market scale. Hence our Deluxe fur vambrace. Because yes, a basic ones are an every day essential!

Haha we’ve just released a new product in time for Valentine’s Day. We decided to launch with a discount for February. I was reminded that because of supply and demand I was supposed to do this the other way around. But you know what? It annoys me no end that flowers double in price on Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. So we’ve decided to do the opposite. As of February 2025 we’ve updated our fair price promise. We promise never to raise our prices because it’s a “Special Occasion”. (We only raise our prices when materials or wages rise significantly otherwise it’s a hassle!)

February discounts R US!