Should you be charging fees as a stationer

I wanted to take some time to chat with you about your pricing as a stationery designer. This is a hot topic no matter how many years you’ve been doing this. Am I charging too much, too little, am I doing this right? ALL.THE.QUESTIONS 

First up – fees.

What are they, should you be charging them, what does this even mean? When I started my business, I was not charging a design fee — I kind of used that as my “selling” point. “I don’t charge a design fee, you only pay the price per suite” – aka I thought I was rolling that “fee” into the price I was charging for my products. 

Sure – that worked for a while for me, but about 5-6 years ago I knew I wanted to develop a wedding collection of pre-designed suites. So prior to even designing it, I did some soul-searching. What was the difference between this soon-to-be collection and my custom work? And guess what – NOTHING. Other than my time involved. But outwardly towards the clients, it really didn’t appear that there would be much difference in regards to price. Because I didn’t feel like I could lower my price per suite on the collection without cutting into my profit, so therefore I envisioned myself charging the same amount for both.

Then I had a lightbulb moment – hmm maybe I AM undercharging for my custom and what can I do about that. So that is when I really sat down and started evaluating my pricing and structure. While I was charging ok prices and had decent profit margins, I really wasn’t accounting for all of my time and the extras that go into custom.

Curious what you’re profit margins should be for your stationery projects? Check out this blog post here!

That is when I decided it was time to start charging a “design fee” aka an additional price based on what each custom client wanted.

I think I never felt like I could charge a design fee because I wasn’t an artist

I didn’t spend hours hand-crafting beautiful watercolor florals and designs or hand sketch venues. I was strictly a digital designer. But you know what – I am a darn good designer and I still put my time into each and every one of these custom projects.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t just start throwing out a $1,000-$2,000 design fee. I started low (read very low). I think it was something like $200. I just wanted to test the waters and see what my inquiries would say. And guess what – no one said a word. Wow – maybe design fees aren’t that uncommon. So over the years, I’ve increased it here and there and I also started adjusting that fee based on what the client wanted. AKA if they needed something very complex or needed a 4-piece suite instead of a 2-piece, I would adjust it accordingly.

So when I launched my wedding collection, I all of a sudden had a differentiation between the two and as a bonus, my profit margins started to increase because I was actually getting compensated more for my time! 

In addition to my design fees, I also started charging assembly fees (dang it can take forever to fully assemble some suites!). All these things that I was sometimes including at no additional cost and they would cost me hoursss of my time. 

For the assembly fee, I think of that more as convenience fees. A client is *choosing* to have you assemble their suite for them. Technically, they could probably do it, it usually isn’t super complicated, just time-consuming. So they are sometimes willing to pay that convenience fee to have an all-inclusive experience. And if it’s something they don’t want to pay, that’s totally fine too, just be sure that they know they will receive their suites unassembled and they’ll have to complete that themselves. 

My advice to you if you do not currently charge design fees but would like to, just start small and feel out your audience and go from there. I guarantee you, it’s not as scary as you think!