Hone your pottery: price the kiln, keep the margin
Clay is cheap. The firing and your hours are not. Price for those and pottery pays.
Throwing is the part everyone sees. The part that decides whether you make money is the kiln and the clock. Here is where ceramics quietly loses money, and how to price so a full shelf is also a profitable one.
Where the margin leaks
The pricing traps that quietly cost makers money.
Under-pricing the kiln
A bisque plus a glaze firing is tens of kilowatt-hours, twice per piece. If your price does not carry that energy, every firing is a small donation to the power company.
Firing a half-empty kiln
A firing's cost is shared across the load. Ten mugs in a 40-spot kiln each pay four times the energy of a full load. Price on your real load, not a hopeful one.
Ignoring the loss rate
Cracks, S-cracks, glaze runs, kiln mishaps. A piece that dies at the glaze firing took all its clay, all its energy, and all your hours with it. The survivors have to carry it.
Where the money is
The levers that actually move your take-home.
Fill the kiln
The fastest margin win in ceramics is a fuller load. Same firing cost, more pieces to spread it across.
Glaze in batches
Mixing and dipping in runs spreads your hands-on time. Labor is a big slice of the cost here; do not pay it one mug at a time.
Sell the seconds
A piece with a small flaw still cost a full firing. A 'seconds' price recovers that cost instead of sending it to the shard pile.
What to track
The few numbers worth watching.
Pieces per load
This is the divisor on your entire firing cost. Track it honestly; it is usually lower than the kiln's capacity.
Your true loss rate
Log the cracks. A 20% loss means each good piece quietly carries the cost of the ones that did not make it.
Cost per fired piece
Watch the loaded cost, not the clay line. The clay is rounding error next to the firing and the time.
Set Anvil up for it
How to make Anvil price your craft the honest way.
Use the firing calculator
Anvil's kiln tool turns your kilowatts, firing hours, cost per kWh, and load size into a real per-piece firing cost.
Enter bisque and glaze hours separately
Two firings, two energy lines. Put both in so the price carries the full schedule, not half of it.
Set pieces-per-load to reality
Do not leave it on the default. Your real average load is the number that prices the kiln honestly.
Know your craft.
The cost engine is free. Put your real numbers in and see what to charge.