A Personal Rant About Glass $
 

This is just my opinion but maybe there's someone else who agrees....who knows....

I am concerned about the rising costs of glass...what with several of the vendors putting Vetrofond on sale and such it makes me wonder what the mark-up on glass is anyway.

Not that I really care about folks making money, but it doesn't need to be so high. Kinda like the oil industry - just how much profit do you need?

I don't buy a lot of the new stuff that comes out right away because it's priced so high - I'd rather wait and see how it looks in other folks beads before I invest.

Just because something is an odd lot and you can get a lot on money for it doesn't mean you should. If the regular Vetrofond and Moretti can be $7-10 per pound why do the odd lots have to be $24 a pound?

And the silver glasses $100 a pound - yeah, I know that it takes money to develope a color but geeze, do you have to keep making gobs of money on it even after you have perfected it?

I know there will be some less than agreeable posts to this thread from vendors. But this is how I feel.

Can't we (meaning you) keep the costs of glass down to within reasonable limits?

To my way of thinking anything over $20 a pound is out of reach and I won't often try it.

I feel better. I just had to get that off my chest.

From what I understand, most glass itself is not expensive. Meaning the ingredients are not really expensive, but producing the glass is expensive. Especially for smaller "boutique" glass companies. Developing colors that are consistent and reliable for the beadmaker is also expensive.

Adding, most of what I buy is in the $7 to $10 range per pound. If those colors were developed and maunfactured at that price range then others should be able to be done cheaply as well.

Manufactures have resources to do it but we as beadmakers have become so greedy for new colors that they can charge pretty much what they darn well please and many will gobble it up and not choke on the cost at all.

Linda

I can't speak for the Italian glass.. but the silver glass makes sense to me. Smaller company, most of the glasses have a high silver content. Silver prices are going through the roof. I'm surprised there hasn't been a price increase in some of the silver glasses because of it. I suspect it's coming.

Also keep in mind, that it takes money to get the glass here, taxes, duties, freight, forwarding costs, as well as exchange rates (the dollar is currently the worst it's been against the Euro) I would imagine each order is a huge outlay of cash because of minimums that need to be purchased and sometimes the glass just sits there for months and months. Inventory turns mean a better profit margin, etc, etc,

I'm not trying to confirm the validity of the prices, just throwing out a few things to consider.

Kristi

I can tell you this...The U.S. dollar is down over 40% vs. the Euro since Bush came into office. So there is a 40% increase right there. There are also heavy fees to import and freight is expensive. Raw materials are spiraling so out of control that I have been wondering if some of the factories are keeping certain colors artificially low just to keep manufacturing. Plus who has the 20 or 30 grand that it costs every time they want to import? So someone is now paying interest on a loan so they can do a bigger buy and hopefully spread out importing costs. And if they pay out of their pocket they now loose the "opportunity" to invest the money elsewhere ("Opportunity costs") while the glass is sitting on a shelf waiting to get sold. If a factory is manufacturing the Silver Glasses they are using other chemicals too and now required to meet a host of OSHA rules and regulations and that all costs money. Plus there's the hired help to pay, labor to cut up and wash glass, advertising costs, website & commerce costs, etc. As a reseller I spend a dollar a box and usually another dollar for bubble wrap and peanuts. On most orders less than $50.00 to $75.00 I often don't break even. Believe me I could never support myself on profit from my glass business.It's been a lot of fun but I'd be starving to death. .Linda you brought up a good question. I don't know the deal on the Vetrofond. Hopefully, other dealers can answer it better than me.
Paula

p.s. I've seen really pretty beads made out of inexpensive glass! And lots of hand mixed colors that are pretty too!

Paula

I think much of the pricing is materials. Not all glass has the same materials. There are plenty of handpulled or odd lots that command a higher price than the basic white or black from the main European companies. The cost of fuel to produce and ship glass is going to become a key in the pricing, but those costs are across the board. Same with the exchange rate. Those increases impact white from a company the same as a high demand small batch odd lot.

The glass from the start up companies, like it or not, have the same costs in materials and fuel but no place else to absorb cost increases. So as silver jumps, their glass will. I figure it is a fact of business like anything else. I really don't expect it to change.

Maybe that isn't the question and I'm off base with my reply. (Hope not.)

As with all things I recognize all I can do is buy what I can afford.

Why would it be necessry to use expensive glass when inexpensive is available?
Doesn't quality work depend more on the design then the materials?
Is the quality of a painting determined by the talent of the painter or the quality of the paints?

I'm not sure if my little input will help answer any questions but I have to agree with some who have already posted here. I have glass coming from overseas and I'm paying double what they are asking because of the dollar vs euro. It really took me back. Not only do I have to pay more for the glass, then I have to pay custom fees. Then they charge you to hold it in a holding area until it passes customs. Every day it sits there is more money. (Could be $600 for 2-3 days) Then there are the broker fees for the guys I've hired to get it out of customs for me. You have to buy a bond for the glass, then they charge a fee to do the work for you since I can't drive out there. Then you have to pay a trucking company to get it from wherever the ship dropped it off to you. Then you pay extra for a stupid pallet jack for them to actually set it down off the truck. Combine all that with the price of boxes, bubble wrap, peanuts, labels, ink for labels....I think you get the picture.
As far as other forms of glass. I just set my prices to be comparable with other companies. The BIG companies like Arrow Springs, Frantz and a few others...they have to pay rent on the building that they are in. Plus they have mucho employees. So they have alot of overhead to take care of.
The sales that you have seen on Vetrofond in the past and you'll see another one soon ;-) is just a sale and not much profit is being made but maybe because you've saved money on this brand of glass....you might be willing to purchase other glass at regular price. It might work out in the long run....I'm not sure as I've not offered glass that cheap yet. Time will tell.
Hope that helps!
Irene

Bingo! All you have to do is look on eBay and see that the beads that bring the highest prices are generally done with the less expensive glass.

Julie

Regarding the silver glasses, I remember reading something about the silver being hard on the equipment, causing more frequent replacement of it - also adding to the high cost of the glass.

And, all of this makes me wonder...if one makes a bead with $2 worth of glass and it sells for $60, surely nobody here would be questioning the artist's mark-up.

Sometimes it's hard to see it from the other side...

I wonder how often artisans chose to buy expensive glass to avoid learning difficult techniques?

I think labour cost is much more important than materials cost. If a higher cost glass allows for a reduction in labour, the end result might be a combined total lower cost. If a higher cost glass allows for a higher selling price, the end result might be higher profit.

For a hobbyist, the cost of materials is important. For a professional, the cost of materials is related only to finished selling price - and often such a small percentage it's almost irrelevant.

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Or to buy presses to avoid learning how to shape the glass.

Artisans that use press molds consider them a labour saving device to improve profits by reducing the time needed to make something. Glass blowers and kilnformers have been using them for centuries. A torchworker using a press mold is pretty much the same as a kilnformer using a casting or slumping mold. Why make something by hand that's "pretty good" when you can use a mold to make it "perfect"?

If local glass artisans expect to compete with imports, they'll have to adopt production efficiencies. Adapt or die.

Most professional artisans will adopt whatever method is the most efficient. The "purists" are more likely the amateurs. A skilled woodworker can probably make their own plywood, but why would they when they can readily buy it premade. Why form something by hand that can be done better and quicker with a mold?

I'm guessing that the folks at Double Helix, for instance, work many hours.

Just another reason I love Bullseye. It's made in this country, no import fees, waiting, etc. Not to say I don't buy other glass, but BE has a beautiful pallet, that I just love and I'd rather support an industry in this country before it goes the way of everything else and you can't get it made in this country. Something to think about when everything is getting outsourced... Just my opinion. Dicrodi

Yep. What did John Lennon say - I'm an artist. Give me a turnip and I'll get something out of it.;-)

Having just recovered from an episode involving inferior paints, I honestly have to say "both."

I was complimented by a challenge to create a special award scroll for someone. Lots of research, lots of preliminary layouts, got everything just right. Laid my background color down, let it dry for a few days (this is gouache on a special piece of real vellum), then began to apply the detail areas. I took a short break and realized that the background colors was all over my hand, in teeny tiny chips! I bought a 'lesser than student' brand because that was the only one that had my required color last week. <sigh> I bought a tube of Winsor & Newton later that day, instead, definitely NOT a sale price. I finished the 3rd layer today and everything is going great, now.

Sometimes better materials DO make for a better outcome.

I also remember the "Priceless International Glass" debacle, about 9 or 10 years ago. Not cheap glass...utterly inferior crap. I still miss that lovely moonstone white, but I don't miss the frustration of using it one bit. [-(

And I'd pay TWICE the price for some glass (Gail's Duo Canes come to mind), just because it's so beautiful to begin with.

ETA: All costs are going up, it's just a reflection of the economy as a whole. Whatever it is, transportation is always a factor, and raw materials costs are shooting up, too. Paints use a lot of the same pigments, and I've seen prices rising accordingly. A friend of mine paints in oils and his canvas costs have more than doubled. Don't even get me started about the price of silver! <sob>

=D>
95% of my beads are made with Bullseye glass. I am grateful there is a U.S. source for a wide variety of colors..... And I will continue to support them buy buying their rods as I did when I was into stained glass and buying their sheet glass a dozen years ago.

Yes, it is more $ per pound than your basic colors of Italian or German glass BUT I am willing to pay a few bucks more for a stable, fully compatible American made product. Just like I am willing to pay a $1 more per yard of fabric to support my local quilt fabric store....or my favorite local Mom & Pop restaurant.

No, I don't buy the high dollar silver boutique glass. I think they are trying to replicate boro. If I want a boro look, I work with boro and have a wonderful array of colors and not fork out all the money.

Just my 2 cents.

I'm sure I'm a dissenting opinion in the crowd, but when I consider what a truly niche market my obsession is the prices don't seem unreasonable.

1# of glass lasts a long time, even if I make bigger beads. And let's say I'm using a Vetrofond odd lot, full priced at $24/lb. How many hours of entertainment will that be - because above all else, melting glass is fun for me. Now compared to other things at a per hour cost - going to see movies, sporting events, renting movies even... It's a steal. (And, as the saying goes, cheaper than therapy.)

And that's not even getting into how many times over you can remake your initial glass cost investment even if you're just making spacers and selling those...

While I'll shop for deals (who doesn't?) I will never have a problem with glass prices from tried and true dealers and brands.

ETA: I am not a vendor, related to any vendor, nor do I have any personal stake in any vendor's sales. The above statement is as an artist and Sheep Goddess alone. That said, I do think our vendors kick ass bringing us beautiful colors, tools, and things to play with. Thanks to all of you!

This is exactly the reason I switched to BE. I got sick and tired of paying a whole lot for what were essentially mistakes and duplication was questionable. The final straw for me was all those corals that weren't coral at all. [Yes, I know lots of you loved them, and tell yourself (and call the colors) whatever you want, but they weren't coral.]

Well... all of the BE girls just stand up and dance..... OMG Elizabeth.. you're a quilter too.. Fire and fiber how much better can it get? Unless of course, its
(as Tink says) glass, fire, and chemicals ( I think I left something out) I started using BE years ago as a fuser and bought the rods just to make attachments for my larger items but then of course got hooked on lampworking. I still do both and mainly use BE although I have lots of 104's , just have to be really organized with putting one away before working with the other. Although most of my income comes from the fusing end I'm working more and more on saleable lampworking . I just love making little works for art and it's much faster than fusing. My quilting hours have suffered only get a couple a year done now. The BE rods are always consistent in quality and color so I know I can depend on the colors and outcome if someone wants a duplicate. I'm a happy camper with it and can experiment with the other high silver glasses for fun. Dicrodi \\:D/

Bingo!

See that's the whole point of this thread - well, partly anyway. I don't want to sell my beads for $60 - I want to sell them lower so I can get them off the shelves and make more, different beads.

I usually price my focals differently based on glass used and difficulty - recently I took over 100 beads to the bead store on consignment and priced them all at $16 retail - called them "Gas Pump Relief" beads - sales have been slow and if stuff is not moving off the shelf, what am I going to do with the new beads I am making?

I liked the posts about BE - that is definately a consideration for me - good grief, what would I do with 300-400 pounds of 104 - including the 10 diffeent shades of coral?

I'm sure some well-priced 104 would move quite quickly in the garage sale area--it always does. Especially the coral....(hint...hint...) Some of us are quite happy to pay for those odd corals...(Nikki--if you get there first, I'm away for the day--get it for me! :lol:)

I :love: a few of the silver glasses for what they DO, not because my beads aren't very good & I'm trying to make them something they're not--they're not great--I know that--but I love the effects I get FROM the silver glass--I can't get a little rainbow swirl from other glass. Has nothing to do with "not wanting to master glass"--I'm doing that as I go along :roll:

Ditto on the presses. I happen to love the lentil shape, I was *buying* lentil shaped beads for a couple specific designs, it made sense to me to learn that press for uniform beads in uniform sizes for the design I produce in jewelry--not because I'm avoiding learning something else about the glass, but because I have a specific use for the beads in mind (ironically, those are made with "cheap" glass in basic colors too!)

I mix & match my "expensive" rods of glass with my "cheap" glass, so it goes further, (sort of like using expensive spices on things like rice or noodles to make them taste better) but if I get the whim to use a rod of say, opal yellow, I'm going to do it--even if I know it's $$$ glass (thanks Nikki for the opal yellow!) because it's FUN! And if I can't have fun with the glass, well, then what exactly is the point? I'll read everything I can online to avoid doing something silly (like burning out rubino, or putting frit on ivory & getting black spots) but to say that new people should only use basic colors, or shouldn't use "new" glass is just stupid--that's like saying kids should only eat cereal or macaroni & cheese or wear generic brand clothing or play outside & have no storebought toys! Just because our beads aren't fantastic (expensive) artwork doesn't mean we don't want to make spacers in the coolest colors!

I love Bullseye glass. I love that it's consistent. I love that it's made here in the US. I love that it's a bit stiffer --- Makes it perfect for blowing! I love their quality control and the fact that they, as a company, are so organized. Unfortunately, I just can't embrace their opaque colors. There's a "milky" look to many of them, or a lack of color saturation. The transparents are fabulous! I *love* the folks at Bullseye.

But I'm fickle. I like trying as many different products out there as I can find. Some are dirt cheap. Some are amazingly expensive. On a piece-by-piece basis, I know that I use about 6" of glass (average diameter cane) in a standard vessel. My standard vessels are priced at $50 each, which I think is pretty reasonable. I know I can get about 13 vessels out of one pound of glass, including typical waste. That's $650 of standard product out of one pound of glass. Whether that glass costs me $8/lb or $100/lb, there's still plenty of room to make a profit.

My higher priced vessels aren't typically based upon higher material costs, but on time and technique. I have a pretty good formula that I use. I know what to add if a vessel is encased or double encased. I know what I need to add for my lensed vessels. Or for wings. Or for any other technique that requires additional time or includes proprietary techniques that I'm the only one doing at this point.

I don't have a lot of the high-silver glasses. I have a little bit, and I enjoy the options that it affords me. But I guess you could say that my work is technique-based as opposed to materials-based. Give me some black and ivory and a rod or two of other $8/lb glasses, and I'm just as happy as a clam. It's all in what I do with it.

ETA: I kind of went off on a tangent there and didn't address the whole issue of "Just because something is an odd lot and you can get a lot of money for it doesn't mean you should". The whole "odd lot" thing had the potential of going in three directions:

1. Odd lots being popular because they are different, making the price for them higher
2. Odd lots being shunned because they are different, which would drive the price lower
3. Odd lots being looked at as just another color in the palette, making their price the same as the original intended color (such as original coral)

Because the glass community embraced the colors, making them popular, it drove the price up. In a free market society, it's all about supply and demand. Higher prices for these colors makes sense to me, just as higher prices (yes, even $100/lb) for the high-silver colors seem reasonable.

Your cost for making whatever you make will be ten times higher using $100/lb glass vs $10/lb glass, of course. I don't know what the going rate is for simple beads and spacers, but even if you make them from 100% high-silver glass (instead of just using it as an accent or design element), a bead made from 1" of standard cane will only cost you $1.28 in materials, on average.

Some folks can do incredible things with the high-silver glasses, making their end product very marketable even at a much higher price than the same size/shape bead made with colors from the standard palette. It ends up paying for itself. But trying to capitalize on that difference in a local market is a whole other kettle of fish.

I only sell at one place locally: The Toledo Museum of Art Gallery. I can guarantee you that I couldn't sell any of my vessels for more than $10 at our local bead store. It's just not the right place for my work. No matter what glass you use, it's always a good idea to find the best possible market for selling your work. Being able to sell it for more makes the higher cost of some glasses pretty much a moot point.

IMO, of course.

But it's hard when you have to decide between keeping the kids or hawking them to buy expensive glass!

And it's hard when you have to decide between treating yourself to an expensive glass or doing whatever financially responsible thing you SHOULD do instead. I also wish the prices would come down.

I see both sides...

Sue

I feel that it is both. For the glass worker the quality is the same but the look you get with one type of glass might not be there with another type. (Speaking of the silvered glass verses the less expensive glass.)

As far as painting goes It is the quality of the paints and the talent of the artist, that will bring the two together. Use low quality materials and you just might not be happy with the outcome of your painting down the line.

Have you ever noticed the cost of reds, pinks, yellows, purples, oranges, in glass is more expensive? Its because of the gold properties they use to make the glass. It seems only reasonable to have the glass higher priced, such as the silvered glass.

So some blues, greens and other like colors would be cheaper, the quality is just the same. Its what is put in it that makes the difference.

On another note someone was talking about presses. Not the price of them but what they do, This made me start thinking about how expensive it is to make the brass tools that are out on the market today. We (in some cases)
dont think twice about paying our hard earned money on tools to get the job done so it would only be right to do the same thing with glass you like and want to use.

Costs are going up everywhere, The cost for us to make our brass tools is high, and getting higher.
The labor is intense as we do everything by hand, We don't have expensive machines that cut our brass, or polish our tools. We do everything by hand. everything.
When we talk about our tools and the money we make off them we laugh and say profit? what Profit? Which I think is what Double Helix is doing to. They pull and mix all the glass and the silver is high, depending on the market price.

In some cases we have had it pretty good for a long time. Prices rise and so does the price of glass and tools. Its uncomfortable and I don't like it one bit but its a fact. Ok off to work. Stacy (SL)