personalising items

[Wichman]

I have an idea to personalize items for sale. My main venue for sales (for now) is a booth at the local Farmers Market. Since once the item is made, it may be difficult to sell to anyone else, how much should I ask as a down-payment on such an item? Cost of all materials (to include finish), 50%, or 100%?

 

[dgman]

If you are going to personalize an item, that means you can not sell it to someone else if the sale doesn’t go through. Therefore, the item must be paid in full when ordered.

[kmmcrafts]

I charge a non refundable 100% paid up front.. Actually, it's 100% but is refundable up to the point of once the pattern is applied to the wood and the first pilot hole is drill I deem it not usable to make something else from that blank at that point there is no refund. 

I also make the pattern, and color it in as to resemble wood to give customer a good look at how it would look. Ask them to be sure spelling, dates, etc. etc. is correct.. once they give the okay that it's correct. There is no refund due to misspelled names or dates etc.  The photo below I just completed ( obviously personalized ) . I did as I always do on this and customer gave the okay to the design, Half way through cutting and the customer says.. OH! I'd like Griffith's name first and then Stephanie.. My response was..

" How bad do you want this changed as you okayed my design 3 days ago and I have 1 hour labor into it as it is, I can change it but it's going to cost you the hour labor as well as the wood for this half made one since I'm not able to use the wood for anything else now. She messaged on a Friday and I said I was halting my progress until I heard back from her what she wanted."

She messaged on Monday evening saying she was sorry and no go ahead with it as it is. 

When she wrote in the message the names and date. I just copy and paste the customers text into my editing software and she put it as Stephanie & Griffith as shown.. so that is how I made it.. and she also gave the go ahead to the pattern..