Costs
Part of Miniature kit makers companies: fit, instructions and battery safety
Costing sheet yield and wastage behind a miniature kit run
Pricing the supplies behind a miniature kit: costing a kit run, sheet yield and nesting, the wastage that humidity causes, packaging and postage.
What to take away
- Sheet yield decides material cost far more than the price per sheet does. A 12 by 24 inch sheet of 3 mm Baltic birch typically costs $6 to $12.
- Wood moves, so a batch cut in a humid month can fit differently from the same file cut in a dry one. The difference lands in scrap and free replacements.
- Packaging and postage are usually the second largest line. A small kraft box runs $0.60 to $1.50, and one-pound USPS Ground Advantage postage typically costs $6 to $11.
- Payment processing takes 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per Stripe charge, and Etsy takes 6.5 percent plus a $0.20 listing fee.
- Promotion is a real cost of selling a kit, even when the only currency spent is your evenings.
Sheet yield and the price of a sheet
The number that matters is how many kits come out of one sheet. Two designs with identical part counts can differ by half in material cost simply because one nests well and the other leaves long thin offcuts.
Sheet prices and yields
Baltic birch 12x24
- Price
- $6-$12
- Thickness
- 3 mm
- Best use
- kit parts
Craft plywood 12x12
- Price
- $3-$8
- Thickness
- 1/8 inch
- Best use
- kit parts
Sanded plywood 1/4
- Price
- less per sq ft
- Thickness
- 1/4 inch
- Best use
- jigs and bases
Prices vary by species and supplier. Rockler and Ocooch Hardwoods sell 12 by 24 inch sheets of 3 mm Baltic birch at roughly $6 to $12, while Michaels stocks 12 by 12 inch 1/8 inch craft plywood at about $3 to $8.
Home Depot and Lowe's sell 1/4 inch sanded plywood for less per square foot, but it is thicker, which suits jigs and bases.
Cost per kit is sheet price divided by kits per sheet. A $9 sheet that yields 6 kits puts $1.50 of wood into each one. At 16 kits, the same sheet puts in $0.56.
That makes nesting a design decision rather than a production one. Long parts that run the full length of a sheet look efficient and strand everything around them. Breaking a long piece into two joined parts often costs one glue joint and saves a quarter of the sheet.
The wastage humidity causes
Cutting is not the only source of scrap. Wood changes size with the air around it, and a slot cut to a snug fit in August can be tight in January.
Ohio State University Extension's factsheet on dimensional changes in wood products gives the working rule for indoor equilibrium moisture content: divide the indoor relative humidity by five. At 45 percent relative humidity, wood settles near 9 percent moisture content. It also explains why wide thin stock cups.
Shop rule: flat-sawn boards move about 1 percent of their width for every 4 percent change in moisture content. A 6 inch panel swings roughly a tenth of an inch between a humid July and a dry February.
A side-cut board shrinks more across the face nearest the bark than the face nearest the pith, leaving a board that slightly resembles a trough, with further drying deepening the effect. Its two stated cures are to use narrow boards where possible, or to edge-glue narrow pieces with the annual rings alternating.
For a kit maker this shows up as fit complaints clustered by season. Measure a sample from each batch, cut a test sheet before committing the run, and record the workshop humidity alongside the batch number so the pattern becomes visible.
A digital hygrometer costs about $10 to $20. Setting aside 3 to 5 percent of material cost covers humidity scrap in most workshops.
The lines that get forgotten
- Packaginga kraft mailer box runs $0.60 to $1.50, a poly bag $0.05 to $0.20, an insert $0.10 to $0.30, and a label $0.10 to $0.25, before tape.
- Postage, which changes with dimensions as much as with weight. USPS Ground Advantage under a pound usually costs $6 to $11, and a Priority Mail Flat Rate Small Box is about $11.
- Printing instructions, or the cost of not printing them. A home laser printer runs $0.05 to $0.15 per color page, a print shop $0.50 to $1.00.
- Replacement parts sent free, which is a support cost and should be budgeted. Two to five percent of material is a common allowance.
- Payment processingStripe charges 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, PayPal about 2.99 percent plus 49 cents, Etsy 6.5 percent plus a $0.20 listing fee.
- Storage of finished stock, space you are no longer using. One square foot of shelf holds about a dozen kits.
Promotion is a cost even when it is free
Selling a kit means being findable, and that work has a price in hours. Mississippi State University Extension's guide to marketing and advertising a small direct-market business calls the online presence the first step.
It lists a website, multiple social media pages, email marketing, and a blog. Three questions it should answer: why the consumer wants to see this, what problem the product solves, and what makes the brand unique.
It also adds two cautions worth pricing in. The internet is a public forum, so anything said online can be held against you and the business. You may own the rights to your content, but you cannot own your social media pages, which is an argument for a site you control rather than an audience you rent.
The hours are countable. Twenty minutes of photographing, listing and answering messages per kit, at $20 an hour, adds $6.67 to a $35 kit.
None of that is free. Hours belong in the cost of a kit exactly as material does. The general version of that arithmetic is in where the money goes, and the buyer's side of kit pricing is in pricing supplies for kits.
