Should I price lower than my competitors?

You've finished the collection. You laid it all out on the table and stood there thinking, yes, that's good, that's really good. Now you're putting the prices on, and your hand is hovering, because there's a number in your head and you're about to write down a smaller one.

It will sell at the smaller number. That's the problem.

My first proper collection sold out in about an hour, and the only reason it went that fast is that I'd priced it 10% under the woman on the next stall. I knew that while it was happening, which is why I spent the hour feeling sick rather than pleased. A sell-out in an hour is just a discount announced to a room that was already willing to pay full price.

It cost more than the margin. My buyers were makers, so their own customers spent the next month asking for fabric nobody could get. And the 10% came off the woman on the next stall too, because the people who cleared me out would otherwise have been buying from her.

Here's what that price really was. Before anybody else had the chance to tell me the work wasn't good enough, I told myself, and I did it with a number. The real question is who already knows the collection is coming. If nobody is waiting, no price is low enough to rescue it. If people are waiting, you never needed the discount.

The low price is how you reject the work before anyone else gets the chance