When I started KWS, the CAD and USD were roughly 1:1. Looking around on etsy, I saw that a lot of people selling stationery had their sets priced between $10.50 and $14 USD, so I aimed for something within that range. I roughly tracked how much envelopes cost me, and shipping of different types of paper, and came up with $12.50 as fairly reasonable for the set.
As I moved forward with KWS, I quickly realized that a lot of etsy shops can offer lower prices than I can because they outsource the printing of their stationery. If you send a design off to Vistaprint (a Canadian printing company that has advertisements all over Canadian TV right now), you can get hundreds of sheets printed for a very reasonable price. That's the cost though - tons of the SAME design. I decided early on that wouldn't work for me. I wanted more customization in the stationery I used with my own pen pals, and I thought it was important to offer that to my customers as well.
More than that, I was worried about the paper. I'd tried stationery from several sellers who used the options available at Vistaprint, and while it was okay-ish for fountain pens, it wasn't what I would call fountain pen friendly. There was bleeding with the thicker nibs I tend to use, feathering with a lot of inks, and in the places neither of those happened it was mainly because the paper/design combination meant the sheet wouldn't take any ink at all, making it nearly impossible to write on. Producing stationery that is guaranteed to work with fountain pens is a tricky combination of the paper you print on and adhering to design principles that can often feel restrictive. KWS came into being mainly because I wanted cute stationery for my pen pals that used Tomoe River paper, and no printing services were offering Tomoe River paper as an option. I had to figure out a way to get it done myself.
Ultimately that meant I had to source access to an industrial grade printer, find somewhere to cut the paper for a reasonable price, and hand feed each sheet through the printer one at a time. When I get big orders from my etsy shop, and I'm doubled over the printed sliding one sheet at a time into it to fulfill the 50 sheets, I feel ridiculous. It's not a perfect solution in terms of how much work it is for me personally in comparison to how other sellers do it, but it's the only way I can produce stationery on Tomoe River paper and with the level of customization I want to offer.
Now that the dollar has fallen, some of my supplies have gotten more expensive while other have remained the same. Earlier in the year I was hesitant to lower my prices because I thought that the dollar would rebound and I'd be stuck having to raise prices again when that happened. Besides, Tomoe River paper in particular has gotten much more expensive now that the conversation rate is so terrible for Canadians. Online, USA residents are rejoicing at paying $75 + a hefty shipping price for a large amount of Tomoe River paper, but that $150 price tag turns into well over $200 for Canadians, especially since the shipping to Canada is more expensive than to the USA for some reason I don't fully understand.
The dollar has been dropped long enough that I'm now willing to try lowering my prices for a trial period, to see how the budget balances. I may have to raise it again depending on the exchange rate, by a little or a lot remains to be seen. I'll never go higher than the $12.50 I was at originally, but for the next while at least, I'm going to try $10.75 USD and see how that goes.
Also, I spent a lot of time recently working on designing and photographing Halloween sets. Check them out here at the new price!
https://www.etsy.com/shop/KindWordsStationery?section_id=17713227
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