If you are someone that has enquired or had a shoot with me before you will have seen my previous boudoir photography pricing list.
It’s time for me to come clean…my prices have gone down. I’d like to tell you the reasons why.
It comes down to environment, and suppliers.
Environment
When I first started offering boudoir shoots in 2019, my home was very newly decorated. Everything was tidy, the paint work was clean and pretty new and I was comfortable with being able to offer a premium service and asking the premium pricing that matched that.
Then…we got a dog! There’s no getting round it, having a dog in your mid-century modern/Scandi-modern home is a difficult balance. An oatmeal and grey palette does not play well with the rigours of a Labrador.
So, the Labrador, Toby…is still very much with us. And so, while he has his own draw of cuteness and being happy and loveable, I can’t in all good conscience say the home, and therefore the boudoir shooting spaces is quite so pristine.
Don’t get me wrong, everything is clean, tidy, well ordered and well maintained. It’s not like I’m having to digitally alter everything to hide the problems. It’s just lost that very top edge. So, I felt I should reduce pricing accordingly a little.
Suppliers
Secondly, I’ve changed my album and wall art supplier. For a couple of reasons. Both of those reasons have actually meant that I think I’m now offering a better quality product range and, as it transpires, I’m able to offer them at a lower price.
I was previously using a very good supplier. They’re based in central Europe. Pricing has been very volatile in the last few years but actually that wasn’t the problem really.
Because they cater for both professionals and consumers for albums and wall art, they feel the need to play the marketing game. And they play it a lot with their pricing! It felt like every time I ordered from them the pricing was different. Sometimes 40% off, sometimes 20% off. And very rarely at full price. But the problem is, I had to protect myself from their top end pricing by charging my clients as if I’m going to be charged full price from them, otherwise there would be no profit in it all for me at all.
That grated on me for the two reasons that I was charging artificially high pricing, which is why I did a lot of sales, and also my business was being pushed around by the practices of a supplier. Which isn’t a great place to be.
Also, while they produced very good results and were actually pretty fast, they made mistakes on the products more often than I’d like. When that happens, I obviously can’t give those mistakes to clients. I have to complain to the supplier and get them to re-print and re-send it to me. That means I have to tell my clients that the thing I’ve got isn’t good enough and ask them to wait.
So, I decided to make a change.
My new supplier is both more consistent with their quality and I think their quality is actually much higher. Albums are about the same quality (although I do much prefer the album boxes with my new supplier too), but wall art frames are now much better.
But because they only deal with professional photographers, they don’t have the same need to be coy with their pricing. I’ve had them as my main supplier for more than a year now and the pricing has fluctuated a little, but less than 1%, which I can absorb without passing on to you.
Oh, and they’re also based in the UK. Which makes me feel better about contributing to the economy and means the office hours are more palatable.
So, in short – I’m offering better product, for less. Win, win, win!
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