Pricing Flies

[Cody Gould 0]

How high do you price flies?

[bluegill576 0]

again could you please give some more info. Would this be wholesale to a fly shop? to some friends?

[Cody Gould 0]

again could you please give some more info. Would this be wholesale to a fly shop? to some friends?

It would be both Im just thinking of a range from the from the cheapest to the most not any specific flies. I dont know if that was enough info. I like dont want to be a rip off when i sell them. I sell Stimulators, floating smelts, caddis and pheasant tail nymphs.

[BobW 0]

Friends get em for free. The occasional stranger met on the river - also free. Otherwise my flies aren't for sale. But $2.00 retail is not unreasonable.

 

BobW

[Flyman416 0]

I dont know what the price is for selling to a shop but to friends i wouldnt go over a dollar unless its a special fly.

[TitanFlies 0]

If you buy materials for your flies at a retail price, then the selling price of you flies will be exceedingly larger than that of fly shop or online vendors. I'm talking like $2.25 per. I wouldn't sell them for anything less in order to make the labor worth it. BUT if you buy materials at wholesale then you'd have to calculate your expenses vs. desired earnings and then price accordingly.

 

I tied up around ~250 flies for someone about 2 years ago. I got (I think) $350 for it??? All in all, I wouldn't do it again for that kind of profit margin. So now I just tie for me, myself, and I and for anyone who says please.

[Voodoo 0]

i would base it on how many you can tie/hour and what do you think your worth? I like to make $15/hour so if it is simple like a hairs ear then $2/each it good but for something like a stone fly or streamer where there are many different steps or glues that you have to let dry i would go as high as $5.

 

some pike flies go for $7-8 and some for salt water (at least in my local shops)

[flytyer166 0]

tis may not answer the specific question your asking, but it may give you an idea. i started commercial tying 7 years ago, and when i did i did this:

 

• split diferent kinds of flies to different groups, according to difficulty, time consumptiuon, and material cost
  
• make a set price for each group of similar flies.
  

 

my prices looked somewhat like this

 

• dry flies, easy flies, simple, cheap flies-1.50
  
• smaller wets, soft hackles, more complex dry flies-2.00
  
• small streamers, large wets, hexes, and fairly complex flies- 2.50
  
• large streamers, articulated flies- 2.99
  

 

keep in mind that the shop i was tying for was keeping 20 percent. i was able to get what i wanted from them.

 

theres my 2 cents. feel free to pm me with any questions you may have

[H Dot Verseman 0]

Personally, I think all of these prices are way too high. I don't know of any shop, that would buy flies for ~$2 each, especially basics like hare's ear and pheasant tails. There are flies that will command that price or more, but those are not amongst them.

 

I also don't know many shops that buy flies individually, it would be per dozen, or xdozen, and usually the latter. Especially with something like Pheasant Tails and hare's ears, it will be like 50-100 dozen+.

 

Pricing comes down to the following for me:

 

Materials- As someone already mentioned, getting a price figured out has multiple variables, the biggest one being if you can buy materials wholesale or retail, and don't minimize this variable. It can make or brake your profit margin. If you are buying retail, there is little chance that you can make a decent profit, especially on common flies. Now, on something unique like Galloup-esque articulated streamers, it won't matter much because the price is so much more expensive.

 

To buy wholesale, you generally need to have a registered business for fly tying, OR you need to be good good friends with a shop owner.

 

If you are going to tie flies commercially you are going to need a business registered and you will also have to pay taxes quarterly on the flies you sold.

 

But, to figure out the basics.

 

1. Sit down and prep all of your materials in advance. Time what it takes to get all the materials prepped for say, 1 dozen flies. If you are using lead, pre wrap the lead, if you are using beads, bead all the hooks, if they are barbless, debard if necessary. Prep out all of the materials. Record that time. Keep track of the exact recipe- ie- 10 .20 lead wraps, 8" black chenile, 1 feather etc. Once you have the exact recipe, write it down on a note card, take a picture and attach it and file it away.

 

2. From your prep list, approximate as best you can, how much the materials cost with whichever method you obtained them. IE If you are tying Wooly Buggers, figure out what it cost you in Marabou per fly, dividing the price of the pack to the percentage of what you used per fly. Just guestimate it will give you a working figure. Find out the cost per fly, or dozen if you'd like, for all of your materials.

 

3. Tie your dozen flies, record how long it took you, and record any waste of materials along the way.

 

4. Figure out how many dozen flies you can record a day or a week.

 

5. Get your figure at where you are profitable and what you want to make per hour. If your number on a particular fly isn't high enough for you, a. work at getting faster thus increasing your hourly rate. B. Tie an easier fly to offset the price per hour.

 

 

Just some things I've picked up.

[deeky 0]

I think another factor to consider is how proficient you are at tying and what quality and durability you can put out. A fishing fly that could also be framed could certainly command a higher price than most of the flies that I tie for myself to fish with.

 

Based on this question and your others, how long have you been fly fishing and tying? Experience in both will help you know what to tie and what to ask for a price.

 

Deeky

[Bruce Derington 0]

I think another factor to consider is how proficient you are at tying and what quality and durability you can put out. A fishing fly that could also be framed could certainly command a higher price than most of the flies that I tie for myself to fish with.

 

Based on this question and your others, how long have you been fly fishing and tying? Experience in both will help you know what to tie and what to ask for a price.

 

Deeky

Yeah, thats what I'm talkin about, If we could see examples of your work I will tell you what I would pay for them, What would you pay for the fly in my Avatar, Bruce

[riffleriversteelheadslayer 0]

I think another factor to consider is how proficient you are at tying and what quality and durability you can put out. A fishing fly that could also be framed could certainly command a higher price than most of the flies that I tie for myself to fish with.

 

Based on this question and your others, how long have you been fly fishing and tying? Experience in both will help you know what to tie and what to ask for a price.

 

Deeky

Yeah, thats what I'm talkin about, If we could see examples of your work I will tell you what I would pay for them, What would you pay for the fly in my Avatar, Bruce

I'd pay for shipping lmao

[Cody Gould 0]

I think another factor to consider is how proficient you are at tying and what quality and durability you can put out. A fishing fly that could also be framed could certainly command a higher price than most of the flies that I tie for myself to fish with.

 

Based on this question and your others, how long have you been fly fishing and tying? Experience in both will help you know what to tie and what to ask for a price.

 

Deeky

Yeah, thats what I'm talkin about, If we could see examples of your work I will tell you what I would pay for them, What would you pay for the fly in my Avatar, Bruce

[Cody Gould 0]

I think another factor to consider is how proficient you are at tying and what quality and durability you can put out. A fishing fly that could also be framed could certainly command a higher price than most of the flies that I tie for myself to fish with.

 

Based on this question and your others, how long have you been fly fishing and tying? Experience in both will help you know what to tie and what to ask for a price.

 

Deeky

Yeah, thats what I'm talkin about, If we could see examples of your work I will tell you what I would pay for them, What would you pay for the fly in my Avatar, Bruce

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

I've been tying commercially for many years, well past the thirty year mark - but who's counting? I try to set my wholesale pricing (the rate shops will pay) to generate a specific hourly rate (that rarely takes into account cost of materials, since at wholesale that cost is minimal, per fly...). In the last twenty years, with the rise of quite expensive imported premium hooks.... their use may generate a surcharge (even at the wholesale level, and when buying each size hook by the thousand some hooks are significantly expensive...).

 

As a general rule, guides and a few selected individuals will get flies for a bit more money (but still well under what retail pricing would entail). Saltwater tying is a different world from the freshwater side of things. We might get paid a bit more - but some of those patterns actually take quite a bit longer to do properly... That's where a saltwater shop learns the hard way about quality and that unstated (do the flies actually work properly?) issue comes to the fore. It's not hard to duplicate something but to get it right you really need to be using it on the waters and in the situations it was intended for. That's the kind of thing that keeps a saltwater shop paying a premium for stuff that their anglers will be successful with...

 

By the way, there are still many, many commercial tyers that aren't paying excise tax on what they make. That's not a mistake I want any part of. Every invoice that I generate clearly shows the excise tax being charged (and if exported, I believe that a shop can reclaim that excise tax if it's worth doing).

 

Tight Lines

Bob LeMay