Rough estimate of costs (May 2012)


Since I often get the question: “Why are my orgonite so cheap?”

I know the marketing principle that is used before commercializing a product: two questions are asked to a group of consumers:

  • Under what price the product seems to you, to be of bad quality?
  • Above which price does it seem to expensive?

I’m under the impression that my prices make people believe that my orgonites are of bad quality or that it’s some kind of a scam?

Hence I decided to approximately describe the costs associated with my activity to answer this question, to explain that it’s not a scam and that these are not bad quality orgonites. From my point of view the prices seem reasonable, even if I’m often told that I should increase my prices to prove that they are not of bad quality, I don’t want to follow that marketing logic (illogical logic), I want them to be affordable to anyone! And for the time being these prices are correct.

First of all, I buy everything in medium or large quantities.

At the time, aluminium costs around 1€/kg and I buy it per hundreds of kilos in scrap metal scavenging depots when needed.

The resin I’m using is “Crystic R115PA” from Scott Bader France, at 2.703€/kg VAT incl. but I have to add the hardener as well. At the moment I pay 1265.55 VAT incl. (delivery included) for 450kg of resin with the required amount of hardener, Butanox M50 (5kg). Thus in the end it costs 2.812€ VAT incl. per kilo, here’s the last bill (04/04/2012):

To make around 50 tower Busters (+/-1-2 more or less) I need around 4.5kg of resin, 50g of hardener and 400g of aluminum. This hence costs:

  • 4.5 x 2.812 = 12.654€ for 4.5kg of resin
  • 0.4 x 1 = 0.4€ for 400g of aluminium

To that I have to add the price of the quartz, bought in necklaces strands and also that I pick up around for the white quartz. The last rose quartz cost me 57.19€ for 30 strands, which is around 5000-600 stones.

The last transparent quartz costs me 61.99€ for 20 strands; around 4000 stones.

By making a very tight estimation, lets say I had 4000 (instead of 5000-6000) rose quartz for 57.19, that makes ~0.014€ per quartz, or 0.715€ for ~50 Tower Busters.

Same way for the transparent quartz, 3000 (instead of 4000) for 61.99€, that makes ~0.0206e per quartz, or 1.03€ for ~50 Tower Busters.

I estimate less stones, because I often drop more than one of each stones in a TB.

The updated costs:

  • 4.5 x 2.812 = 12.654€ for 4.5kg of resin
  • 0.4 x 1 = 0.4€ for 400g of aluminium
  • 0.715€ (50 rose quartz)
  • 1.03€ (50 transparent quartz)

That makes a total of 14.799€ for around 50 Tower Busters, or 0.29598€ per TB, I’ll round that up to 0.3€ per TB.

Thus for a TB sold at 1.10€ a piece, the material costs are of 0.30€, that gives me a margin of 0.80€ per TB to cover all other costs, working time, packaging costs, trips to the post, taxes, etc.

For 10 TB at 11€, that makes a margin of 8€, for ~50 TBs the margin is hence of 40€. To make ~50 TBs, sand them, clean them I need less than 2h of work and believe me I take my time and pleasure, to have good orgonites it needs to be done with love and care. My ‘work’ is one of my passions, I don’t even consider that as work!

That would make more that 20€ per hour, but we still have to take into account the packaging, teh petrol for the trips, the time spent to make the packages, the time spent on the website, the latex gloves to manipulate the resin, the cleaning products, the taxes etc. There a many other costs that I won’t delve into, else it would take time. In any case I don’t think that I’m going below minimum wage by taking all of those into account.

I won’t describe the price of Cloudbuster in details either, I have a margin of around 45-50€ per cloudbuster sold. That’s enough to cover my work time, trips, packaging, etc.

Hence, in summary, here’s a small overview of the costs and margins that I have, not very big, but sufficient for my taste. It’s amply sufficient to cover of my costs, once all initial investments will be met. For the moment I’m still covering my initial investments, the moulds, the material to transport the barrels, the sanding machines, the dosing recipients for resin, a planning machine (to make wood shavings, that are not included in the costs, nut come to less than 1€ for ~50 TBs) and other tools and materials.

I do this activity because I live making orgonite, it’s been many years that I made them at cost for friends, giving my time while I had student allocations; that also allowed me to gift orgonites in many countries (place orgonites in nature, cities, lakes/seas/oceans to clean pollutions of all kinds). Since my studies are over, I’d like to live of that activity, while still helping the planet, the people and at the same time finance other gifting expeditions to keep on placing orgonites all around France and even Europe, as I did when I was a student.
I love gifting (offering orgonites to the nature/planet) to make the energies of the planet and nature better. I hope you understand that all you order from me will serve me to continue doing that once all my initial costs are covered, I won’t forget to let you know what’s happening!