The 5% discount rule and the slaughter game

My father Renato Niccacci taught me the basic rules of selling ceramics when I was a little girl. One thing I learned from him is that if a customer asks for a discount, you cannot say "no" and the maximum you may offer is a 5% discount. I think this is the answer of an honest artisan. If you give a higher discount, that means you were asking for a higher price to start with or in some cases you are under pressure because of recession times, if we think of nowadays. This makes sense.

In my experience at Cama I never had to negotiate with customers and there was a lot of respect for the work of my family and workshop. Therefore at the workshop I applied the 5% rule.

Another important point is that customers always came back to Cama for her quality and for the services we offered. This was one of the most rewarding experiences I had as a sales assistant. Based on the quality of the products, the service and care, customers brought more and more customers by word of mouth, creating a community of friends of friends. A wonderful enchanted world with some echoing of the world around us in Deruta but enough to know that we were successful.

As you know Cama has recently interruped her production and I look forward to the reopening that I wish to happen within 2012 at a different address. While waiting for this to happen, I am taking clients to other workshops in Deruta for the first time in my life: a new world is opening up in front of my eyes!

Yesterday I had the opportunity of meeting my first small group of visitors. I have a story to tell because I watched a slaughter game. I will describe herewith what happened with notes of the critical points. I hope this will be of help.

We did a brief tour of downtown and visits to a couple of large producers in the lower part of town. I learned a lot of interesting information. First of all the first competitors of Deruta are not the Chinese or the Romanian but the Deruta artisans themselves, they are all competitors. This I knew from my previous experience. Second in Deruta there are no regulations in the prices applied. Actually most of the time there are no price tags at all. No rules for discounts. No rules for shipping costs. Differences apply if you buy from a workshop or from a store. Some places carry imported ceramics. Really puzzling. Third thing, lots of dust on their ceramics.

I took the group to a collegue's workshop in Deruta for the tour of the factory. This workshop has reasonable prices. Quality is acceptable on some pieces, other pieces are ordinary but they carries one variation of the Raffaellesco dinnerware I really like. Customers were interested in two Raffaellesco full place setting with accessories and another customer was interested in a different set. The customers decided they wanted to compare the selected items with other producers, therefore they would be back. Customers came back to the workshop asking for the same lower price they had found elsewhere. She said she couldn't afford such a discount which was about 25% from the original price. After some back and forth, at the end the workshop did not do the sale. What happened is that the customers bought their ceramics sets from an individual ceramicist who offered a variation of the same pattern, shipment included, for the price they had decided to spend on a Raffaellesco dinnerware set, offering them a big discount.

On my side I made the mistake of not following the group for the whole time. I waited at the workshop like I used to do at Cama. Therefore I did not see the products they purchased. I do not know what the quality level of the product was, I do not know if there is lead in the painting nor if the shipping service is reliable as well as their insurance service and so on. By doing some research afterwards, this ceramicist is possibly using the decal for the dragons and the rest of the product is handmade. By following them I might have warned them about what they were buying.

Moral of the tale: Customers bought the lowest price. Customers bought the price. For Deruta this can be a slaughter game. Now I am thinking about what I can do to help both, the customers and the producers. I am feeling concerned.