Variety vs. Consistency....

What sells better for pelts?

One or two of a color, but with the selection of many colors,

OR

Several of the same color, to give enough to make large projects.

What's your experience?

I have only ever sold one pelt, and it's to someone who won't be much of a steady customer, so I'm not sure what I should be concentrating on if I want to be able to make selling the pelts a way to pay for pellets.

Thanks for opinions in advance!

It depends on who your selling to, and if you plan on selling raw or tanned skins, and who your competition is.

Hand tanned pelts are labor intensive and can be somewhat expensive in materials.

If you use a tannery you'll have to add their fees+shipping to the total price of your pelts.


Offering bulk discounts isn't a good idea. (too much work/not enough money) I mean, just imagine actually tanning as many pelts as it would take to make a blanket. People looking to make large projects like that are often looking for the least expensive source of skins they can find.

They will generally find that buying directly from a tannery or china is less expensive than going through a rabbit raiser who has to pay the tannery and shipping, or tan them all by hand. Not saying customers like that don't exist, but you don't want to put yourself in a position where your customers are too few and far between.
I also strongly suggest being creative and opening up new markets anywhere you can. It will mean thinking outside the box a bit.
Your prices will never be able to directly compete with industries already in place. They already have the money invested, man power, machines, and even govt support to bring their prices down lower than anything individuals can produce by hand.

So the best bet is to provide something a large industry isn't already providing.

My own experience was that niche markets and crafters were willing to shell out more money for fewer pelts, so long as you had exactly what they wanted, and everyone wanted something different.

So variety is important there.

I hand tan each pelt, and have only sold one so far to a friend for a project at $10. It was a very small Jr pelt.

Since I alum tan materials are fairly cheap, but yes, it can be labor intensive. I want to re-open an old etsy store that I had and sell the pelts from there. There are very few people who actually want that kind of stuff around here, so I think I'll have the best customer base there. I'm not looking to make bank or turn a profit off of this project, I'm just hoping to make some of my feed costs back.

I was mainly asking because I have two NZX does that I was debating whether I wanted to keep now that I have the champagnes, but I can get more colors out of the NZ's. (Chestnut, chinchilla, blue, black, torts, steels, etc. all solid and broken) They do eat about twice as much as any other rabbit I own, but if they'll throw more pelts that will help recoup some of the feed costs than they can stay. Now if only TSC would get my cage wire in so I can finish the extra cages for them...

You could try posting a few of each color and see what sells?

Is there a way to post on there somewhere that you are able to provide greater amounts of the champage pelts for larger projects if needed?

A champagne blanket would be amazing...but the labor involved in hand fleshing and breaking that many pelts would be intense.
It's hard for one person to commit to that much work. Just doing pelts for stuffed animals, trim, or a collar or hood liner for a coat wouldn't be so bad.
Oh,
Etsy is a great site that allows you to sell all over the place, but it can be difficult to get exposure because there is often a lot of competition, so you'll want to advertise your etsy page on as many other websites as possible.

My current rabbits are being designed to produce craft grade pelts. Rainbows of unusual colors, long thick dense fur, a standup quality like SF, a lot of guard hair to best show off the colors.
Appetites like SF instead of voracious NZs, but with pretty decent grow out rates. I haven't even decided when I'm going to get back into selling pelts, but when I do, it will be with the right bunnies for my needs!

They won't be anywhere near as good for garments as rex are, but will make nice plushy things and craft projects.

Rabbit guard hair sheds or breaks easily, which is part of why it's not preferred for garments. It's just not durable stuff.

But people are willing to look closer when you attach words like sustainable, organic, cruelty free, or even chrome-free.

The coats on the NZ crosses are actually kind of scrawny, but I'll see how they turn out crossed to the champagnes, hoping it will bump up the density a bit. The first litter is due in 10 days. Keeping my fingers crossed they're decent.

I would love to get back into rex if I could find a more local source. The last trio I got were from a much higher elevation and couldn't take the heat here. There are a lot of breeders around, but few that live where it's a comparable temp to here, not to mention, I'm running out of cage space!

I've seen the picks of your two little does for your pelt project, they look lovely!