Dea Amilo

RedBubble may seem all lovey dovey and like they’re here to support the community and the artists but the truth is it’s about money. I mean just look at the prices, the base price for a card is £1.75 with tax it’s £2.10 in total… (which is 20% VAT even though I’m from the UK where it’s supposed to be 15%) Meaning if I give myself 0% then I can sell a card to you for £2.10 which is expensive in card terms even for a well printed card.

I can buy in Shared Earth, a fair traide, paper recycled card designed by an artist for £2.25 and thats in a store, than doesn’t charge for shipping to their customers, is eco-friendly and being sold in a store that is staffed which we all know it’s more expensive to run stores than online hence why so many business are going under to online competition.

I’d really love to be able to give my art work to people cheaply… I don’t want you to have to pay through the nose because you’re supporting many small time artists who have no way of getting their work to the world without the aid of a bigger company but should we really have to charge a minimum of £2.10?

So as an artist I would have to charge 7%, the tax office gets 15 or 20% (because the VAT is messed up on the sell part) and what does the leave for redbubble? A whopping 78 or 73% (if they are paying the government 20% for no apparent reason). Just to sell mine the same price as Shared Earth. Red bubble is making a fortune off YOUR art!

Asda will print an A6 card for you for £1.92, including tax and they aren’t pretending to be charging you a base price but a price where they are making profit. If you order 100 you can get them for as little as 48.9p per card. Oh and you can pick a verse to go in the middle of your card too.

So I will no longer be selling my art via red bubble, hopefully one day I can set up an independent way of printing. Perhaps I will order 100 off asda and gradually sell them but for now I do not have the means. I will leave my artwork and photos online… I may even add a few and hopefully one day I can direct you to somewhere where I will be selling them.