Chris, I don't think wood can be lumped together in such a category like that. If you go to those same craft fairs, you'll also see handmade bags and paintings selling for $20 or less. Heck, one show I went to I was sitting next to an 87 year old woman who knits dish towels and sells them for $2 each!!! My point is though, that although you CAN buy cheap items like that at craft fairs, it has more to do with the venue than the product. If you went to a craft show and said "handbags and paintings are percieved as cheap" because they are cheap by amatures at craft shows, that's not true in all cases. Go buy a Birkenstock handbag or go to an art gallery and buy a painting. Not cheap at all!! People with the money will know that there is a difference between your really nice wood pens and the kindling you see at some shows. Like any product there's a market for everyone. I will never go back to the show with the towel lady, and I won't even consider another 'craft' show again. It's not a good market for me and I sold almost nothing. But I will look into juried shows like the Washington D.C. Pen Show.
Wood is a pain to deal with at times, and to sell high end pens to very discriminating customers that demand perfection is very challenging. You have to REALLY know what you're doing, from the marketing, design, wood selection, customer service, etc. But keep in mind, you're in a whole different "class" of customer when you're dealing with 'discretionary' pens like the ones most of us sell.
I have to respectfully disagree with your statement about wood being percieved as inferior. I actually have the opposite experience with my customers. My exotic wood pens are more in demand than the acrylics (though it depends on the gender....men like wood more I've found!). If you think about the really high end Mercedes, Bentley, etc, a lot of times what make the interior so nice is the wood burl trim pieces they put in the cars. The discriminating customer will recognize that in order to harness the natural beauty of wood it takes a great deal of skill and craftsmanship. And since most brand name pens out there are not dealing with wood, it makes it all that much rarer.
Enough rambling. There is no hard fast rule here, and your customers are on the opposite side of the globe than mine, so we're bound to have different experiences!! I fully and completely sympathize with the problems you're having with wood pens. But I have a passion for them, and to me the wood has an intrinsic value that you can't find from man made materials so I keep coming back to them. And in the end, the passion you have for your products will sell them as much as the product themselves. My passion is what literally got me into the pen business in the first place, so I will follow my own passion which is for wood, even with all of its imperfections:biggrin:
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