Finding customers in Milan without underselling: the problem isn't demand, it's positioning

“There is too much competition in Milan, I have to keep my prices low.” It is the line you hear most often from people who work with their hands in this city, and it is almost always the wrong diagnosis. Not because the competition isn't real, but because price is not the lever holding you back: in Milan the money is there and the people are there, and that isn't a hunch.

When bookings don't come, the cause is hardly ever demand: it is that nobody can work out in thirty seconds what you do, who it is for, and why it should cost what it costs.

The demand in Milan is real, and it isn't a hunch

Milan has for years been the provincial capital with the highest average declared income in Italy: that is what the tax statistics of the Ministry of Economy and Finance show, tax return after tax return, placing it at the top of the ranking of provincial capitals by a clear margin over the national average. It means the customer in front of you has, on average, spending headroom that doesn't exist elsewhere.

And it isn't only declared income, it is actual spending. In Istat's surveys of household consumption, Lombardy sits consistently above the national average for monthly spending: people here don't only earn more, they spend more too. That is the context you are selling in, and it counts.

On top of that comes a flow of visitors few Italian cities have in quite the same shape: Milan is Italy's leading destination for business travel and short breaks, with one of the highest shares of foreign guests in the country. They don't stay long, often they are here for work, and they are after something to do that isn't yet another museum.

Put together the nearly 1.4 million residents of the municipality, the 3.2 million of the metropolitan area, that spending power and that flow: if your workshop isn't filling up, it is not because people can't afford it.

Your competitor is not the other ceramicist

This is where the argument about price falls apart. People cut their rates because they picture themselves competing with the other pottery studio three metro stops away. But on a Saturday afternoon the Milanese customer isn't choosing between two pottery classes: they are choosing between your class, an exhibition, a long brunch, a day trip to the lakes and an afternoon on the sofa. The real competitor is free time, and free time is not won with a ten-euro discount: it is won by giving a reason.

That reason is what the jargon calls positioning: in practice it is the answer to a very ordinary question, why should someone choose you in particular. In a city with an enormous supply of things to do it has to be readable in seconds, before the eye reaches the price. And the answers that work are almost always specific.

• A stated outcome, not a generic activity: not “pottery workshop” but “your own mug, thrown and glazed, ready to collect fired two weeks later”.
• A precise audience: people who have never touched clay, people who tried once, a couple, a group of colleagues.
• A time slot that fits the day of someone who actually lives here: the evening after work, early Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon.
• A location explained the way a Milanese would explain it: the metro stop and the minutes on foot, not just the street address.
• Proof that the experience is worth it: reviews from people who genuinely attended, and the objects that came out of participants' hands, not only your own finest pieces.

None of these points is about price: they are all about clarity. Which is why, for a comparable offer, in Milan the winner is whoever explains themselves best, not whoever charges least.

Why discounting costs more in Milan than elsewhere

Cutting the price is the instinctive reaction to an empty calendar. It has two drawbacks, and in Milan both weigh heavier than elsewhere.

The first is arithmetic. Milan is among the Italian cities where keeping a space open costs the most: rents per square metre are the highest in Italy, well above the national average. A studio here starts with a fixed-cost base that doesn't exist elsewhere, and every euro taken off the price weighs double: you are taking it out of a margin that is already thinner.

The second is about perception, and it does the most damage. In a crowded market, where the buyer cannot judge quality before trying, price becomes the first available clue. A three-hour workshop at twenty-five euros does not communicate good value: it communicates “probably something quick, run with twenty people in the room”. Anyone after a real experience skips it; anyone after a cheap filler books it, and then doesn't come back, because they were never looking for you.

Same effort, less money, and a lowered price is extremely hard to raise again: customers who have already booked will read the return to a fair figure as a price rise.

Building the price: the five items to account for

A price isn't decided by feel: it is calculated, then tested against the market. There are five items to line up, and almost every mistake comes from forgetting at least two of them.

1. Your time, all of it. Not just the hours in the room: set-up, welcoming people, cleaning, firing, messages, bookings. A three-hour session easily takes up five or six.
2. Materials, including waste. Clay, leather, yarn, wax, glass: count what is needed plus what gets ruined, because with beginners it always does.
3. The fixed share of the space. Rent, utilities, insurance, depreciation of kilns and equipment, divided by the hours in which the space genuinely earns, not by the hours it is open.
4. Collection and admin costs. Payment fees, the time spent on receipts and invoices, taxes: inside the price from the start, not discovered at the end of the year.
5. The margin. It is not a luxury: it is what lets you buy a new glaze, rebuild the website or take a week off without shutting up shop.

Once the sum is done, the number it produces has to be compared with what others are asking. Not in order to fall in line, but to know where you are placing yourself: a price above average is perfectly defensible, as long as you can say precisely what justifies it.

The number that matters isn't the price, it's the fill rate

There is a technical reason why discounting rarely pays. The costs of a session are almost entirely fixed: your time, the space and firing the kiln do not change whether there are four people in the room or eight. The only genuinely variable item is materials.

So the margin does not move by lowering the list price: it moves by filling the room. Six places sold out of six at full price earn more than double what ten places at half price bring in when you sell five of them: the same session, the same hours, more than twice the takings. Before touching the figure, look at the chain: how many people saw the listing, how many opened it, how many started booking and stopped. The leak is almost always there.

Workshops as a second income stream (and as a way in)

For anyone making objects in Milan, running workshops is not a stopgap for topping up income: it is a second leg to stand on, and it has two properties that selling product does not.

The first is that the revenue doesn't pass through stock. A place in the room needn't be made in advance, doesn't go unsold, doesn't take up shelf space: you sell time and skill, not the object. For a studio carrying Milanese fixed costs, a stream that ties up no capital changes how you get through the months when sales slow down.

The second is more interesting. Someone who spends three hours trying to centre a shape on the wheel leaves with an understanding of your craft that no shop window can convey: they have felt how hard it is and how many attempts go wrong. Faced with one of your properly made mugs they no longer think “that's expensive”, they think “I know what goes into it”. A workshop is the cheapest way there is to explain the price of your product, because you don't explain it: the person who tried works it out alone.

• Participants buy afterwards: the lopsided piece made in the room becomes the desire for the one made properly.
• Participants tell the story: an afternoon with dirty hands is worth recounting, a purchase in a shop is not.
• Participants come back with others: presents, birthdays, groups of friends. And in Milan, where the concentration of companies is extremely high, corporate enquiries very often come from someone who first attended as a private customer.

Where a platform helps, and where it doesn't

Worth saying plainly. Handsome is an Italian platform for artisan workshops with zero commission: it does not take a percentage of the price of your workshops. On the subject of this article the difference is concrete: if a platform takes a cut of every booking, either you raise your price to cover it — becoming more expensive without being any better — or it eats into the margin you have just calculated.

The rest deserves saying too: Handsome has only just arrived in Milan, and there is not yet a Maker in the city with a published calendar, so today the Milan page is still waiting to be filled. And no platform, this one included, brings customers automatically: anyone promising that is selling something else. What a platform can remove is friction: a readable listing, online payment, instant confirmation, reviews collected only from people who genuinely attended. Positioning and price remain your work.

And that is the part nobody can do for you. In Milan the audience is there and it has above-average spending power. What is usually missing is a clear sentence about what happens during your three hours, and a price that doesn't apologise for existing.