Cookie cutters, cakepans & more, made to order

• Register the domain "Frankencutters.com".  I think that costs about $15/year, and you can register for 5 years at a time.
• Find a webhosting company (I use ValueWeb). That costs about $230 per year, including pop email hosting.  I really have to have pop email, rather than just a free webmail account.
• Setup a few email addresses  for FrankenCutters.

• Labor - To estimate labor cost, I keep a lot of records, especially for repeat order customers.  On the work sheet for making the cutter I often write down how many minutes each phase of the operation took (cutting the copper strips, bending the cutter, soldering, adding a handle, cleaning, packing it up.)  I can use those numbers to estimate similar cutters accurately.  This is especially useful for big things like multicutters.
      I also created a database template (Microsoft Access) which I use sometimes for bigger items.  It gives me a template with a lot of entry fields.  I enter how many minutes for each operation, how many square inches of copper, how many cutters (for multicutters), time to add the handle, etc...  I also have fields for the current cost of copper, and for dollars per hour for labor.  It then calculates a selling price for that particular item.
• The copper (or aluminum) price is a small percentage.of the cost, even though the cost of copper has just about tripled since I started doing this.  The cost of aluminum is roughly 1/4 of copper, but I can't solder it, and it's thicker, so it won't work for cookie cutters, just cakepans.
  
• The cost of solder, propane (for soldering), plastic bags, rivets (for cakepans) - This is a tiny percentage of the cutter price.
  
• Tools - Other than a metal shear and bar-folder, there aren't any big tools, just small, custom-modified handtools, and a lot of custom-made bending jigs and fixtures.  So tooling doesn't enter into the price much at all.
  
• Office expense - Again, not much.  I have a few computers, printers, scanners.  There are expenses for paper, ink, toner, blank CD's, etc... but it's not much expense at all.  I don't believe in buying the latest version of anything. And computers and printers are very cheap at yard sales.
  

-Cut a strip of copper to 1" width and approximate length
-Bend copper until it looks like the design
-Trim ends (if needed), and solder ends
-Clean up cutter with special tool
-Pack & ship cutter order

This is done with a custom Access database I created around 2006.  I enter the information such as date of order, ship date, payment info, item descriptions and prices, etc...  From this database I print the invoice and shipping label.

Every cutter is heat sealed into a food-grade plastic bag then packed in a box (most often, a Priority Mail box from the Post Office).  Around the items I use recycled plastic grocery bags or newspaper.