Fursuit Expense

[TheFamousFurry]

I don’t understand why Fursuits are so expensive 

[Wuff-Wuff]

Hmmh~ I'm certainly no expert here, but I could imagine that most are hand made (no industrial production cutting down time and cost). Looking at a few websites that offer fursuits I've seen them take from half a year up to a year.

I guess you could look at it as tailor-made clothes with so much added to it (the fur itself, the paws and the often very detailed head). Good fabric alone can cost a lot. I'm pretty sure fursuit material doesn't come cheap either.

But this is just guess work  would be interesting to hear from someone who actually makes them. I've only dabbled in making simple medieval clothes.

[ZaraRa]

I used to be a fursuit maker - half of it comes down to the materials! Let me illustrate what I mean, starting with fur...
Fur is the most important part of making a fursuit. You know how soft and fluffy suits look? That relies directly on the quality of the fur. The cheap faux fur used in fancy dress costumes ends up looking patchy, matted, and greasy  in case you wondered why those Buyee Wholesale suits always look scraggled.
Good quality faux fur will set you back anywhere from £30 to £60 for a metre - to make a fullsuit, you need approximately 6.5 metres... So if we assume £45 per metre, that is already £293 - and that's before we've looked at foam, AND assuming that you only want one colour. 
If you're using the 'foam bucket head' method, you'll need a yard of half-inch foam, which will set you back a further £50 - assume you want digitigrade legs, that's another £100.

Before we've looked at starting to -work- on this thing, for a uniform-colour fursuit of foam and fur, we've already spent £443 

Not to mention polyfil, duct-tape dummies, resin or silicone pieces for eyes, tails, and jaws, thread....

THEN we get to man hours. crafting an entire body suit and sewing it takes many, many hours. To work minimum wage, which is £11.44 in the U.K, even just working on the suit for 40 hours would bring up the cost to almost £1000!
And we do want fursuit makers to work minimum wage; without letting us be paid the bare minimum for our work (we don't make a profit off of the £500+ spent on materials!) then there wouldn't be fursuit makers - you'd think that fursuit makers would be rich, but most of the time, many of us end up working at a loss, under minimum wage, where we might as well be working a service job - but we don't, for the love of the game. It's a dedication of love, truly, and I am so, so very thankful to see rates going up; we've all been working at a loss for decades, it's high time we were able to actually make a living out of our passion 

I hope this makes sense.