How to Prepare for Your First Craft Fair

Making a living as an artist is not as simple as making the art and then selling it. There's a lot that goes on between that process of creation and the final sale. Maybe you've been making a lot of arts or crafts and you want to take your work to the marketplace. If you've tried Etsy or eBay without much success, you might have decided to set up a table at your local craft fair or a nearby art sale. Don't make the mistake of simply packing up your items and heading to the sale without a little work and research before the sale.

INVENTORY

First things first: do you have enough work to fill your table at a sale? A half-empty table doesn't draw a lot of traffic, so if you don't have much, consider sharing the space with a friend. On the other hand. having too much work overflowing and cluttering your table can make it difficult for a buyer to find what she wants. It's always better to have too much stuff though, because having an "overstock" container under your table is perfect to filling in spaces when you make sales.

So how do you decide how much is enough or too much? Here's where the research comes into play. Visit at least one big craft fair or art sale before your sale. Sure, you've attended these events before, but you'll be going with a new perspective and a notebook for jotting down ideas. First, look at the different kinds of booths and displays. When you find something similar to what you will be selling, pay close attention to how the artist chose to display his items. You should never copy someone's display schematic exactly, but make note of what works and what doesn't work for you.

Are prices displayed visibly? Do shoppers seem to be enjoying the set up or breezing right past. You're not here to shop; you are here for research, so pay attention to what's going on behind the scenes. Do quick counts of how many items are on each display. Look at price ranges: what's the lowest priced item? what's most expensive? Just visiting a craft fair before your own can give you invaluable information that will help when your sale comes.

Think, too, of your inventory in terms of money. If you want to make $100 in sales and you only take $100 worth of merchandise, you are probably not going to achieve your goal. I'm willing to bet that you will never sell every single item that you choose to display. A good rule of thumb is to take 3 times the inventory as the goal you want to achieve. For the example above, you'd take $300 in merchandise. If you find this overwhelming, consider that if you don't sell your work at this sale, you'll have a nice inventory built up for your next sale. If you add a few new pieces each time you do a sale, pretty soon you'll have a great inventory for sales all through the summer. Come fall, you can either find indoor craft fairs and art sales or find stores to carry your work on consignment.

PRICING YOUR WORK

The next thing you need to considering when you prepare for your first craft fair is pricing of your work. Many artists, especially beginning artists, make the mistake of charging too much or too little for their work. Pricing is a bit arbitrary, of course, because each person has her own method for determining the value of her work, but one thing that's true across the board is that the price must react to what a buyer will pay for the item. When you visited a craft fair or art sale, one thing you looked at were the prices of work being sold by other artists, so you already know what other people are charging, but before you decide to undercut everyone with a lower price, you have to consider both the actual cost of your work in terms of materials, time, and overhead and also the perceived value of your work by a buyer.

When I design a new item for my Literary Tease jewelry line, I like to ask lots of people both how much they think I should charge and what they think of the price I've decided on for the item. Sometimes, the price they think before I tell them is higher or lower, which helps me determine a perceived value for the work. Then, their reaction to the price I've set well help me decide if I'm close to a fair price. Some people always price high, some low, which is why I ask at least 3 or 4 people what they think. Still, I always have a "floor" price, which is the lowest I can go and have selling the item still be worth my time.

So how do you determine prices for your own work?

First, work out the exact materials cost for the piece. This includes all supplies and packaging. If you used one package of clay to make ten pieces, then divide the cost of the clay by 10 to determine the cost per item. This can be a little tedious, but you need to do it in order to accurately determine pricing. This is A.

Next, determine how long it took you to make the item. This can be difficult to estimate when you are working in series on a project that has a lot of steps, but do your best to accurately guesstimate the time it would take you to replicate the item if you were able to create it in ideal circumstances with no breaks or no required drying times. This is B. This should be in hours, when 1 hour = 1. So if a item took you five minutes, your number will be 5 / 60, or .083.

Decide how much you want to pay yourself per hour. Don't just say you want $50 an hour if you are starting out; you have to be reasonable based on your skill level and compared to what you could make per hour in another field, i.e. the "real" world. If you make $10 an hour at your current job, start off paying yourself $10 an hour in your craft business. You can always adjust this hourly rate later. I've been making jewelry and accessories for 8 years. I have a bachelor's degree. I could pay myself more, but I've settled on $20 an hour as a number that I'm happy with for now. I do work part-time, too, and I make between $15 - $30 an hour for my other work, depending on what classes I'm doing at the time. Making jewelry and doing sales is fun for me, even if it's exhausting. In a lot of ways, it's less work that the time I put into doing my $30 per hour jewelry classes, mostly because I consider making my craft a relaxing and enjoyable way to spend my time. I also feel like $20 an hour is a realistic number for me to achieve with the work that I am doing. If you do more time-consuming or difficult work, you might need a highly hour wage. Your hourly wage is X.

Now, figure out your overhead costs for one year of making your art. Do you pay monthly studio fees? Do you pay for website hosting? How much are you paying for craft fair or art sale fees? Are you paying for transportation to and from festivals? Even if you are brand new and just starting out, you need to take this into consideration. If you don't know, make your best reasonable guess at operating costs you might incur during the year. Do not include materials costs in this number. Your total overhead costs is C.

Divide C by 2080. This will give you the amount you need to make per hour to cover your overhead costs for the year, assuming that you are working on your craft 40 hours a week. If you aren't quite there yet, it's still useful information should you make the leap later. This is D.

Now to figure out the cost of your item:

A + (B * X) + (B * D) = Items Cost = IC

But, wait, don't stop there! If you sell your items at the IC number, you aren't going to make any money; you are only going to break even. Most artists add a percentage to their IC to determine both wholesale and retail pricing. Do you need to worry about wholesale pricing when you are just starting out? In a word: yes! What if someone approaches you about wholesale pricing when you are a craft sale? If you are selling your work at the wholesale price, your buyer will want a 50% discount (on average). Which means that you will do a lot of work for the order and end up losing money because you'll be selling at your bare minimum IC.

What to do? Many artists recommend multiplying your IC by 2 to get the wholesale price. Then multiply that number again for your retail price. When you do craft fairs or art sales, these artists say you should always sell at the retail price. This makes sense because if you do end up selling your work wholesale or on consignment, your stores won't want to see you underselling them at craft fairs. Its up to you how much you stick with this pricing. I tend to mark my prices on some items a little below retail for when I sell in person. For example, I sell pendants for $12 on consignment. For each one I sell, I get $7. At craft fairs, I sell the pendants for $10, and I get all of that. I don't do that for everything though. My pocket mirrors are $5 whether they are in a store or in person with me. It just depends on you.

Plan a range of prices for your craft fair booth. You'll find some inexpensive items under $5 will end up making you a good amount of money because you'll sell them in volume. I had a jewelry sale yesterday where I sold cute little flower rings for $3 each. I started the day with 14 and ended with 4. I would have sold more, too, if I'd had more because people asked for multiples of certain colors and I couldn't meet that demand. I made $30 from a cute little item that didn't cost must to make and didn't take long either. Don't discount the money-making possibility of inexpensive items either: every single item in my Literary Tease line is $25 or less. I have to sell a lot of items to make money, but I know that I end the day making a lot more than the people who sold less items at a higher price. There's something about a lower priced item that makes people more inclined to buy it. It helps, I think, that, if I do say myself, my items are super-cute and unique, too.

Learn more: Read about tables, tents, and weights for your outdoor craft show.