Craft Show Pricing

Determining the Price You Charge at Craft Shows

I am "hopefully" going to get into a craft fair this year.

I was just wondering the calculations to use to figure out the price of the finished product to sell at the craft fair.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Tammy

Be sure to keep very careful records about everything you spend to produce your crafts. Materials are pretty straightforward.

If you're making beaded jewelry for example and buy a pound of beads, count how many beads that is (No, I'm not kidding!), calculate what each bead cost you and write that on the label.

Next time you make a necklace using twenty of those beads, you can easily figure that portion of your material cost.

You need to do this for every component of your craft. I do computer graphics where ink is the highest cost component. I've figured that a color ink cartridge yields 200 copies on average and a black one yields about 600.

How did I figure that? I put in two new cartridges and kept a tally of every page I printed until the quality started to deteriorate.

The only way you can make sure you are making a profit is to know your costs. Don't forget little things like the glassine bags you use to protect your product or the product labels or business cards. If the craft fair requires an entry fee or a portion of your proceeds, you need to cover that cost too.

Finally, there are a few things you can't directly quantify, like depreciation of your computer printer. Eventually it will wear out or become obsolete and need replacing. For my graphic art business, I need a new state-of-the-art printer about every year and a half. For components like that, you need to allow a little wiggle room in your pricing.

Once you have a reasonable idea of the cost of each product, you need to look to the market to determine your maximal price - the price that will maximize your profit without driving the customers away.

Good luck at your first craft fair! You may also want to read my article on Craft Retailing for some tips on selling at craft fairs.

A very good book that might help you a lot is The Ultimate Guide to Jewelry Booth Selling. One section of the book talks about creating "perceived value" for your crafts. This section alone is worth the price of the book.