Before you pay a booth fee, find out how much you have to sell to cover it. A cheap booth at a quiet show can lose money, and an expensive booth at a busy one can be well worth it. The only way to know is to run the numbers before you send the check. This short video shows the free booth break-even calculator at break-even.cc, which needs no sign-up.
How It Works
- Enter the booth fee. The check you'd write to the organizer.
- Enter what the day costs you. The other costs of doing that show.
- Enter your average price. What a typical item sells for.
- Enter what each item costs to make. Your cost per item.
The calculator shows your break-even number, and a slider shows your profit at any number sold.
Don't Stop at the Booth Fee
The booth fee is the obvious cost, but it isn't the only one. Gas or mileage, lodging for an out-of-town show, food for the day and anything you bought just for this show all count. Put them in and you get the real break-even, not just the number that covers the organizer.
Then Ask If You Can Hit It
Once you have the number, the question is whether that show can realistically get you there. The slider helps here: drag it to what you think you'd actually sell and see what's left. My earlier post on break-even for craft fair booth fees walks through the formula with an example.
If you log your actual sales for each show, you build up a history of how each one does against its break-even, and that makes next year's calendar much easier to plan.
Part of VendorTools
This is one of the VendorTools tools, a set of free calculators and checklists for craft fair and market vendors. You can see the rest in my VendorTools hub post. If you want to track every show, your sales and your costs in one place, that is what FairKeep is for, and my FairKeep overview covers what it does.
More short how-tos on the VARØ Industries YouTube channel.
More short how-tos on the VARØ Industries YouTube channel.