How Much Money Should you Make at your First Craft Show?

A “successful craft show” is different for everyone. So many factors can impact sales and revenue, profits, and potential for after-event-sales depend on what you’re selling. 

However, this article will help you determine if a craft show was a success for your business.

Start by knowing your costs

Selling products at craft shows isn’t as simple as “I sold $100 worth of products, so I made $100”.

It’s likely you spent more than $100 on materials for products, booth fees, and production wages.

You can get as detailed as you like with tracking expenses and wages.

But in the startup phase, it’s unlikely you’ve worked on everything you need to build a business (e.g. building a website, creating a lookbook, etc.), so you won’t know what all of your overhead expenses are yet.

For your first few craft shows, I would focus on tracking:

• material costs for your products
• production wages (the time you spent making products multiplied by your hourly wage)
• craft show fees (again, you can keep things simple and look at just your booth fee, or account for any expense associated with the event; parking fees, gas, wages for your time selling at the event, etc.)

Although I advocate for paying yourself an hourly wage, during the startup phase, it’s okay to put in more hours than you pay yourself for. At this stage, you may not want to track every hour you spend on your business (e.g. shopping for materials, mocking up your craft show display, setting up your socials so people can find you after the event, etc.), but you should eventually.

I do suggest tracking your production hours/wages from the start and ensuring your product’s prices cover those (and then some).

It’s likely your first few craft shows will be about testing the waters and seeing if you have a viable business. Once you move past that phase, it will be important to track all your business costs and your wages and ensure your prices and sales cover them.

 

Good: Covering COGS + Booth Fee

When you take your revenue and subtract your cost of goods sold (COGS), do you have enough money left to cover your booth fee?

If yes, you’ve done fairly well.

Costs of goods sold are the direct costs of products sold during a specific period (e.g. at a craft show).

Direct costs of products sold will be the money spent on materials and wages for production, as well as the cost of the sold product’s price tag, the shopping bag you put it in, etc.

If I make 50 items but only sell 25 of them, I would only calculate my costs for the 25 that I sold.

So let’s say I’m selling pencil cases:

I spend:

• • $3 on fabric for each pencil case
  • $1 on a zipper
  • $0.20 on tag/shopping bag
  • $3.75 on production wages

COGS = $7.95

Let’s say my retail price for each pencil case is $30 and I sell 8 pencil cases at the craft show.

Revenue = $240

COGS = $63.60 ($7.95 x 8 sold)

After covering my COGS, I have $176.40 (240 – 63.60)

If I paid $150 for my craft show booth, after subtracting COGS, I have enough money to cover my booth fee. 

$176.40 – $150 = $26.40

Although I have $26.40 left, it’s not technically profits because I haven’t included all my costs in this calculation. I would have spent money on travel/parking, food for the day, display elements, etc.

However, I covered my booth fee and gathered important information to help me improve at the next craft show. So I would call it a success (for it being my first one).

 

Excellent: Covering ALL Event-Related Costs & Profiting

You’ve done really well if you sell at your first craft show and earn enough revenue to cover:

1. COGS
2. Craft show fee
3. Craft show-related costs (e.g. parking, food, gas, business cards, shopping bags, transaction fees, etc.)
4. Craft show-related wages (e.g. wages for you time spent marketing the event on social media, packing up for the event, setting up your display, selling during the event, etc.)
5. And have money left (which are your profits)

Not every event will be a winner. There are always elements out of everyone’s control that can impact how many shoppers show up and how much they buy. But if you’re profiting from the majority of craft shows you sell at, you’re doing amazing.

Of course, there is more to calculating a business’s costs and profits, but this is a simplified look at revenue, costs, and profit for your first craft show.

 

Pivoting Required: Not covering booth fee

With each sale, you’ll automatically cover COGS (costs of goods sold), if you’ve priced your products properly. But you’ll need several sales to help cover the cost of your booth fee.

Before signing up for an event, do some rough math to determine how many sales you’ll have to make to cover your booth fee.

For example:

COGS = $7.95

Retail price of products I’m selling = $30

Gross profit (i.e. money that is left to cover other expenses + wages) = $22.05 ($30 – $7.95)

Craft show booth fee = $1500

I would need to sell 68 pencil cases to cover my booth fee (booth fee ($1500) divided by gross profit ($22.05).

If selling, or even making 68 pencil cases seemed like a lot, I probably wouldn’t apply to the event.

Choose events that set you up for success and don’t apply too much pressure when you’re just starting.

If you thought you’d be able to make enough sales to cover your booth fee and you were short, consider the following:

How many people attended the event?

If very few shoppers showed up and no one did well, take that into account. You may still have changes to make to your business/products, but you didn’t get your products in front of enough shoppers to gather valuable information to base changes on.

How many people stopped at your table?

If you had a lot of shoppers stop at your table but very few purchased, analyze the details of your products.

Shoppers stopping tells you they have an initial interest in your products.

What details do they uncover once they take a closer look?

It may be that they’re interested in your products, but the craftsmanship needs some work. Or perhaps your prices made them decide not to buy (prices that are higher or lower than a shopper is expecting can both turn people off from buying).

Try to analyze the event and determine what caused the low sales for you. How were your booth/business/products different from the vendors who did seem to make a lot of sales? Can you make a few adjustments that might help you improve sales for the next show?

Did you get many leads?

Sometimes a product isn’t as well-suited for craft show sales, but craft shows can generate leads. For example, original pieces of art might be a higher price point than most craft show shoppers spend. But you may have had lots of shoppers interested in your art, who didn’t buy, but did take a business card. 

Craft shows should be used for sales and marketing. So although you may not have made a lot of sales, pay attention to how many sales come after, due to the event. 

 

If you didn’t earn enough at your first craft show, don’t count it as a failure and give up. Try again with a few small changes and see if you get closer to, or do cover your booth fees.