Selling at Craft Fairs: Tips & Tricks from an Expert

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Want the best tips for selling at craft fairs? I interviewed an expert in the field and we’re sharing tips and tricks to help you sell more handmade goods!

Do you love to make crafts? Have you ever tried selling your handmade goods at craft fairs or online?

Whether you have tried selling your handmade crafts before or not, you will want definitely want to check out this interview with Erin Mooney, from Made Urban, an expert in selling at craft fairs.

Selling at Craft Fairs: Tips & Tricks from an Expert

Learn the best tips and tricks for selling at craft fairs and online from an expert in this interview all about products, display, pricing, and more!

A few years ago, I started working an office job and was itching to do something creative and make some side money.

I started making crafts and setting up at local craft shows. It started out as a fun hobby to make a little side money.

Once I started attending craft fairs, I wanted to learn all I could about making money selling crafts and how to turn this hobby into a money maker.

That’s when I stumbled upon Erin’s site, Made Urban, and her absolutely amazing ebooks with all the answers to my questions about selling my crafts.

She helped me turn my hobby into a profitable business, that along with this blog, allowed me to quit my job and stay home and work for myself.

I reached out to Erin to ask if I could interview her and ask some questions you might have about selling at craft fairs and online. She was excited to help out and I think you will enjoy her interview below!

Interview with Erin from Made Urban:

I’m Erin, founder and one of the creative minds behind MadeUrban.com. I’ve been in the crafting industry over a decade now, with 2005 being the year of my very first craft fair.

I started as the poster child for “craft fair don’ts” and grew into a successful handmade business owner selling full time through craft fairs, online and wholesale accounts.

That small business led me to my current dream career of helping others with their creative businesses and working for the cuddliest boss in the world…..my cat Josh.

Question: I want to start selling crafts. How do I start selling at craft fairs?

There are several elements to cover when starting a craft business, but let’s start with the essentials:

STEP 1:

Before you determine what you’re going to sell, determine whom you’re going to sell to. There are hundreds, even thousands, of businesses already selling jewelry, scarves, soap, art, etc.

So you must be offering something different to capture a piece of the market and encourage people to buy from you, instead of the businesses they typically support.

People care about their wants and needs first. So you must put customers first. Find a group of people you want to serve and who you can connect with. For example, you may create a craft business that serves cat lovers, or wine lovers, or runners, or yogis, or cabin owners, etc.

Once you know who you’re selling to, then you can build a business and create products suited perfectly for them.

STEP 2:

Research which businesses are currently serving your target market and determine if you can offer something better or different than them.

For example, if I was starting a jewelry business and wanted to serve cat lovers, I would look for businesses already offering cat-themed jewelry and ensure I could offer better or different products than them.

You also want to determine if there’s a market for what you’re selling. Let’s say I’m considering selling jewelry for cats, but I can’t find many businesses doing the same. It’s likely because there isn’t a demand for those products.

I would want to find proof of consumers buying jewelry for cats before diving into building my business around that product.

STEP 3:

Get set up legally. The steps each business must follow will depend on the jurisdiction, the business, business practices, products, and many other factors.

Laws for Selling Handmade outlines the steps each business must take to get set up legally.

NEXT STEPS:

Once your business is set up for success, then you can start building a brand, planning product collections, setting up social media accounts, signing up for craft shows, opening an Etsy shop, etc.

Question: How do I figure out pricing?

Pricing can be tricky because there isn’t a formula that works for every business.

A common formula for a handmade business is:

Materials + Time (hours worked x hourly wage) = Costs

Costs x 2 = Wholesale price

Wholesale price x 2 = Retail price

For example, if materials cost me $5 and it takes me 30 minutes to make one item, and I pay myself $20 per hour, my costs are $15.

$15 x 2 = $30 (wholesale price)

$30 x 2 = $60 (retail price)

You should always price your products to cover costs and have a profit when selling at wholesale prices; even if you’re not currently selling wholesale to retailers. You may want to one day or want to have wiggle room to offer discounts for bulk purchasing from regular customers, run sales, offer free shipping, etc.

That basic formula assumes that multiplying your costs by two will cover costs that fall outside of production costs and leave you with a profit. It may or may not. It depends on your business’s expenses.

*Profit is money left after covering all of your business’s expenses. That money allows you to grow your business (e.g. spend more money on ads, craft shows, materials, etc. next month, without having to dip into your personal bank account).

For example, costs outside of production may be:

Craft show fees
Printing of business cards
Etsy listing fees
Website hosting fees
Facebook ads
Etc.

The more costs your business has, the less money there is for profit.

For example, if my production costs are $10, my wholesale price is $20. I have $10 from each sale to help cover overhead costs and earn a profit.

The more units you sell, the more money you have to help cover those costs and increase your profits.

You must also think about what you spend your time on outside of production. You may spend time:

Setting up, selling, and packing up at craft shows
Designing business cards
Adding Etsy listings
Updating your website
Posting to Facebook and creating ads
Etc.

You must track those hours and multiply the total by your hourly wage, which should be what you’d expect an employer to pay you.

Let’s say you want to be paid $20 per hour and you spend 15 hours per month on those tasks; that’s $300 a month in hourly wages.

The $10 left from a sale must also help cover your wage.

Again, the more units you sell, the more money you have to help cover overhead costs, your wage and increase profits.

You can see why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula for pricing. You can use the basic formula when starting out, but it’s important to check your numbers once you have a few sales months under your belt.

Once you know your average costs each month, as well as average sales, you can adjust your prices accordingly to be sure all costs are being covered and you’re profiting.

For help determining your business costs, tracking them, and making your craft business more profitable, check out The Success Planner.

Question: What can I expect at my first craft show?

Expect to learn a lot. No matter how much you prepare for a craft show, there will always be something that could have been done differently. No two shows, or even two days at the same show, are alike.

Make More Money at Craft Fairs will help you be as prepared as possible for a craft show, whether it’s your first or your 100^th. It’s full of ideas to help you constantly improve your craft show game and increase sales.

What’s most important for your first craft show is to relax and have fun. Go in with an open mind and don’t be disappointed if you don’t sell as much as you were hoping to.

Craft shows give you an opportunity to be face to face with buyers of handmade. Not every shopper will be right for your business but you’re able to see what type of people are drawn to your table, which products they’re drawn to, what they pick up but put back down, which products they compare, etc.

This is information you can’t gather from online sales, so use each craft show for market research, as well as making sales.

Question: How much inventory do I need to bring to a craft show?

This can be a tough question to answer because there are so many variables. You’ll find a complete set of formulas and calculations in Make More Money at Craft Fairs to help you more accurately estimate how much stock to bring.

You must first know your numbers, such as:

Product prices and profits
Average transaction value
Average profit per sale

Then you can determine how much you must sell to:

Cover your event costs (e.g. craft show fees, parking, time spent setting up, selling, and packing up, etc.)
Reach your revenue and profit goals

And how much stock you’ll need based on:

How many shoppers the event is expecting to attract
How long the event is
Your average sales per hour

Once you know those numbers, you’ll have a better idea of how many products you’ll need. Keeping in mind, the emptier your craft show table is and the fewer items shoppers have to choose from, the fewer sales you’ll make. So as nice as it would be to completely sell out, you don’t want an empty (or near empty) booth at the end of the show, or you’ll be missing out on sales.

Question: I didn’t sell much at my craft show. What should I do now?

Craft shows require a level of guessing when it comes to how much stock you need and it’s better to have too much stock than too little (otherwise you miss out on sales). So you’re likely to have leftover stock from every craft show.

But sometimes, overestimating how much stock you need, bad weather keeping shoppers away, or bad event marketing on the organizer’s part can leave you with way too much stock.

If this happens, use another sales channel to get those items sold.

A sales channel is a platform you use to conduct sales.

For example, a handmade business may use the following sales channels:

Craft Shows
Etsy
Website
Retailers

When you have stock leftover from a craft show you may:

Sign up for another craft show
List the items in your Etsy shop
List them on your website
Sell them wholesale to retailers

If your items are seasonal (e.g. you have Valentine’s Day stock left over after a Valentine’s Day craft show), you may want to run a promotion or sale to move your stock quicker.

Question: I don’t have a lot of money for my booth setup. Any creative ideas?

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to create a professional-looking display, but it does require some planning.

When in doubt, keep it simple. Not as simple as placing your products on a table and calling it a day, but simple in terms of using a clean white tablecloth, boxes neatly wrapped in brown craft paper to use as risers, and a set of frames from the dollar store to use for signage.

You can repurpose items but it’s important to think about your brand.

Sure, the holes in a cheese grater allow for a jewelry maker to hang earrings from them, but do they really want their handmade pieces associated with cheese or rusty old kitchen tools?

A cheese grater might be a good fit for a brand selling food-themed jewelry and displaying earrings that look like cheese slices or tiny bowls of mac & cheese. But a cheese grater is not a good display prop for a brand selling high-end 24K gold jewelry.

There’s a long list of prop ideas in Make More Money at Craft Fairs, as well as how to layer different elements to create a professional, cohesive display that tells a story and converts shoppers into customers.

Question: Where can I sell my handmade crafts online?

Etsy is the most popular online marketplace for selling handmade crafts, but there are several Etsy alternatives outlined in this article.

It’s also important to set up a website. It can take months, even years for a website to start showing up in the top results of Google results, so it’s a good idea to start building your website now and working on SEO (search engine optimization).

Question: Should I focus on selling online or at local shows?

Every business should have an online shop, regardless of whether you decide to focus on online sales or craft show sales.

The sales channel you put the majority of your efforts towards will depend on your business model and goals.

If you hope to one day open a boutique, craft shows are a great platform to market your business to local customers and gather valuable feedback and market research. They’re also a good platform if you have goals of selling your products wholesale to local retailers, as many boutique owners visit craft shows.

Craft shows do require a lot of time to research, apply to, prepare for, set up, sell at, and pack up from (all covered in Make More Money at Craft Fairs). And you must be prepared to work during craft show hours (typically evenings and weekends).

Selling online allows you to workmore flexible hours, but you must consider:

You’re required to do all the marketing – Craft show organizers take care of most of the marketing to bring shoppers to your table. When you’re selling online, through Etsy or your website, you must put the work in to drive traffic to your shop.
You’ll be charging for shipping – Shoppers are likely to abandon their shopping cart if they get to checkout and shipping costs almost as much as the product. If you’re going to focus on selling online, the products you sell must be affordable to ship. Alternatively, you may be able to work some of the shipping costs into the retail price so shipping doesn’t seem as high.
There must be a reason for people to pay for shipping – If I’m a seller offering basic bars of soap, there isn’t a reason for consumers to find me online and pay for shipping. Consumers can buy regular bars of soap at any craft show, farmers’ market, or even grocery store, so they’re not likely to conduct a search for “soap” online. However, if they’re looking for a unique gift for their friend who loves wine, they may go online to search for “gifts for wine lovers”. If I sell wine-themed soap, they may discover my shop and be willing to pay extra to have my soap shipped to them since wine-themed soap is harder to come by.

You also must consider, you don’t have control over how a craft show organizer markets their event or who they market to. So the people who show up may or may not be the right fit for your products.

When you sell online, you’re in control of who you target and can be sure the people you spend time and money marketing to, are people who are right for your products.

Determine your craft business’s goals and weigh the pros and cons of each sales channel. One isn’t better than the other; it simply depends on your business, your products, your schedule, and your goals.

Question: I’m interested in selling my handmade items in a shop. How do I get started with this?

First and foremost, you must have your products priced properly. Retailers typically expect to purchase your products at half of what you would charge when selling them at a craft show or online.

For example, if I sold one of my handmade purses at a craft show for $50, a retailer placing an order for that bag would be buying it at wholesale price. They would expect the wholesale price to be $25 (or lower).

If you haven’t priced your products to cover all expenses and leave you with a profit at wholesale price, you could actually be losing money on wholesale orders.

Once your pricing is in place it’s a matter of finding retail stores that are serving a customer who might be interested in your product. If they’re in the same city as you, you can call and set up a meeting to bring in samples, a line sheet, and maybe even a look book. Be prepared to take orders. They may place an order on the spot or want to know how they can place one in the future.

They may also want to sell your items on consignment before they commit to a wholesale order. This means they’ll display your products in their store, at no cost to them. If the items sell, they’ll take a commission on the sale. If the items don’t sell, they’ll send them back to you at the end of an agreed-upon time frame.

Determine if you’re open to consignment deals (they can help get your foot in the door but they’re more risk for you because you have to deal with stock they couldn’t sell).

Don’t forget to follow up. Store owners are busy just like you. If you reach out or have a meeting and they don’t place an order right away, follow up with a call or email to see if they have any questions about your products, or even feedback for you if they don’t plan on placing an order.

Question: What do I need to know legally about selling crafts?

Because it’s so easy to start selling crafts through an Etsy shop or craft show, and neither check that businesses are set up properly, many handmade business owners skip the legal aspect of starting a business.

In general, craft businesses must follow many of the same laws every other business must follow.

Which laws you must follow will depend on how you set up your business (e.g. sole proprietorship, or partnership or LLC, etc.), what you name your business, where you sell, how you sell, and what you sell.

Laws for Selling Handmade outlines the steps that must be followed to properly set up a craft business.

Question: I’m making a part time income from my craft sales. How can I level up?

If you’re ready to focus on your craft business full-time, it must be treated as a business; not a hobby.

You must have a plan.

>>Know how much money you need to make in a year if you’re relying on your craft business as your main source of income.

>>Know which projects produce revenue (e.g. Launching a Valentine’s Day collection before Valentine’s day is a project that will generate revenue).

>> Know the tasks required to complete a project (e.g. design Valentine’s Day collection, source materials, create stock, update Etsy shop, etc.).

>> Know how much time is required to complete those tasks and schedule them into your calendar.

The Success Planner will help you set a goal and create a step-by-step plan that makes hitting it inevitable.

You also must know how you’re going to grow sales.

If you plan to transition from part-time hours to full-time hours (let’s say full-time hours are double what you’re currently working) and doubling your current revenue and profits will help you reach your goals, then it’s simply a matter of putting in more hours.

If you need to grow revenue and profits before you can dedicate more hours to your craft business, then you must determine how to be more efficient with the time you do have and how to make your business more profitable.

The Success Planner will help with that, but you can also use my method of working back from one sale, to determine a clear path to multiple sales.

Start at the end: someone just purchased a product from you:

Who are they?
What did they buy?
Why did they buy from you? (what’syour business’s USP; unique selling position)
How did you attract them? (what’s your brand?)
Where did you attract them from? (which marketing channels and methods did you use?)
When did you reach them (what are the times of day, week, and month your target market is shopping?)

Now you can use that information to:

Target more people just like that buyer
Offer more products they’re interested in (and stop wasting time on products that don’t sell or are targeting people who aren’t right for your business)
Highlight your USP in every aspect of your business so more consumers understand why they should buy from you
Strengthen your brand to attract the right people
Market on the right platforms to reach your customers
Market at the right times

How to Sell Handmade Beyond Friends and Family will help you analyze your sales and trace them back so you can determine how to make more sales.

Selling at Craft Fairs: Tips & Tricks from an Expert

Amanda back here! Wasn’t that an amazing interview?!

Erin has so much knowledge and actionable advice for turning your craft hobby into a profitable business.

She has built a successful business, and knows the ins and outs of selling handmade at craft fairs and in online spaces. I learned so much from her ebooks, and from this interview!

Thank you, Erin, for all of your helpful advice, tips and tricks!

Want to learn even more about selling at craft fairs and online?

Erin is the author of the best craft business books, and the books I learned everything from!

She teaches in such a practical and actionable way that makes it easy to apply to your business and become more successful and confident.

Check out here amazing ebooks below!

I hope you enjoyed this interview with Erin and that you got some great tips to help you start or grow your handmade business!

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Selling at Craft Fairs: Tips & Tricks from an Expert

Selling at Craft Fairs: Tips & Tricks from an Expert

Interview with Erin from Made Urban: