Teach Soap

(I'm sticking this in the CP soap category rather than "Off topic chatter" because CP soap is my main product.)

Question for fellow soapers who do markets often. How do you judge whether or not a specific event will be profitable? I know these things can never be known for certain and depend on a lot of factors, but I'm wondering mainly about how you weigh the fee vs. turnout. Are there any tips or general rules of thumb for this? For every X number of people, you usually make about Y?

I'm currently considering a November fair/festival/market that has a fee of $175 and an estimated turnout of 1,800 people. That doesn't seem like a very large audience to count on making my fee back, but I haven't done many markets.

Thank you all!

What I look at is how long has the market been around, what type of advertising they do and I also talk to the other vendors if I can. That gives me a better idea how well the market will do. 1800 people is not very much unless it's in a very small town. Are there any other soapers in this market? If so, how long have they been there? Are their prices comparable to yours? Are they just a hobbyist who don't pay themselves for their time and just charge for the ingredients and nothing else?

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

I don't really look at fairs in terms of attendance. I look at the type of attendees. It depends on the timing, i.e. is it near a holiday, the location, etc. I also look at it as a mode of advertising. I've only done 2 fairs, but I've recovered more than the cost for the booth, and then some. But I gained some regular customers from the fairs. I did one fair 2 weeks ago, and I've had over $1,000 worth of online orders directly from people who saw us at the fair but didn't buy at that time because they didn't want to carry the products around.

I really think it depends on the area you live and the type of show it is. I've seen plenty of small shows with upscale patrons of fine art that bought a lot from expensive vendors... and I've been to big shows in "cheap" areas where thousands of people were there to "look" and not buy.
The last show I did was $75 for one day with 30,000 patrons and I made about $400 (not selling soap yet, but I make other handcrafted stuff) and a few months ago I spent $75 on a 3 day show and made about $200 the whole weekend :-/ Two completely different cities in my area and a huge difference in the attendees.
My local city is going to start doing a first friday farmers market/handmade night from 6-10 each month and it's only $20 -- I am certainly not expecting much, but I figure that's not a big financial or time investment, so why not?
It helps if you know people that have done the show before or can ask around to see how well that show or shows in that area typically do, if it's outdoors - hope for good weather, etc. Best of luck!

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~*~ Jennifer ~*~

Thank you all! Those are great points and questions.

This particular festival is in a small town of only 11,000. It's rural but close to larger cities, and is the type of place that highly values local merchants (no department stores within city limits, etc). So the attendance is small, but I feel it would be high quality attendance, particularly being so near Christmas.

As for the rest of the points that soapbuddy mentioned---how long the festival has been running, whether similar vendors are currently enrolled---I passed those concerns on to the coordinator and am waiting to hear back.

Thank you again! It's certainly a gamble and a lot of work to do these things, but the reward can really be worth it... sometimes

I recently read the article on Teach Soap called "how to find craft fairs". It has some really great questions to ask coordinators of such events including questions you should ask. I'm actually making myself a spread sheet based on her article so that when I call people I don't miss any questions or call back multiple times and look like a newbie! lol