CRAFT FAIR VS ETSY CALCULATOR
CRAFT FAIR VS ETSY Calculator
There are two break-evens, not one. The items that cover the stall and your day, and the many more that beat having sold the same stock online.
Craft Fair vs Etsy Calculator
A craft fair is almost all fixed cost and Etsy is almost all variable, so there are two break-evens rather than one. The number of items that covers the day, and the much larger number that beats having sold the same stock online.
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Fill in a price to see the answer.
The day costs you –
of which your own time –
Contribution an item at the fair –
Contribution an item on Etsy –
including the packing and posting time –
The fair keeps this much more –
Items to cover the day at all –
Items to beat selling them on Etsy –
At the number you expect, the fair leaves –
The same items on Etsy would leave –
Difference –
| Items sold | The fair leaves | Etsy would leave | Better |
|---|
The fair line starts deep in the red and climbs steeply. The Etsy line starts at nothing and climbs gently. Where they cross is the only number that decides it.
Two things this cannot see
The comparison assumes the stock you sell at the fair would have sold on Etsy anyway. If the fair reaches people who would never have found you online, the second break-even matters much less, because those sales are not coming out of your Etsy orders. If you are selling the same things to the same sort of buyer, it matters a great deal.
It also cannot see what a fair is worth beyond the till. Talking to people who pick your work up, seeing which pieces they reach for first, commissions, wholesale enquiries and the photographs you get are all real and none of them are in this arithmetic. What the arithmetic gives you is the price of finding out.
Both channels cost you time. A day at a fair is obvious and the five minutes it takes to print a label, wrap a parcel and walk to the post box is not, so an Etsy order is charged at the same hourly rate here. Leaving it out would quietly load the comparison against the fair.
Set your hourly rate to nil and you get the out-of-pocket answer, which is the one worth knowing if you were going to have the day off anyway. Both numbers are true, and they answer different questions.
Several fairs, in Excel
The workbook logs each fair you do with what it cost and what it took, works out the two break-evens for each, and totals the year so you can see which events are worth going back to.
Download the workbookFAQs
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