Quick Tips – Buying Inventory
Welcome back. Are you ready to dive into some of the nitty gritty, behind the scenes planning that’s needed to ensure you have a successful craft fair this season?
Now that we’ve covered how to pick a craft fair, what products to sell, and you’ve prepared your designs, let’s dive into inventory! This is actually my speciality from 25+ years working in retail.
When it comes to pre-purchasing inventory of products that have your designs on them, here are a few quick tips I recommend:
#1 – Don’t overbuy.
Particularly if this is your first craft fair or your first one in a while, don’t buy too much inventory. This is important because you don’t want a lot of unsold items filling up your basement after the event. It may not be easy to determine how much is too much, but just keep in mind that selling out of a few items is a good thing. If that happens, get the customer’s contact information and let them know when re-orders will be available.
#2 – Mix high and low margin products.
If you’re not familiar with the term “margin”, it’s a very important concept to understand. It’s essentially the difference between what it cost you to make (or buy) a particular product and the price you sold it for. As you finalize your product assortment, pay close attention to your profit margin. You’ll want to offer a mix of products, some that yield a higher margin and some that yield a lower margin.
An example of items that can be very high margin are greeting cards if you design and print them out at home. When purchasing small quantities of products from print-on-demand (POD) sites, which I discuss next, remember to purchase your designs there when they are running a sale. This will also help your profit margin.
#3 – Explore my three favorite resources.
Resource #1 is Society6 where you can set up your own online shop. You upload your designs, pick the products they look best on and they take care of everything else. As I just mentioned, purchase small quantities of your products when Society6 is running a sale. This is an effective way to know the profit you’ll receive when you resell them.
Resource #2 is Stationery HQ where I love to get wrapping paper and other paper products. They manufacture very high-quality products and it’s very easy to set yourself up as a wholesaler (reseller) by following the instructions on their website.
Resource #3 is for gorgeous tissue paper and it’s called Noissue.
Explore these three resources and don’t forget to download my free eBook: Craft Fairs: A Step by Step Guide for Success. Click HERE to download it. It contains a clickable link to a google spreadsheet that will help you understand your profit margin.
To access the spreadsheet, you need to open the guide on your computer screen using Adobe Acrobat (it’s free). Hover over the word “downloadable” on page 4 and you’ll see your cursor change from a black arrow into a small hand. Click once and you’ll pop over to google sheets. Make sure you save a copy of the spreadsheet on your own computer so that you can make changes to it as you plan out your own inventory.
Your assignment is to plan out what level of inventory you want to purchase. Are you ready?
Come back next week because we’ll bring everything together that we’ve talked about so far and plan out your sales. Entering your craft fair with a sales plan sets you up for success in more ways than one.
Pop over to my YouTube channel to watch the video version of this blog. Click HERE and please subscribe while you’re over there.
Bye for now. I’ll see you next week.
xo,
Anne
Explore Surface Pattern Design by downloading my free ebook HERE.
Have fun and I’ll see you next week.
Remember,
It’s Never Too Late to Create®
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MEET ANNE
Hi…I’m Anne!
My creative inspiration comes from a lifetime of observation. I grew up in Paris on the Place St. Sulpice and walked to school through the Luxembourg gardens. And that was only the beginning… Learn more by watching the video on my About page.
