Selling help

General Knitting
1

It’s my first time selling my knitting ever. I’ve got a booth at my friend’s mother’s salon’s winter boutique some time in November. I’m making hats with a fairly nice ribbing -k2,p1, kitbl, p1 repeat- and then stockinette stitch when the rib is done. I’m going to do a variety of colors and so far it’s taken me about 9-10 hours to make one hat. The yarn has been a fairly consistent price of $5 for one skein as I’m knitting up all my extra skeins so I’ve only bought one.

I have a couple questions. What should I be expecting in general?
I’m also going to make business cards with my shop name, email and a little logo and something to say that I’ll do custom colors or something like that. Could I put the washing instructions on there or should I put something in the hat itself?

Last question that I can think of: what should I be pricing them at?
I originally had it at $10 then someone suggested around $15, does that sound fair?
Thank you in advance!

2

Hello, and welcome to KnittingHelp.

I don’t have any experience of selling at craft fairs, but I have done my share of toy fairs and boot sales with my late father.

In general you should expect the following and if things are better count them as a bonus:

You will have a long walk from the parking area to the entrance and then to your stand (if you are on a different level to the entrance assume lifts are non-existent or out of order). Remember you’ll have to get your stock from your vehicle to your stand so a collapsible Sack Truck or similar is useful.

Your stand will be the one in the gloomiest part of the venue. Bringing additional lighting in the form of free standing spot lights is useful. Also bring one or two multi-gang extension leads in case there is only one power point near you and/or the nearest one is located by the next booth.

Allow more time to get there and set up then you think you’ll need.

If you can take someone with you, do so. As well as help setting up and someone to talk to in quite periods, they’ll also be able to look after the stall when you take a bathroom break. If you can’t get anyone to go with you make friends with the person on the stall next to yours and offer to return the favour of looking after their stall for them when they need a break.

Once the public are admitted it will probably go to one of two extremes, either it will be really busy and you’ll be rushed of your feet, or it will be mind numbingly slow.
The public in general will either be wonderful or so jaw dropping stupid you’ll wonder how they made it out of the womb without the aid of a sat-nav!

The business card are a good idea, but I would put to washing instructions with the hats as the hats and cards could get separated in the future.

With regard to cost, are you intending to do this as a ‘one off’ event or to do more of the same in the future? If you intend to do more you need to ask yourself what will be the cost of purchasing the yarn to make a complete hat? It’s better to price as if you had to buy the yarn from the start. Is the 9-10 hours for 1 hat literally that amount of time or does it include ‘down time’? As you do more hats you’ll get quicker at them.
If the person who suggested you sell the hats at $15 each has experience in this market go with their advice. One of my father’s observations was ‘If something’s too cheap, people won’t buy it’. In fact I would be tempted to mark them up at $20 each and if someone is undecided between two hats or things are slow you can always let them go at 2 for $30.

I’ve probably made it sound a lot worse than it is, but I’m one of those people who prepares for the worst and hopes for the best, so everything will be a lot better for you on the day.

3

First off, thank you for the reply.

The salon itself is very small and I’ll have to talk to the owner about tables, mannequins and the like. Unfortunately, for a majority of the yarn I’ll be using I don’t have the original tag thing to tell me the brand and how to wash so I figure I can just do handwish with cold and dry flat for those.

I’d love to do more events but I’m not sure how I’ll do that. The 9-10 hours included down time. I was thinking about doing $20 and doing something for 2 hats. I’ll probably stick with $20 in order to get something out of it even if I only sell one hat.

4

I sell baby sets at a craft store. I usually put $15.00 on a sweater and hat set and $20.00 for a set that includes bootees. I know that I under charge but this store does very little business. The owner doesn’t like to advertise for some reason. The owner is good with one thing though. She doesn’t charge me anything for putting my items in her store. If she did my price would have to go up. Anyway, I’ve heard that you should charge 3 to 4 times more than what it costs to make. So if the yarn cost $5.00 you should charge $15.00-$20.00 and that’s not including the hours that it takes to make the item. You should figure out how much you want to make an hour. I find this kind of crazy myself. Years ago I did the craft fair thing and it drove me nuts. People would walk by look at the items and then say “Oh I can make that” and then keep on going. It got to the point where I was spending more than I was making so I totally stopped. Your salon setup sounds great and to start I think I would just have a small table with items on it. Your washing instructions should be attached to the hats. I also include the content of the yarn - 100% Acrylic etc. Hope this helps and I wish you all the luck in the world.