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Emma - lots of ideas here.

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Hi both, i really like the article from the guardian too. I think it covers everything we need.

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Hi both, i really like the article from the guardian too. I think it covers everything we need.

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EMMA - I agree, gives fantastic guidance.

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Part 1-benefits of craft fair for local artists

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Emma - hi, take a look at the research.  we need to decide which crafts we will be progressing with.

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Emma - hi, take a look at the research.  we need to decide which crafts we will be progressing with.

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Lara- Yes lets do it
Kirstin - Hi all! I really like the article from UK Craft Fairs! I think it covers everything we need - thoughts?

EMMA - Really think we should take guidance from the uk craft fairs re popular and trendy items.

I agree shall we go with the two articles and maybe look to include some images to support? Kirstin

EMMA - YEs - lets do that.

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Great article from the guardian!

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Run a craft business? Here's why you should pitch up at a fair

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With Craft and Design Month under way, it's the perfect time to invest in a stall. Meeting customers can help you brand, price and market products

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Helping you understand your craft business activities

Starting and running a craft business

Many people enjoy making hand crafted products as a hobby and some would like to generate an income by selling what they make.

If you would like to develop a craft hobby into a craft business, it is important to consider whether there is sufficient demand for what you make, if you can sell what you make for a profit and how you are going to find your customers.

This site has been designed to help you find fairs to attend, venues to book, suppliers etc. It is a good idea to sign up as a member and then to list your crafting details.

Product choice

Your product choice will depend upon what your craft skills enable, you to make and what people want to buy.

Good places to look for inspiration include craft shops, gift shops, relevant magazines and at craft fairs. Also, you could ask friends and relatives what things they would consider buying. If you attend craft fairs, in addition to seeing the craft work of others, you might make useful contacts in the craft community and find new craft materials suppliers and additional outlets for your work.

You might decide to improve a product that already exists or develop something new, to meet an opening in the market. You could enhance your existing set of skills and expand your product range to meet market demand. Craft courses are very popular and learning something new is always a bonus.

Regulations

Many products produced by artists and crafts people need to be made to recognised standards. Unfortunately, the details are a little long for this article, so we would recommend that you check whether the items you are making need any certification or approval.

For example, if you were making toys and games you would need to investigate CE marks and if you were making cakes you would need to think about food hygiene standards.
CE Marking Guidance Food safety and hygiene
It is very important to make sure your products are safe for sale, as none conformity to regulations may result in harm to individuals and fines for you.

Pricing your products

Pricing is one of those subjects that is very hard to pin down. Some people class it more like an art form than a science. To help people come up with a number that works for them, we built the Craftally app, available on the app store.

Pricing requires you to include costs such as craft materials, insurance, tools, packaging, distribution, stationery, utility bills and the amount you pay yourself for the time you spend working on the business. You should also take account of any tax that you will have to pay. You can find many of the things you need in the craft supplier section.

Once you have calculated your unit cost and compared it to the going rate for similar craft products, you can decide how much you are going to sell your work for.

For example, it may cost you £10 to make a finished product. You could set your wholesale price at £20 (the price you would sell it to a shop). The retail price may be double your wholesale price, in this example £40. If you were renting a stall at a craft fair and doing the selling yourself, you would sell at the retail price not the wholesale. This would then cover your selling costs.

Too high a price could make you less competitive and reduce sales, whilst too low a price could increase sales but reduce profits and even cause your business to run at a loss. Your aim should be to find the right balance, which provides you with a good cash flow and a healthy profit. By reducing your costs or improving your productivity, you could increase the profits needed to invest in the growth of your business and help with finances during any periods of low sales.

Pricing flexibility

Your prices do not have to be fixed. Large companies use a more flexible pricing matrix. They can often change the price based on the person buying, considering an increasing number of factors. For example, source market pricing - where people coming from one country pay more for the same thing, as someone from another country. For example, car hire pricing at an airport or hotel prices.

With ever more complex web-based strategies some companies can display a different price based on who you are and your previous buying habits. Not something that we feel is fair.

When you are selling at a craft fair, you may need to adjust your pricing up or down. If you are at a large perhaps costly event you may need to increase your pricing to cover your costs. You may be at an event in a poorer area and not be able to sell at full price because people can't afford it.

The ability to be flexible is important. However, you need to know your numbers. In the example above of your unit cost being £10, trade price being £20 and retail price being £40, your flexibility may be based on volume to a shop (£18 trade on orders over 50, for example) your retail price at a fair could have £5 off for today only - knowing that you are still making a healthy profit.

Receipts

Despite being a legal requirement as part of a sale, it is very rare to be asked for a receipt at a craft fair. However, this may depend on the cost of the item being sold. You should have a receipt book available, just in case someone does ask for one. It is also an excellent way to get an additional piece of marketing material to a potential repeat customer. The good thing about receipts is that they are often kept for long period of time. If possible, you should also include your details on the item being sold, which may be quicker for you during a busy fair.

What to include on a receipt

As you can see from the list below, if you are not well prepared and you are asked it could be a time-consuming effort.

Date and time

Number and price of items

Name of business and location

Any VAT charged

Method of payment

Returns policy

You could hand write an amount on the back of a business card, with a date and where you are on the day.

Monthly overheads

An overhead is something that is not directly involved in the production or sale of your product. For example, the space you rent. If you use part of your house or flat, or rent a workshop then that cost is an overhead. Let's call the rent £100 a month. If you sell 100 items per month, you could say that £1 per item covers the rent. If you sell 200, then it is only 50p. If you only sell 20, then it is £5 per item.

It is a good idea to try and make you monthly overheads as low as possible as they do impact your profit. Equally important is to know what they are and not miss any out. Anything that you pay yearly, divide by twelve and put that number into your monthly overheads.

Once you know the number, let's call it £300. Then it is relatively easy to add the number into your pricing calculator to work out your pricing.

The cheapest or the most expensive

It is important not to think, "I would not pay that", instead think "what are people happy to pay for this". You should detach your own opinions and think about the buyers. If you are creating great art then the price is not just the costs, it is about its uniqueness and how it makes people feel.

When an artist is first starting out, their prices will be lower than when they become more established. This is then a very different calculation, based more on supply and demand. The artist can only create so much and if the number of people wanting to purchase their work is high then the price will increase.

In the case of authors pricing is affected by global factors, print on demand, eReaders, publishing houses. Adding a signature to a book during a book signing, should increase its value to the purchasers. Sometimes increasing its value only increases the chance of a sale rather than increasing the sale price. If you are looking to promote an arts or crafts book you have written, check out CraftBook.co.uk

Looking at the competition, what is the lowest and highest price for the items you are making. What is the difference between the two, it could be product quality, but it is more likely to be branding. All that stuff around the product, the name the packaging, the shop, the website, the location etc. If you can't compete with that then your price may not be at the top end. However, with craft it is very unlikely that you can be anywhere near the mass-produced bottom price, so you need to pitch yourself somewhere in the middle.

Market research

Often people start a craft business because it is what they enjoy, or it is based on knowledge they already have. This is good because you will have a passion for what you are producing and be able to demonstrate and discuss your work.

Market research is the process of looking at what people want to buy and in what quantities, to see if you will be able to meet your requirements.

The Internet is probably the best source of information on just about everything. The UKCraftFairs site has many thousands of members and concentrates solely on craft, you could also look in:

Libraries

Directories

Professional bodies guilds and associations

The Internet

You can do your market research yourself, popping along to a local craft fair is a very good start as you can talk to people already in the business of selling what they made.

Money

It is often the case that people want or believe that they must raise finance to start a business. However, this may not be the case and you will need to pay back, any money borrowed. This can put a strain on any profits you may be making, and you may find yourself over stretched and working hard for the lender.

If possible, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be". Work within your means and think your way past the need to borrow money. Build your business with hard work, honesty, friendship and loyalty, rather than debt.

If you borrow money from a friend or family member then you may find that the money goes, and you are unable to pay it back and so the friendship goes to, "For loan oft loses both itself and friend, "

Business types

You will need to decide the structure of your business, there are three to choose from:

Sole trader
Quick and easy, just start and let the Inland Revenue know

Partnership
If there is more than one of you working together, this is an option

Limited company
A much more formal company structure with many advantages but more paperwork

Accounts

You will need to keep good records of all transactions, money in and money out. If you are not great with organising money, make sure you get help and advice from an accountant or book keeper. They should save you more money than you pay them and will leave you free to focus on your work.

Marketing yourself

Effective marketing will make potential customers aware of your work and therefore increases your chance of making future sales.

Many craft people choose to use this site to promote themselves.

Other ideas for marketing yourself include:

Printing and distributing your leaflets, you can print an A4 leaflet from your listing on this site, that includes your confirmed events list.

Putting a postcard in shop windows

Selling through local retailers

Advertising in newspapers and magazine

Selling to large organisations like factories, office etc.

Advertise in directories

If you provide work of good quality at a competitive price this could lead to repeat business. Marketing your craft work will be made easier if you have a clearly defined range of products to offer potential customers and a strong brand identity for your business. If you sell your work through retail outlets they will want to position your product line in a section or department and will increase the cost of your products to cover their profits.

Print marketing

If you're at an event or want potential customers to learn about your list of events (you will be attending as an exhibitor), you need to be able to list those events and be able to send visitors to the list. Print marketing is often the only way to get memorable information across to them. As part of your membership of this site, you can print out materials based on your listing details. These materials currently include Business cards (54mmx85mm), DL compliment slips, A4 and A5 posters. All you need is a printer, ideally that can print in colour and on thicker paper or card. You would also benefit from having a guillotine to crop your prints.

Website design

One of the first places people look to see if a business or person is genuine is the Internet. It is a quick and easy way for people to find out more about you. Therefore, your listing on the UKCraftFairs site is a great place to get your message across.

You can go and make you own website for a relatively low cost using a collection of well know providers that use templates, but you may not be happy with the end result unless you are willing to invest a lot of your time.

Video marketing

Where to sell

A good place to market and sell what you make is at craft fairs. Fairs have the advantage of enabling you to meet and talk to existing or potential customers and get feedback on your range of products. Look at the Selling at craft fairs section of this page or search for craft fairs in your area.

Insurance

As with all businesses, you will need to take out insurance, public liability as a minimum.

One of the advantages of starting a craft business is that you can often work from home.

If you dedicate a room in your home to your craft work, you will be able to claim back part of the running costs of your home against your business.

Some reasons why people choose to work from home, include:

Avoiding the time, stress and cost of commuting

It is much cheaper than renting or buying premises

The freedom to set your own hours and work at your own pace

You can make your work environment comfortable

You can see more of your family

Parents can have the freedom to work hours that suit the family, whilst bringing in an income and avoiding paying out childcare costs.

You may want to think about these things before you start:

Check if there are any restrictions from your landlord, mortgage lender or local authority

Business insurance

Home security

If you can't work from home then many craft people set up a studio, gallery, workshop or shop.

Protecting your business

You promote your business to attract genuine customers or organisations offering you legitimate products or services. These are the people who you want to find you, whether your contact details appear on a website such as this one, or in a printed publication. However, you might also be contacted by people or organisations who intend to mislead or deceive you and they might even wrongly claim to be endorsed by or to be working on behalf of legitimate companies when they are not.

We would advise that you carry out due diligence when considering using products or services offered to you, particularly from organisations you are not familiar with. You could begin by visiting their website or other online presence, looking for comments from some of their existing customers and searching online for information about them.

If you are contacted by cold callers claiming to be from an organisation, take care if they request sensitive financial information. You would be better obtaining the organisations contact details from a trusted source and then you can contact them directly to discuss the matter further.

Conclusion

"Working for yourself is a rewarding, challenging and exciting pursuit. If you can achieve success by doing what you love, then you may be rewarded with two of the most important things in life; time and the ability to say no."

This is just a guide and you need to make sure you think about what you are doing and research thoroughly in order that you make the right decisions for you. You should take professional advice before spending your hard-earned money on things that may or may not have a positive return.

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Helping you understand your craft business activities Many people enjoy making hand crafted products as a hobby and some would like to generate an income by selling what they make.

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Emma - please let me know what you think.

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These include any type of craft where you work with fabric, yarn or surface design. Some examples are knitting, quilting, appliqué, weaving and dyeing. Many of these could obviously also fall into the decorative or fashion crafts categories, since the finished good is sold as a sweater or wall hanging. However, they are technically textile crafts since it all starts with the fabric.

In my career as a crafter, I've done just about all textile crafts. My favorite? Dyeing. I find silk fabric dyeing very appealing to the creative mind as the dye can either flow freely across the fabric or you can use resist to make the dye form different shapes

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Types of Crafts: Textile, Decorative, Paper, Functional, Fashion

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These include any type of craft where you work with fabric, yarn or surface design. Some examples are knitting, quilting, appliqué, weaving and dyeing. Many of these could obviously also fall into the decorative or fashion crafts categories, since the finished good is sold as a sweater or wall hanging.