A busy craft stall can feel successful before you know whether the event covered its costs. Before booking, calculate two targets: sales needed to cover event cash costs, and sales needed to cover those costs plus an allowance for your time. Neither predicts customer demand.
Start with contribution per item
Your selling price is not the amount available to cover your stall fee. Subtract costs associated with each sale, including materials and packaging. Use your own figures.
This entire worked example is fictional and assumes identical items with constant prices and costs:
• Selling price: £12 per item.
• Materials: £3.50 per item.
• Packaging: £0.50 per item.
Contribution is £12 − £3.50 − £0.50 = £8 per item. For your own calculation, also subtract any other applicable per-sale costs, without counting them again elsewhere.
Calculate your cash-cost target
In this fictional example, event cash costs total £70. Divide those costs by contribution, then round up to whole units:
ROUNDUP(70/8, 0) = 9 units.
Eight units contribute £64, leaving a £6 shortfall. Nine contribute £72, covering the £70 with £2 remaining before any excluded costs. This is a simplified event contribution estimate, not a bank cash-flow reconciliation or accounting profit calculation.
Give your time a separate target
Continuing the fictional example, preparation, travel, setup and selling take eight hours. An optional allowance of £12 per hour adds £96 to the planning target. This represents a desired return for your time, not an additional cash payment.
The second target becomes ROUNDUP((70 + 96)/8, 0) = 21 units. Twenty units contribute £160, below the £166 target; 21 contribute £168.
Stress-test before deciding
Write down cautious, expected and strong sales totals. For multiple products, consider their different contributions and expected shares of units sold. A higher-priced item does not automatically contribute more. After the fair, record actual receipts, refunds, sold-item costs and event costs separately from forecasts. Avoid counting costs twice.
The Craft Fair Break-Even Planner costs £7 as a one-time purchase: a three-sheet XLSX workbook plus text guide, supporting five products, three sales scenarios and separate forecasts and actuals. Tested by importing into Google Sheets, editing inputs, then saving and reopening. Desktop Excel and LibreOffice have not been tested.