How to Prepare Your Inventory for a Craft Fair

A craft fair can be a huge sales day — or a stressful one where you sell out of your bestseller by noon and lug home a bin of slow movers. The difference is mostly preparation, and most of it happens before you ever load the car.

Start from what you have, and what sells

A week or two out, look at two things: what's in stock, and what's been selling. Bring more of what sells and a sensible spread of the rest. If a bestseller is low, that's your cue to make a batch before the event — not after.

Make a pre-event restock list

Once you know what to bring, work backward to production: which products need a batch, and do you have the materials for them? Order any supplies early so a missing material doesn't cost you your top seller's whole table.

Pack a market kit, not just product

• Your products, counted, with a packing list so you know exactly what you brought.
• Display, signage, and price tags or labels.
• Bags, tissue, and packaging for what you sell.
• A way to take payment, plus a float of change.
• A simple way to record each sale as it happens.

Count in, count out

1. 1Count (or scan) everything you load, so you have a starting number.
2. 2Record sales through the day — even a tally works.
3. 3Count what comes home.
4. 4Reconcile: what you brought, minus what came back, equals what you sold.

Knowing exactly what you sold at a market is how you decide what to bring to the next one.

Reconcile and learn for next time

After the event, update your stock to match what actually came home, and note what sold out and what didn't. That record is gold — it tells you what to make more of and what to retire. Hivara makes the whole loop easy: scan your stock in and out, log market sales so finished stock draws down, and see which products earn their spot on the table.