nonsequitur... Can you tell me a little about your craft fair and what you do? We do a holiday workshop on a Saturday morning that the kids come to. They prepay to attend. But we really do not make a profit as they only pay $2 to come and that really just covers the cost of the materials.
So I would be interested to hear what you do?
Bertha...I just emailed you with the scoop on the Holiday Store.
Our last holiday shop was a complete disaster! Our 2nd VP ran it and did a really bad job. She screwed up and through away stuff that was supposed to go back to the company. In years past we made a little money on it because like other school it's supposed to be a service, anyway this past year we wound up losing over $700. GO FIGURE!!!
This year we are looking to do something different, so any info you would like to share please email me. Thanks
The topic of Holiday Stores recently came up so I just wanted to share with you all a really great thing that we did.
Due to circumstances one year of our vendor coming up short with products, we were forced to run out and buy merchandise to sell so that there was enough products for the kids to buy. When we were done we paid the bulk of our money to the vendor but we made a nice little profit off of the items we purchased to sell.
Most schools do not do this as a fundraiser, they do it as a service. But the bottom line is that the vendor you use to supply the stuff for your store is making a killing and taking all that money to the bank. With that in mind we decided the following year to cut out the vendor and do it all ourselves.
We purchased items from wholesalers, oriental trading, kmart, wallmart, & dollar stores.
People loved it as they liked the merchandise better and the prices were better as we made prices only slightly more then what we paid for the items.
As an example one wholesaler sells the I love Mom pens. You can buy them in lots where they only come to $0.68 cents a piece. These are the same pens that many vendors charge $3 or more for. So if you sell them for $1 it is a better deal for the kids (parents)money and the organization makes the profit instead of handing it over to a vendor.
Our Holiday store made a profit of $2,800 last year. Which was great to turn around a spend it back on the kids instead of giving all that money to a vendor.
This may be tough for really large schools. Our school has about 300 kids. And yes it was a decent amount of work. But every year it gets easier to do.
If anyone would like to consider doing this I can certainly point you in the right direction.
