An $85 table split across 40 soaps is $2.12 you never put in the soap.
Saturday market report · Priya · 40 soap bars
The table cost $85. The rain still happened. The bars that sold had to know both.
A slow Saturday still has a cost. The table, the parking, and the bars that ride home all sat on the ones that left with someone else.
Journal · Markets
Priya loads before dawn because the lot opens at six and the good corner is gone by 6:20. Forty bars in two crates, a vinyl banner that has been to this lot eleven times, a card reader, a cash box, a folding rack, and a tote of bags she will pretend are free. The city market wants $85 for the Saturday. She has paid it so often it feels like weather.
Weather is the wrong metaphor. Weather does not invoice you. The market does. If she sells all forty bars, the table is $2.12 in every bar before she starts the van. If she sells twenty-two, the table is $3.86 in the ones that sold, and the eighteen that ride home still carry butter, lye, and Thursday night. Unsold inventory is not a reset. It is a cost waiting for another day, or a cost the sold bars have to pick up if the loaf will not keep.
She tells people the market was fine. Fine is not a unit. Fine is what you say when you do not want to look at the parking garage.
Price the day, then the bar
Start with the day, because the day is what you actually bought. Then divide by the units that sold, or by a honest expected sell-through if you are costing before you go. Do not divide by the number you packed as if hope were a customer.
Saturday, as a day
Booth fee
$85.00
Gas, round trip
$12.40
Parking garage
$14.00
Bags, tissue, tape
$8.60
Card reader batch fees
$11.20
Four hours at $22/hr
$88.00
Load, unload, leftover count
$22.00
Day cost
$241.20
If 40 bars sell
Day on each bar
$6.03
Soap unit already costed
$4.80
True unit at the table
$10.83
Her sticker
$9.00
Gap per bar
-$1.83
If only 22 sell, day each
$10.96
True unit at 22 sold
$15.76
Gap at 22 sold
-$6.76
Read the $9 sticker against the $10.83 unit on a full sell-through. She is paying to stand there. On a rain day she is paying more. The weekend can look busy in photos and still pay her less than a quiet day in the studio, because the studio day does not include an $85 table and a garage.
What rides in the van is not free inventory. It already has a Thursday inside it.
Unsold bars still have a history
The loaf that did not sell still cost butter and time. Those costs belong on the units that did sell, or they belong on a second costing when you restick the leftover for online. What you cannot do is pretend leftover product has no past. If soap will still be good next Saturday, carry the materials and labor forward and put only this Saturday day-cost on what sold. If the loaf will not keep, this Saturday has to absorb it. Write which one you are doing. Do not mix them in your head at 4 p.m. while you fold the tent.
Card readers at the table take a cut. Square is not a tip jar. Put processing in the unit the same way you put lye in the soap. If half your sales are cash, use a blended rate from the last three markets, not a hope that everyone brings twenties.
Rain math. Same $85. Twenty-two sold. Eighteen ride home and three of those bloom by Monday. The three wasted bars add their unit to the day. The day is no longer $241. It is $241 plus three bars you already costed at $4.80. That is another $14.40 the twenty-two have to carry. This is why a pretty stall is not a costing method.
Price the day before you pack
The decision is not whether you like markets. The decision is whether this SKU, at this sticker, at this sell-through, can hold the day. Some makers should keep the table and raise the bar. Some should skip December because the fee doubles and the sell-through does not. Some should send only the SKUs whose units can survive $6 of day-cost. Sending your lowest-priced object to the most expensive Saturday is how studios get tired.
Before you pack the van
Write the fee, gas, parking, bags, and hours. That is the day.
Write how many you honestly sell, not how many you wrap.
Divide. Put that number on the SKU that is riding with you.
Compare it to the sticker. If the sticker is under the unit, change one of them before dawn.
Decide what happens to leftovers: recost for online, or absorb into today.
Recost when the December fee hits, not after you have already said yes.
The workbook has a line for booth fees, packing, and waste. Use it once per market SKU, then again when the fee goes up. Pair this with the waste note if your leftovers do not keep, and with the time note if you have been costing the table as if you were not standing at it.
