“How much stock should I bring?” sounds like a request for one number. For a first fair, it is more useful to build a record of your own choices. You want to know what is ready, what you intend to take and how you will account for it afterward.
Start with the products you can actually prepare. A stock plan is a working document, not a promise about demand. Keep assumptions visible so you can change the plan when your time, table space or product availability changes.
1. Use names you can recognize quickly
Give each product or variation a clear label. “Small blue ceramic earrings” is more useful than “earrings” if several similar designs share a box. If you already use product codes, carry them into the plan. The labels on the worksheet and the labels on your containers should mean the same thing.
Choose a level of detail you can maintain during a busy day. Listing every variation separately may help when the differences matter to stock counts. Grouping indistinguishable pieces may be simpler. Write your rule at the top so you do not count one way before the fair and another way afterward.
2. Separate ready, packed and displayed quantities
Stock at home is not automatically stock at the event. Record the quantity you intend to bring, then count what actually goes into your containers. Decide how many of those pieces belong on the initial display and how many stay in reserve. Display stock is part of the packed total, not an extra quantity to add again.
For an illustrative example, a maker packs twelve pairs of one design, places four on the table and keeps eight in a labeled box. The opening event quantity is twelve. This simple distinction prevents a plan from looking larger merely because the same pieces appear in both a display list and a packing list.
- Ready: available to choose from before packing.
- Packed: the actual opening quantity going to the event.
- Displayed: part of that packed quantity, placed on the table.
- Reserve: the packed quantity kept off the initial display.
3. Leave room for more than sales
A piece can leave sellable stock for several reasons. You may give an item away, discover damage or use it as a display sample. Give those movements their own notes instead of treating every missing piece as a sale. If stock arrives later in the day, record that addition too.
At closing, count the remaining pieces and compare them with your opening count and movement record. Investigate a difference before drawing conclusions about performance. A stock discrepancy might be a packing error or an unrecorded movement. Your first aim is a record you understand, not a tidy result forced by changing a number until it matches.
4. Let the table rehearsal inform the plan
Put a representative selection into your actual display space. Check whether labels remain visible and whether you can reach reserve stock without interrupting a conversation. You may discover that you need fewer pieces on the table at once and a clearer replenishment routine.
Avoid interpreting a full table as evidence that your stock plan is right. The rehearsal answers practical questions about visibility, access and setup. It cannot tell you what visitors will buy. Keep that boundary clear when you adjust your opening quantities: you are making a manageable preparation choice with the information available.
5. Add context before the next fair
Afterward, save the completed plan and write a few observations beside the counts. Which products attracted questions? Which labels caused confusion? Did you run out of one variation while related pieces remained? Notes help you interpret the numbers without assuming that every event will behave the same way.
Make a copy for the next fair rather than overwriting this record. Change one or two assumptions deliberately and explain why. Over time, your worksheet can hold both the quantities and the reasoning behind them. You are building a useful history of your own events, one observed day at a time.
Choose five product lines. Record the packed total, the part going on display and a place for non-sale movements. Keep the first version so you can compare it with the closing count.