The most repeated advice in every makers' forum is also the most ignored: count your labour. Most makers price at "materials times two-ish", which works out to paying themselves nothing and subsidising every customer's bargain. The reason it keeps happening isn't ignorance — it's that the honest price feels unsellable. Both problems have partial answers.
Materials plus packaging, plus your time at a real rate (UK average hourly pay is around £13.60 — even half that is infinitely more than zero), gives your cost. The traditional craft formula then doubles cost for wholesale and doubles wholesale for retail. A soap that takes £1.50 of materials and 15 minutes of your time at £10/hour costs £4; formula retail says £8–16. If you're selling it at £3.50, the fair isn't the problem.
Three moves, in order of preference. Make things faster — batch production is the real margin lever in handmade; the 15-minute soap made in batches of 20 becomes a 4-minute soap. Change what you make — some products simply can't carry their labour at fair prices (intricate crochet is the famous casualty); the kill-list is part of the craft. Charge it anyway — fair buyers pay for story and quality more than makers expect, and underpricing reads as low quality to exactly the customers you want.
Your per-item contribution — price minus materials minus card fees — is what pays off the stall fee. Price at materials-times-two and a £63.50 day needs far more sales than priced-for-labour stock. Run both versions through the calculator and the difference is usually the whole answer to "why do I never seem to make money at fairs?"
General information, not financial advice. Average wage figure verified August 2026.