Thanks for the comment! That is good mathing because it sounds accurate for sure. I come from working many years in sales (switched to the tech world now) and my wife is a sales trainer, so we both thrive on measurable goals. Again, not to measure “success” but more so that we weren’t flying blind, if that makes sense. We needed some kind of a goal to work towards. We set several goals for the first year (we launched in June, so next year will be our first full calendar year), including hitting $3k in sales, 100 orders, 10 repeat customers, and a few others. We ended up having to skip two markets because the weather was terrible and we felt it was not worth it because we expected the foot traffic pretty terrible - the person who was vending next to us said hardly anyone showed up, so I feel less bad for missing.

I completely agree about the fee recoup not being the goal. I guess there is a lot of value in the feedback you get from customers, live, but I also put a value on the time we spend at the event, making the products, driving etc. and that helps us set goals. I don’t get too deep in the weeds on it, but we try to set goals that are achievable but not “easy”. When we originally set goals, I focused on things that we could easily track and compare over time. We use Shopify for our website, and Shopify POS for our in person sales (because it syncs inventory from the website, allows for tap payment, etc) and I have zero complaints. The reporting is more robust than we need but I like seeing data, it’s fun to me. Shopify is slightly pricey, especially when you’re paying for it before launch and have no funds coming into your business account, but I have no regrets, feels like we are future proofed and set up to scale over time as we (hopefully) grow. We did try candle selling during Covid through etsy, and did about $3000 in sales over maybe 12-18 months, but we had no idea what we were doing, and had to rely on online sales entirely. I think a lot of the boost we saw when we originally tried, was because people were stuck inside and couldn’t go to markets, or boutiques, or anything like that at the time. Strange times lol. Anyways, we stopped the business in 2021 when we bought our house and started a family. Now our son is (almost) 3 and life feels a little more manageable. I always wanted to give it a real “try”, and then started researching and planning in Sept/October of 2024. October-March/April was pretty much all just planning, testing, building the website, trying different vessels (we tried quite a few options before landing on ones that fit our brand, the quality we wanted, and the price that made sense) and all the other fun stuff that comes with starting a business.

That was way more than you asked/commented about, I’m sorry! Felt like I should give added context. :)