Make Money Creating
Kids' Craft Kits by Mike Morgan
Here's a twist on the old "sell
your crafts" theme. How about creating and marketing a craft
kit for your craft? Instead of selling a completed project, you sell
an materials-included, ready-to-do craft project. It doesn't
necessarily HAVE to be geared toward kids, but those seem to sell
well.
For example, since our Cub Scout Den
recently built some birdhouses from kits, let's say you like to
build birdhouses. To build one, let's say you need to cut some
1/4" wood into a variety of shapes, glue some pieces together,
and nail some others together.
You would cut the wood into the all
of necessary shapes and sand them. Your kit would consist of the
pre-cut wood, all the nails (plus extras), and instructions. All of
this could go into a Zip-Loc baggie and be sold for a few dollars.
Just about any small and relatively
easy craft can be sold as a kit "baggie". Crafts using
wooden thread spools seem to be popular lately -- those would be
perfect candidates for kits.
Remember that the more difficult or
involved the craft, the better you will have to write the assembly
instructions.
PRICING
Set your price at about four times the cost of materials. However,
if you are going to sell crafts for kids, try to keep the price
below $10.
For kids crafts, create "bundle
packs" of 6-8 of the same project at a little bit of a
discount. This will make it very attractive to Scout leaders and
parents shopping for birthday party activities.
MARKETING
Write a press release -- or have one written, if you don't know how
-- and make sure the local newspapers (free and paid) and radio
stations (especially AM stations) get it. This is the kind of story
they love, and a feature story will get you a lot of exposure.
Create flyers for your local
community bulletin boards.
Call your local Scouting (Boy- and
Girl Scouts) council office and find out when they have their
leaders' meeting, called a "Roundtable" in Boy Scouts.
Arrange to speak for five minutes atone of these meetings. Bring a
kit or two for demonstration and plenty for sale, since you might
make some immediate sales.
Talk to your local craft shop. Many
are surprising open to the idea of selling local craft works-- but
most crafters assume they won't be, and never ask!
If you do a craft that can be
packaged as a kit, and aren't doing that, you are bypassing what
could be a very lucrative avenue for revenue!
