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So lets talk about Event Pricing....such as Birthday parties, Bar/Batmitzvahs, corporate parties....etc....How do you Price?
I think it's pretty obvious that there is absolutely no one way to price and one can not even have a "standard" price for all events since all events usually have something different about them that makes it impossible to fit into some kind of mold. But you can usually figure out a pretty good "formula" or "guideline" so that you do not have to rack your brain each and every time you have to price an event.....the key is being flexible.
The first thing one has to do is get a good idea of how many pieces of any given item an artist is capable of painting in an hour.
For all the standard party items such as hats, shirts, tote bags, etc....The numbers I usually hear from artists around the country are between 20-30per hour for each artist working the event. Obviously it also depends on what you are painting on the items, but a good general number is between 20-30 per hour for the standard items with just standard "name designs"
Once you have that estimate you then have a good idea of what your inventory is going to be for each event. Next you have to figure up what your time is worth, what you are going to pay any "helpers" or additional artists, and of course any travel expenses. These are all the main items that go into determining a price.
Here at Anything Airbrushed plus we generally price our events by the number of items we are going to be doing. We started doing it this way not soon after we started doing these types of events which was about 25 years ago(as of December 2019 the writing of this post) because of a problem we had with some of the very first clients we got for Barmitzvahs.
The question would come up of how many we could do vs how many people were going to be at the event. We told them the standard 20-30 items per hour and they translated that as the Highest Number....so for this 3 hour event they thought they were going to get 90 items(30 items X 3hours)....as it turns out they only had 65 kids show up....so they demanded 25 blank shirts because they felt they paid for them. This happened twice in just a matter of months and a third time one client tried to say they deserve ALL the inventory we had left over....saying he paid for it and it's not his fault we had stuff left over...lol...this guy was a JOKE...he couldn't grasp that we bring more inventory than what we are going to paint because you never know what sizes are going to be the most popular....lol.
So from then on we started pricing per piece in bunches of 20...so 20-40 items, 40-60 items 60-80 items etc...The client is contracting us to paint the LOWER number but we will paint up to an additional 20 items at the event at no additional cost to make it the HIGHER number if needed. This helps when they have unexpected guests or they decide to let certain people have an extra item etc...and it also protects us from not having to worry about the client believing they get to keep the left over inventory
When it comes to these....what we consider "smaller events" like birthday parties, Bar/Batmitzvahs etc....this works out great for us. It also forces the client to narrow down the number of guests getting an item.
So at the time of this post(December 2019) our standard prices for a LOCAL event no more than 3-4hours doing simple name designs on items that cost us between $1.00-$2.00 each(t-shirts, hats, tote bags etc...) are as follows.
20-40 items $1000.00(one artist no order taker)1-2 hours
40-60 items $1400.00(with one artist and 1 order taker)2-3 hours
60-80 items $1,800(2 artists taking turns with order taking or one artist and one order taker)3-4 hours
80-100 items $2,300 (2 artists one order taker)3-4 hours
Here is the most important part of pricing an event. You have to remember that YOU ARE A BUSINESS. So even if you are a one man show and you do an event by yourself. YOU need to separate yourself from the company. Your “Company” needs to make something off your events also…not just YOU the artist. Some of the money you earn at an event needs to go back into the company otherwise your company will never grow. This money helps with advertising, upgrading equipment, overhead expenses, business travel, etc…. So keep in mind that 15-20% of the prices listed above actually goes back into the company. So when figuring up the cost…pay yourself just like you would pay an artist you hire to help you. Then add in an additional 15-20% on top of the calculated price (which included all the artists, helpers, inventory, travel expenses etc…) This extra is the “profit” from the event that goes back to the “company”. So many artist forget this and therefore are losing so much money that they never imagined.
These are pretty much our "lowest"prices" it would be very rare or some kind of special reason if our prices dropped below this. Usually there is always something that is special or different about events that these prices usually are slightly higher such as corporate events. The artists are usually making between $200-$800 for these events....so usually between $50-$200 per hour (the average being about $125 per hour). We supply everything...all they do is show up and paint.
If we paint above the maximum number of items on the contract we generally charge between $10-$15 per item above the maximum. So if the contract says 40-60 items and we paint 75 items(15 more than in the contract) then the client is charged an additional $150.00-$225.00 depending on the whole sale cost of the item.
Now...other event like After Proms, large corporate events, College events where there is no set amount of people who are allowed to get an item....events where these are FREE and anyone can have one...these above prices still stand based upon the number we are capable of painting which is determined by the number of artists they want to pay for vs the number of items the client is hoping to give away.
So for example, a college event where we are going to be there for 4 hours and they are hoping to be able to give away 400 items....doing the math of 20-30 items per hour per artist we would need at least 3 artists to be able to get 400 items painted in 4 hours so we figure in how much each artist is getting paid plus the wholesale cost of the 400 shirts. Then if the client decides they want more artists on top of the 3 we suggested, then we take the amount we are paying the artists plus the number of items each additional artist will be painting in 4 hours. This is where a lot of artist screw up their pricing. They charge extra to have more artists but they forget that each additional item that each additional artist will be painting costs them money also.
So if we are paying the artists $600 for a local event, they can paint 30 items an hour X 4 hours=120items(each artist per hour)... at a cost of $1.65 an item= $200 ....So each additional artist will actually cost $800($600artist fee plus $200 cost of inventory they will be painting)….not just the $600.00 artist fee. If we don’t consider the cost of the items the artists are painting then we lose money.
The pricing on other services we offer like airbrushed tattoos/body painting....these are rather easy since there is really no "inventory"...just materials. These we charge per hour per number of artists....so for example
1 artist =$175 per hour
2 artists= $350 per hour
3 artists= $575 per hour
The artists are still making between $50-$200 per hour for these types of events.
A few key points:
1.) We do not give discounts to party/event planners, they are charged the same as if the client called us directly...most party planners "tack on" an additional fee to our price which is what gets passed on to the client....thats how they make their money. This fee is usually 15-20% of the price we give them. So if we give them a price of $2000.00, they are telling their client $2400.00($2000x20%=$400.00). We see no need to discount our price if they are just going to tack on their own price.....they are just making MORE money off of our discount and all they have really done is made a few phone calls or sent a few emails….they have absolutely NOTHING to do with the actual work at the event, and more importantly we are doing the exact same amount of work..but we would be doing it for less.
2.) If we can get a higher price from an event then we would normally get....we pass that on to the artists...vise versa....if we have to discount an event so we don't lose it...the artists MIGHT NOT get paid as much as they normally would.
3.) If it is an out of town event....we pay for EVERYTHING!!...hotel, meals, gas, airfare(if applicable).... this has all been figured into the price so why make the artists pay for anything that is already being covered.
4.) The above prices are for ONE type of item....if the client wants us to bring a variety of items for the guests to be able to choose from....we charge extra for EACH type of item we bring. The reason being, since there is no way of actually knowing which item will be the most popular, we have to bring enough of each so we do not run out of one particular item. We usually just figure up the wholesale cost of the extra items we will bring and tack that on. We charge more because of the extra money we invested in what will turn out to be extra left over inventory.
One advantage that we have verses artists who solely do events is that since we have a store, we are really not out any cost in inventory if we happen to have a lot left over. It all just goes back into the store. Where as someone who just does events may have to store the left overs in hopes of being able to use them for a later event. Which in most cases I am sure it eventually gets used.
Hopefully this gives you a good idea of what it’s like to price event.
As always feel free to leave comments or ask question