How Much Inventory to Bring to Your First Table

The two ways this goes wrong

Bring too little inventory and you sell out of your best items by 1pm on day one, then spend the rest of the con watching people walk away from an empty table. Bring too much and you're hauling three overstuffed bins back to your car at the end of the weekend, having paid to print stock that's now sitting in your closet indefinitely. Both are common first-con mistakes, and there's no single right number, but there is a way to estimate that beats guessing.

Start from the con, not your inventory

Before you print or stock anything, find out the con's expected attendance and, if you can, whether it's your first time at that specific event or a returning one. A 2,000-person local market and a 40,000-person convention need wildly different inventory volumes, and new-to-you events are always a gamble the first time regardless of size.

A rough starting formula a lot of vendors use: estimate roughly 1-3% of attendees will stop at your table, and of those, expect maybe a third to actually buy something. It's a wide range on purpose, since foot traffic depends heavily on your table placement, how established you are, and how the con itself is trending that year. Treat it as a floor to plan around, not a promise.

Tier your stock so nothing sells out completely

Rather than guessing one number, think in categories:

• Hero items (your best-known or most-photographed pieces): bring the most stock of these, they'll move fastest and you don't want to run out on day one of a multi-day con.
• Steady sellers (reliable but not flashy): moderate stock, these fill out the table and catch browsers who didn't come for anything specific.
• New or experimental pieces: bring less. If they don't sell, you're not stuck with a huge unsold batch, and if they do sell out, that's useful data for your next print run.

Print smart, not just more

If you're doing print-on-demand or ordering from a printer with reasonable turnaround, you don't need every SKU maxed out before day one, especially for a multi-day con. Bring a strong opening stock and, if the printer and your schedule allow it, plan a reorder for anything that's clearly outperforming your estimate.

For stickers, pins, and smaller items with longer shelf life and lower per-unit cost, err toward slightly more rather than less, since they don't go stale the way a trend-specific print might, and running a self-serve sticker bin dry mid-con is a visibly empty spot on your table that's easy to avoid.

A simple sanity check before you leave home

It's genuinely fine to get this wrong on your first few cons. Most vendors do. Keep a simple log of what sold and what didn't at each event, even just notes in your phone, and by your third or fourth table you'll have real numbers instead of a guess. That log is worth more than any formula, including this one.

Curious what a Shapeshift kit actually looks like in person? Head to the Artist Booths homepage to see the full lineup and find the one that fits your table.