Split Tables and Shared Costs: Doing the Maths Fairly

Splitting a table sounds simple until the show's over and you're both staring at a pile of cash trying to remember whose sale was whose. Table-sharing is one of the best ways to get into pricier shows when you're not ready to cover a full table alone, but the friendship-ending potential is real if the money side isn't sorted before you even apply.

Why people split tables in the first place

A half table at a mid-size con might run $200, which is a lot easier to justify at $100 each than $200 solo, especially if neither of you is sure the show will sell well yet. Splitting also means you're not alone for 8 hours a day, someone can grab food or hit the bathroom while the other watches the table, and you get a second brain for pricing and crowd-reading decisions.

The fair way to split the fee

Even-split (50/50) works fine when you're using roughly equal space and both attending every day. It gets murkier fast when it's not equal, and there are a few common situations worth planning for before they happen:

• Unequal space: if one of you has twice the display real estate, split by space, not headcount. A 60/40 fee split for a 60/40 space split is fairer than insisting on even shares.
• One person attends fewer days: pro-rate by day. If it's a 3-day con and one of you can only make 2 days, that person pays roughly two-thirds of their half, not the full half.
• One of you brings the display, the other doesn't: this is worth a small discount to whoever's hauling and setting up the gear, even just $20 to $30 off their share, because setup and pack-down time and the wear on their equipment is a real cost the other person isn't carrying.

Sales: separate registers beat splitting revenue

The single biggest source of table-share conflict is trying to pool and split total sales. Don't do it, even between close friends. Keep separate cash boxes, separate card readers if you can swing it, and separate signage on pricing so customers know whose item they're buying. If a shared card reader is unavoidable, track every sale in a shared note or spreadsheet in real time, item, price, whose it was, the moment it happens, not from memory at 6pm.

A simple pre-show agreement checklist

Displays are the other half of this

Fair space allocation is hard to enforce if your display gear doesn't actually divide cleanly. Two people bringing two separate grid walls and hoping they fit together often eats more table space than it should, and one person's setup inevitably creeps into the other's half by hour three. If you're splitting regularly with the same person, it's worth building toward shared modular gear you both know the footprint of. A Shapeshift Base kit covers a full 180cm table on its own, so two vendors can agree on an exact panel split (say, 24 panels each) before the show and know precisely how much vertical space each person actually gets, instead of eyeballing it with tape on show morning.

Splitting a table is genuinely one of the smartest moves for a newer vendor. Just treat the money and space agreement as seriously as the application itself, because that's the part that actually determines whether you'll want to split with this person again.

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.