And the winner is....$5.00 faces!!! 10 to 1 (little long)

So, my big fat dilemma was put to the test and for my area (large families and average income about $40,000 a year) the $5.00 faces won hands down. We had blue and red wrist bands (another fabulous PPF tip that was an integral part of our tent set-up here: http://www.facepaintforum.com/t11158-we-survived-but-our-tent-almost-didn-t-sooo-long) and by the end of the first 10 hour day only had 3 blue ones for the $5.00 faces left and had only sold about 10 full faces.

And you know what...just like I thought...every $10.00 face messed with our mojo so much that about half way through the second day, when we had a huge line I told Jeff to take down the $10.00 boards and just sell $5.00 faces. It was good because we were almost out of the second package of wrist bands anyway so we started using red only.

The bands seemed silly when it wasn't busy but I'll tell you, when it got confusing and people were waiting in line thinking they were next and others were looking at boards with their kids it saved Jeff from having some of the arguments between parents that we had last year. He would say "Can I put your child in line" to the parent if he saw them standing in the line with no wrist band. He'd collect the money and then put a wristband on the kid and then the kids could keep looking at the board. He started numbering them (but I don't recommend this) because people would try to go back to the same place in line before they paid. We wanted to reward those that paid like they were supposed to by being next. The reason I say I don't recommend numbering is because of the entitlement feeling a number gives and if someone leaves the area and tries to come back, it causes a big hassle.

The other benefit to the colored bands were the communication gap between line manager and artists and the parents and kids. So if a kid said "I want Ironman" and I looked down, I knew that he paid $5.00 and I would pull out the Starblends. It also helped with the kids that THOUGHT they were getting a full face because mom didn't square up with them so I'd say to mom, "I'm seeing a $5.00 band, I'll have to do something else for them" and often they already had an alternative in mind or they'd ask for a $5.00 version of a $10.00 face I refused to do some of my $10.00 girl designs even though they seemed simple because, dang it, I set a price! So instead of just trying to whip out a Pashur mermaid face, I'd paint a sea shell with little pearl chain up to the hair line and eye liner and lips. It wasn't nearly as cute and probably took the same amount of time but I'm NOT going to be price bullied.

Some people did balk at having to pay up front but it was SOOOOO nice to have that transaction taken care of before they even got to me. It's so awkward when mom sneeks off to look at a booth a few tents down when you've painted a kid and try to get some money. I've usually made the kid go get mom before I painted but that's awkward too, especially when it's busy. So having a line manager is so worth it, even if I had to pay someone in the future.

So, I procrastinated making up all new boards so I still had some fast full faces for the $5.00 ones and guess which were my HUGE sellers. Quick batman, quick spiderman, quick ironman, quick pirate and quick kitty. but...but!!! I made up a new board with new eye designs that some of you inspired and they were a HUGE hit. The peacock petal one was the biggest seller but I sold a bunch of tropical eyes like Heather Green's, several of Linda's star swoop, several swirls like Cindi's and the girls LOVED the quick flower cluster of Laura Oliver's. I was soooo thrilled to do these little jewels.

I will be burning the dreaded Unicorn board in my fire pit. I brought my old quick design board along but didn't have it as part of the wall. Jeff found it and started using it with the crowd and after about 10 unicorn faces I said in no uncertain terms "that board is gone!" and hid it behind the camp kitchen. I have GOT to come up with a one-stroke one and NOW. Athena Stovall has a good one I'll adapt or Rebecca's is super cute.

So, next festival I am only doing $5.00 designs (or should I say 3 minute or less.) I may make some of the quick faces a little more just because they have more perceived value but I'm not doing the $10.00 detailed faces when Emma and I are working together. When were doing $5.00 faces we are like a well oiled machine...when I do a $10.00 face she sits...not cool.

So, here's a picture of my new board and then I snapped a couple of photos...but we had people that wanted to get painted before we had our paints out so they aren't good. I did want to point out my rules but I think I'll do that in another post because this one is getting long too.









D.

This is so awesome. Thank you for all the time you took to type out these great, informative posts. I really like the way you run your business. ;-)

I would love to see a few more pics of your set up, if you have them. I looked at your diagram and it was great!

So, when you say that Emma lays down the base and you do the line work - do you switch chairs back and forth?

That was very informative, thank you. I may have to borrow some of your eye designs...I have the palm tree one, but could use more.

thanks for the info Denise..I think 5 dollar faces are a great way to make the kids happy and make good time and money..thanks for always sharing

I would let Emma 99% of the time go get the client from the chairs, she's so much more charming. Then she would set them down in the chair and glue up a jewel if we were doing a butterfly and sponge in the wings and add glitter and about that time I'd be done with spiderman in the next chair and we would cross over and I'd finish the line work on the butterfly and she'd show Spiderman himself in the mirror and get him out of the chair and get the next person in line. If it was a one-stroke face design next, she'd get the book to make sure we had the right one and show me which one and either mirror the butterfly or clean up the station if I was already done....then on to the next client. It really was a beautiful thing.

D.

Are the faces in the middle different designs than are on the black display boards?

Sorry I have a big festival coming up and I'm trying to figure out what designs I should offer......It's my first big big big one. I'm a little nervous.

The ones in the middle on the photos were the $10 designs. I will say that it was good to have them as "show-off" designs for my birthday parties but I think I will put them on a poster that says "We do parties."

So Jeff would say "the designs painted on the boards are $5.00 and the one's in the photographs are $10.00."

I had very few repeats. So, I have an eye designs board to attract the ladies and older girls, there is a young girl board, young boy board and then I was planning on making a arm design board with tribals and flower clusters and one-stroke designs for arms (but ran out of time.) I did have books with photos of all the boards so that when they got seated in the tent they still had something to look at.

There is space for 6 boards so what I will do is have my rules board, ladies, girls, boys, arms and then I'll make up a board with the theme of the month...like 4th of July.

One tip...A lot of women were confused by the white paint I used to indicate an eye, they thought it was eye liner. If you do painted boards like this, use a flesh colored pencil or something else to indicate the eye outline.

D.

Great pricing info!

So, I have a different take on things than i did even two weeks ago.

I was all gung-ho excited about doing exactly what you do with the $5.00 faces, Denise.

But at the Oz-Stravaganza, there was another face painter charging almost the same prices as I did and we obviously had two polar opposite ideas of what painting should look like. My prices were too low. So I raised them for the BalloonFest. There was another face painter there who also does not share the same idea as I do about what face painting should like. So I raised my lowest price to $6.00... and I could have easily asked for $7.00. I am not going to sweat about worrying who is going to pay what or try to turn out a quicker design to pack more faces in an hour's time. I'm raising my lowest price to $7.00 for my festivals & fairs for the rest of the summer. I had my prices at $6, $8 and $10 this past weekend and I actually sold more $8 designs than the $6 ones. My $10 price didn't even phase people; they paid for what they wanted and there was a constant hub-bub going on outside our tent.

As I said in another comment somewhere, we don't have a line manager, but we only had two problems with the take a number system... and the person only went to the tent next to us both times so it wasn't even a big deal.

I no longer have paint envy because I have so much freaking paint now... but I have efficient set-up envy and line manager envy and how'd you get your sh*t together so well envy...

My attitude was totally different this time year compared to last year where we were trying to bargain basement everything. I had the confidence (and of course the line soon backed me up) to say "sorry" every time some would say "OMG" at the $5.00 and $10.00 pricing. I don't have to apologize to them for my prices because I know I'm worth it now.

I was just talking about making masks a little more even though I still consider them my quick designs. The perceived value will be a little higher so I'll just charge a little more for them...like the $8.00 price. That way I will get just a little more money for more coverage.

Thanks for your support and I hope that a tall dark & handsome line manager comes into your life soon.

D.

Instead of saying "sorry," you could say "Hey - you'll love it -it'll be one of the BEST face paintings you've ever had." Give 'em a HUGE smile to go with it!
)

So Miss Ronnie, do you have examples of what your $7 and then your next price and then your $10 prices are?

I'm trying to figure out if I offer two prices this weekend or only two.

My husband thinks I should offer $3 $5 and $8 and I think if I offer three prices they should start at $5.

Start at $5...it's not a huge difference for parents but it's a huge difference in your profit. If you have a little baby and it's slow you can offer a little something for $3.00 as a FAVOR...a discount. But I guarantee if you offer $3.00 that's where the majority of people will want to start. I had a whole post last year about the difference in day one and day two of this same fair when we stopped offering our $3.00 and upselling our $5.00...and this year I cut out $3.00 completely, still had a huge line and made a lot more and that's even quitting 4 hours before.

Value yourself.

You

Denise, I totally love your ideas...I am making boards as we speak...Love it! The festival I am going to has about 4 painters over a 2 day period...they all charge 10.00, even for simpler designs and I don't think they like that I charge 6.00. Last year one painter was quite snooty with me but I have to do what I feel good about and when I see families with 3 kids...I can't justify 10.00 for the quicker designs...anyway...I wanted to tell you that i love your art and you have amazing ideas and you can only be very successful if you keep going the way you are now...Rock on Sista!!

my last event, I charged 5 & 10 but I didn't have the priced photos separated, I had them scattered throughout both boards. I didn't want people to focus on only the $5 board. I had a few that I charged $12 if they wanted the upsell (like arm bones for the skull/flames or extra jewels on the bling mask).

Denise, you are always so generous with your knowledge. I appreciate that, being able to learn from the ones that have gone before me. When I do a festival I will be so darned prepared! Lol

I also LOVE your designs, particularly the eye designs. Stunning! Mind if I have a go?

I think when I get a minute to breathe and get my house a little more back in order I may have time to really work more on making a menu board like yours, Denise. I don't know whether I am coming or going right now.

Seriously.

I somehow made it through this past weekend on Hydrocodone for my back that went out last weekend. I was not myself. I couldn't get to the event as early as I had planned on Friday because of it... it made my already dragging butt about as rock bottom draggy as you can get... and I really stressed the h*ll out of my booth partner. She is my best friend/owner of the daycare I work at part-time, but after this weekend she doesn't want to booth partner with me anymore... for realsies.
She's type A personality and I'm... what's the opposite, type Z?!! My body is not doing what my mind knows I am capable of. I can't find the time to create a workable menu that I am confident I can finish every face in 6 minutes or less... I CAN if I am not tired, not hungry, don't have to squeeze my legs together 'cause I had to pee three hours ago and still haven't had the chance to, not on drugs (haha - that sounded bad!), hot & miserable and 100 lbs. overweight.

The good news is my son's beautiful girlfriend and his best friend have offered to clean the house with me this week, as I am off from my daycare job. It is like a miracle for me. I may sound happy all the time, but really, I am so tired and overwhelmed that I want to cry... but I turn to humor instead. And this forum REALLY is my only real outreach I have because I REALLY have no social life.

And the other good news is that I made enough money this weekend to buy order one month's worth of Medifast...YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The bad news is my car is pretty much on it's death bed.

But the good news is that I can think about getting a vehicle that fits all my festival set-up stuff and maybe all I'll have to do is open the back hatch and slide things out.... a girl can dream, can't she?

The bad news is I just finished paying the stupid thing off and don't really get to enjoy not having a car payment for very long.

The good news is it's not snowing.

Hey Ronnie - Subarus last forever. I always buy mine used (well - the first one was incinerated in a 43-car arson in a parking garage in Vermont - no kidding!) The second one I bought in 2000, three weeks after the arson. It was already two years old. Now it's a 14-year old and I own it outright and this summer, I'm going to paint it by hand (and no doubt make a drawn-out federal project of it) so it looks better when I drive to face painting jobs. I always said I wanted to own and drive a Subaru into the ground.

Hope your spirits are up again soon.

What kind of paints do you use for that?


and 43 cars.... say what?!!!! That's insane!

Happy Nut, of course. Like I said, a lot of those designs came from other painters and I'm so grateful for the forum and Facebook. I think by sharing with each other we all become better painters and providers.

Ronnie...so sad about your partner. I hope things go better for you soon.

I hope you don't think that the outcome was good for us that I wasn't a mess physically and emotionally. We were arguing by the end of the first day. My house is a disaster, my yard has been a weed patch for 4 years...it gets a little better every year but I die a little inside every time I walk outside. I have a pile of face painting crap by my fireplace, and my craft room is still a crap room. It's all too much sometimes.

I think that's why painting is such a good release for me. It's something I can control. Something that if I work hard enough at it, I can succeed and make people happy. Sometimes life isn't like that. There are a lot of things that I can't control and it's hard to be at the mercy of it all. Now, we just both need to find a balance between taking care of ourselves and our business.

D.

Denise, are you my long lost sister...or all most face painters like us in general?

I hi-jacked your thread... I'm really good at that, too

I am just generally a hot mess all the time, but I do have a joy for life that surpasses all the bull pucky that gets in the way

And because I am on Hydrocodone and am rambling on through the drugs tonight and I love everyone and I am having my own SharetheLoveFest on the forum.... here's a picture of my son and his new girlfriend... they are so gosh-durn adorable together. She's as sweet as they come and he treats her like a queen... but they love to be REALLY goofy together

Thanks for the Rock on! LOL! I was actually ended up very happy to do the quick designs. I thought I would miss the full faces and was tempted to just charge $8.00 so I could do full but I'm so glad I didn't. I got so good at the quick faces by the end of the day that I was shocking myself...for instance, I went from lining the quick batman with a round brush filling in the corners and then finishing with a filbert to kicking the whole mask out with a 1/2 inch square brush with just as sharp of corners in about 10 strokes and a little fill in...it was fun.

Miss Ronnie...

D.

Ronnie & Denise, add me to the list of way overweight, I'm always tired unless I'm face painting, our only clean clothes are in the dryer -- or need to be put in the dryer, our only clean dishes are in the dishwasher, my office is only large enough for ME and my STUFF, the house has the beginnings of a hoarder-appearance, I only go grocery shopping when we're out of toilet paper, should I go on?

Lorie.... my other sister from another mother!!!!!