What's more effective: raising prices or cutting costs?
The fastest profit wins come from matching your price moves to customer price sensitivity while protecting the costs that keep quality and repeat buyers intact.
The Narrative (Left Column)
The Empathy
After a strong market weekend, a vendor thinks, "Maybe I should nudge prices up." The next weekend is slow, so they panic and start trimming costs instead. They bounce between both moves without knowing which one actually helps. When every item is handmade and every booth fee matters, the decision feels risky because it touches their reputation, their time, and their cash.
The Education
Price changes work best when you understand margin elasticity: how much demand drops (or doesn't) when you raise a price. If a $2 increase barely changes volume, the margin gain is huge. If it scares away half of customers, the margin gain vanishes. Cost control has its own tradeoffs. Cutting packaging, ingredients, or prep time might boost margins short-term but can erode perceived quality, slow production, or increase defects. The goal is to protect the costs tied to customer experience while trimming waste, rework, or low-value steps.
The Solution
Run small, measured tests. For price moves, track unit sales and margin per item over two or three markets to see if demand is elastic or steady. For costs, label expenses as "experience-critical" versus "process waste," then target the waste first. Compare the profit per hour before and after each change. The winning strategy is the one that lifts margin without hurting repeat buyers or stretching production beyond what you can deliver.
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