Super Fun Rave Math: The magic number
Let's face it: my entire business model depends highly on the large events I vend at. My online sales aren't where they need to be, but they are improving. (that's another story for another time)
For anyone who has visited my booth at EDC or Nocturnal, you've probably seen the massive, empty spaces that occur, just after the event opens. This sounds like bragging, but it's really just poor planning on my part. Too many people, not enough product. I should know better than to come to a 20-40,000 person event with only X amount of fluffy legwarmers.
Can we do some fun math for a bit? I'm really lousy at algebra. I did nothing but talk shit to my math teachers all through high school, and barely passed most of my math classes in college. But we're going to do super fun rave math right now. in this equation, X= the standard amount of product I normally make to bring to an event
Anime Matsuri, 5k people. 2011. I brought X amount of product. Had excellent sales without completely draining my stock.
So for Nocturnal, I figured that 3X was good enough. (not realizing there were going to be 40,000 people at the event) Sold out.
EDC, half the amount of people as Nocturnal. approx 24,000 people. I thought, Since there would be half the amount of people, I could get by on 4X. Sold out of fluffies at 10 PM, everything else at 11.
So, by these calculations, X is good for every 5,000 people, approximately. Therefore, I should have brought 6X, to EDC, and 10X to Nocturnal.
Exceptions: I realize there's going to be exceptions to every event, some events will be particularly good, and some will not. Some events will defy expectation, and some events (even really good, really promising events) will be catastrophically bad. This is just kind of a basic starting point.
These are my planned events for this year (please note, these are last year's attendance numbers, and only BW LA, EDC vegas, and Noc TX are confirmed so far)
Beyond Wonderland - 25,000 - 6x
Anime Matsuri - 6,000 - 1.5X
Nocturnal Texas - 40,000 - 10x
A-kon - 18,000 - 4x
EDC Vegas - 250,000 - 80x
EDC Orlando - 20k - 5X
EDC Denver - Unknown attendance - ?x
EDC Dallas - 24,000 - 6X
Beyond Wonderland Texas - Unknown attendance (event not yet confirmed) - ?x
so, for those who suck at math like me, this means 112.5X (plus some for denver and BW TX). To give you a rough estimate of product needed to fill 112.5x - X= a myriad of products, tops, skirts, cyberlox, jewelry, handbags, etc. It's a mess, and I'm not going to disclose all the numbers, cause then I'll REALLY bore you. But X equals approximately 15 pair of fluffies. So total, for the entire year, (minus online sales, and the two shows for which I don't have attendance figures) I'll need to get to producing 1,688 pair of fluffy legwarmers.
Is this the magic number? probably not. There really is no "magic number" for shows. But it is a good place to start.
-Hypergleam
p.s. That number scares the shit out of me.