How much should you actually charge to break even?
Most small traders can tell you their turnover. Fewer can tell you the number where they stop losing money. That second number is the one that actually matters.
Turnover isn't profit, and profit isn't the same as breaking even
Break-even is the point where what you've taken in exactly covers what it cost you to trade that day — rent, stock, staff time, everything. Below that line, you're paying to be open. Above it, everything extra is what you actually keep. It sounds obvious written down, but very few traders have actually worked out where their own line sits.
The two kinds of cost, and why mixing them up causes the damage
Fixed costs don't move whether you sell one item or a hundred — your pitch rent, your insurance, your licence fee. Variable costs move with every sale — stock, packaging, a percentage taken by a card machine. The mistake that quietly kills margins is pricing off variable cost alone and forgetting the fixed cost has to be clawed back from somewhere too.
A working method, not a spreadsheet template
Add up your fixed costs for a set period — a week is usually the easiest unit for a market trader. Divide that by how many selling days you actually get in that period. That's your daily fixed cost — the amount you need to clear before you've made a single pound of profit, regardless of what you sell. Add your variable cost per item on top of that, and you've got a genuine break-even price, not a guessed one.
Where this actually bites
Knowing your real break-even number means you know exactly how bad a quiet Tuesday can get before it's actually a problem — rather than finding out from your bank balance three months later.
This is the exact method — fixed vs variable, worked examples, and a pricing calculator — set out in the Small Business Starter Kit.