Friday 12 October 2012

How to Choose a Craft Sale


One of the other blogs I follow, Handmade Success, recently posed a question to readers about how to choose which craft fairs/shows to go to.  I added my two cents in and thought I’d share them with you:

We had a less than successful market day recently.  We felt we were doing everything right:  good venue, reasonable cost for the booth space, good visibility at the venue, we even brought a not-so-portable spinning wheel along that drew the attention of everyone that came through the market.  Unfortunately, very few people made their table money that day.  However, we learned at least two things: 
1) End of summer may not be a great time of year to be trying to sell homespun yarns, knitting and quilting items.
2) We will research future venues/events a little more. 

Many other posters had already indicated the importance of going to a potential show to do research if you can.  My recommendations on how to make this research useful would be to see if the vendors that are there are willing to share some information on the show with you.  Organizers may not be as honest about what their traffic has been, or what percentages of their vendors come back each year.  Other crafting entrepreneurs usually will though - why?  Because they usually recognize that you're not a direct competitor, unless you're snapping pictures and taking sketches of their work to copy for your own.  We each create something that is unique and different and good vendors work with organizers to create a positive environment for each other.

No comments:

Post a Comment