Craft Fair Take Two!

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Last November, I was accepted to show in my very first craft fair.  I was super nervous and had no idea what I was doing.  Therefore, I did a shit tone of research, made checklist after checklist, did two booth design run throughs and nearly lost my mind worrying.  In the end I actually did pretty well, moneywise, and made it through the five hour show without having a panic attack.  Win/win!

Going into my second craft show I was more prepared and less nervous.  I had a better handle on how much product I needed and didn’t have to make any extra.  I had my inventory organized in such a way that I could just load boxes into the car to go to the fair…serious rearranging wasn’t necessary. I already had the base materials for my booth (table, umbrella, rug, etc.) so that didn’t have to be repurchased. My checklists were already made so I just had to reprint and go through it.  And thankfully, after the first show, I packed all of my fair materials in an organized way so that accessing them and assessing them was super easy.

Prepping:

This time I only did one booth set up run through.  Although I will say that it took me several hours.  I have a lot of new products so I had to change all of my signage.

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I think going forward, I’ll stick to paper stock signage that is taped to the display as opposed to the chalk pen signage I used before.  Getting the chalk pen to erase is hella hard.  So unless you have one of those magic eraser sponge thingies, that chalk pen is gonna stay there forever.

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I also decided to incorporate a drying rack into the display so I could better showcase my activity blankets.  I had them at the last fair.  But they were folded up and I had no idea how to really show them off with the limited space I had.  So I thought laying them on a drying rack would present them in a better way.  It was a risky choice because the rack would have to sit partially in front of my table and I didn’t want to make it hard for customers to get to any of my products. (Please note, the rack was PERFECT.  I got so many compliments on my blankets and people seemed to be really excited about them.  Last time, no one even noticed them.)

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Fair Day:

Packing was a breeze, mostly because Hubby did all the packing.  But I will say that this time around he was able to easily fit everything and even had a little room to spare.  The last time I was so scared to forget something that I basically brought my entire studio with me. This time I actually opted to leave an entire bins worth of products at home.  Some of the products aren’t really fair friendly, others, like my fleece hats and neck buffs, are just off season.

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Unloading was a little more trying because we had to park about 50 feet away from where my booth assignment was.  50 feet isn’t far to walk, unless you’re carrying a bin full of rice filled eye pillows. With that said, I was completely set up about an hour before the show began.  But that was a good thing because casual passersby walked into the lot where the show was being held and started shopping around 10:30a, 30 minutes before the show was actually supposed to start.

My sales were a slow burn all day long.  I didn’t sell out of any large items like I wanted to.  But my felt masks were selling like hot cakes.  I made back the cost of the booth on mask sales alone and I was only charging $5 a piece for them. I didn’t hit my money goal like I wanted to.  But I met so many lovely people and I got a lot of takeaways that will help me continue to have successful fairs.  I was given ideas for new great products.  I met teachers, social workers and health care workers who complemented me on my blankets and will hopefully be working with me in the future to create some custom works just for them.  And most importantly, though I fell short of reaching my goals, I still came away feeling positive and encouraged.  My inner gremlin who tells me I ain’t shit must have taken the day off.  And thank God for that.

Shout out to my booth neighbors: La Luna Jewelry Studio and Hippy Toes. A thousand thank yous to Hubby for encouraging me, supporting me, being my braun/best seller/cheerleader/master Tetris car packing hero. Special thanks to the Patchwork Craft Show.  I can’t wait to work with them again.

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