Going to Market!

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Permalink Reply by James Dillehay on December 30, 2009 at 9:38am

I started selling at craft markets before the Internet came along. There are definitely different kinds of shows and not all crafts will sell at all of them. I describe the variety of craft shows in this article.

Being prepared will help. After your first show, you will know everything you forgot to bring. But you can also make a checklist. The article here is a good list of what to think about bringing to ...

I relied on Sunshine Artist Audit Book for reviews from other artisans, but it is pricey.

Another list of craft shows guides and publications.

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Permalink Reply by Annika deGroot on December 30, 2009 at 5:46pm

Recently I was a vendor at a craft show specific to beading and jewelry. I had a lot of sales but the other vendors around me didn't. I didn't focus on getting a fancy schmancy booth together because I didn't know if I was going to continue to do craft fairs and didn't want to invest too much money in that, but I think I did well because I had a couple of advantages over other vendors there:

I offered to autograph any copies of my book sold and offered a discount on one of the jewelry kits if it was purchased with the book. The jewelry kit was for owl earrings and cost $6, with the book, the kits were $3 a piece. I sold 40 owl kits.

I offered micro-macrame jewelry kits and supplies (micro-macrame is a little hard to find supplies for) and had $3 and $6 items as well as items in the $20 to $85 range.

My jewelry was so unique that a friend who was waiting outside the craft show to come in overheard two ladies talking and one said to the other "Go see the lady with the micro-macrame - I've never seen anything like it." Other vendors didn't have a brand new rarely-seen-before item to sell- they had the same stuff they had been carting around from fair to fair for the last year or so. Most of the time that that's good - you want that continuity so that folks who didn't buy from you last year still have a chance to get the same thing from you this year, along with the new items you've added since last time. But I think with the recession, people were really looking for a lot of novelty and items they hadn't seen before.

I demonstrated how to make a micro-macrame bracelet and got so many people to sign up for a class at a friend's bead shop that she had to schedule 4 classes. I also got a ton of questions from passersby and answered each one frankly.

And instead of passing out business cards, I gave out free bookmarks that had a photo of one of my most popular bracelets on one side and the book's title and info like my email address and website on the other. Also, on one end of my table there was a clipboard with a sign up list going for a newsletter to be started in the coming months.

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Permalink Reply by Shasta McLaughlin on April 7, 2010 at 7:12pm

Before taking your products to any show you should have proper packaging, displays, and brochures, business cards etc. to help your customers understand any products that you offer. You also need to plan a way to ask your customers for their name, address, phone, email and birth date. Then you need a way to keep track of that information.

For instance if the shows you are attending allow prize drawings by offering a prize many of your customers will be willing to share their contact information. By offering a birthday club with a special discount you can also get customers to sign up.

You also need to prepare a safe way to collect payments and to make change. For instance a fanny pack you keep on your person or a lock box.

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Permalink Reply by C'est Soy on April 19, 2011 at 7:11pm

Thanks for the tips!  I'll be doing my 1st craft show soon and I really can use this information.  I would've been without a few items!

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Permalink Reply by cqGin9911 on December 16, 2011 at 7:14pm

I agree with Shasta's tips. I held a raffle draw set for a specific time and had a lot of attendee's along with sales. It was fun and definitely good to have a biz card of some sort prepared. :)

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