Craft fair results

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post about the craft fair that I participated in on June 29 and 30. It's been almost 2 weeks and they've just flown by. Part of it is that I've been sick most of this week (some nasty flu bug) and last week was the 4th of July and a birthday party we threw for a friend. Just lots of other stuff going on.

So the craft fair started Friday afternoon. We didn't have a single sale Friday, but according to our neighboring vendors, that's pretty typical, so we didn't sweat it too bad. When Saturday around lunch time came and I had only sold 2 cards and 10 window clings for a total of $3, I knew something had to change, so I offered the cards at buy 1 get 1 free (after calling my husband and crying on his shoulder. This was his idea to up the sales). That seemed to get people more willing to stop and at least look. I ended up saling $25 worth of cards and the 10 window clings (they were 10 cents each, so that was another $1). All in all, not a very profitable craft fair, especially considering I spent $8 on food while there and had spent $18 on display stuff (plus a $12 gift certificate).

So, will I do another craft fair? I'm not sure. If I do though, I'll make a few changes that I think really would have helped. The first change I'll do is make packs of cards. People looked at the packs of 6 moving cards I had and seemed interested until they realized it was only moving cards. They seem to want to get packs of cards, even if it ends up the same amount they'd pay for the singles. Second, I'd find a better display method. The one I had made for me at Home depot seemed to be a good idea, but I had so many cards that were in baskets and stuff that people seemed overwhelmed. I'd like to find some way to hang most of my cards so that they are easier to see at a glance. Lastly, I'd organize them by theme. I did that with the baskets, but ended up hanging everything I could fit on the tent itself, so the themes were no longer together. I'd love to find a way to hang them all together, and label them with a huge sign that says what themes they are. I'll be experimenting at home before the next one to see if I can accomplish this. I guess most of all I'd just be more prepared. Even though I knew about this one for 2 weeks, the first week of it I was preparing for a party at our house, so I really only had one week to prepare and most of that was spent packaging the cards, making envelopes to match, and labeling the cards with prices. So preparation for the booth was seriously lacking. That'd be the one thing I'd change.

This photo shows my card table with baskets on it. The picture frame shows some of the vinyl window clings I made with my craft robo. People seemed to think that it was a picture that I had made with the shapes (if it was, it'd look more cohesive). This photo also shows the "Captain's Log" notebooks I made.

I began to realize that I could hang some of the cards on the tent flaps, thereby maybe making it so there were less baskets on the tables. It seemed to overwhelm people to see so many baskets worth of cards, so they'd flip through one and then quickly leave. You can also see the cloth visors my mom made and the little animal fun foam visors she made.

This one shows more cards hanging on the tent flap, plus my mom in the background. It also shows the wands she made to sale, the cute little rabbits she had, the bracelets she was saling, and the bucket of water bottles she was saling.

This photo is just another one with the cards hanging on the side of the tent. The next day I had to move these ones because my mom's friend who showed up late Friday and was in the area next to ours, insisted that she set up her tent right next to ours. Wished I had known that before I set up the cards, it was a pain to move them all : ).

Another photo from Friday. I went to Home Depot on Wednesday looking for ideas to display the cards. A very nice man helped me and made these display racks for me. He cut the dowels, and suggested that the bottoms be shelf brackets, which turned out very pretty. He also drilled the holes and screwed the dowels in for me. His idea was to have the two brackets be like bookends and the dowels support the cards. It was a good idea, but wouldn't have let me display this many cards on it (it would have maybe held 15, instead of the 25 to 30 I hung up). So I modified it once I got home, setting the brackets as bottoms and then the dowels up in the air. I then strung ribbon like clothes line and used clothes pins to attach the cards to the ribbon. You can also see more of the window cling shapes I cut out, plus baskets of cards. Like I said, I think it was overwhelming for people to see how much stuff I had and feel like they had to sort through them.

A close up picture of my mom and her table. She made the wands and jewelry out of kits she had ordered from Oriental Trading company. She is putting together more of the necklaces in the background.

This photo was taken on Saturday. Since no one seemed to get what the window clings were, I made a window out of cardstock and put it in the picture frame, then put at least 1 of each type of window cling on the front. People seemed to get the idea of what they were much better. We moved the clothes line display to the front of the booth today so people could see it better. I also made it so there was not as much stuff on the table. In fact, we just lined the front of the booth with all 3 tables, so people didn't feel like they were invading our space to see everything (a suggestion by the vendors next to us and it seemed to work). I also used the front of the table cloth to hang a few cards.

A photo of my mom's stuff and some of the baskets of cards. I had brought these photo boxes just in case I needed to elevate stuff, and so I put a few baskets on them to give the display more depth. I again hung some of the cards on the front of the table cloth. People seemed to notice the booth more on Saturday because of the cards hanging everywhere. I guess just more visual stimulation.

The basket with my mom's wands in them, plus the stuffed animals. I made two window picture frames, one for the butterflies and flowers, the other for the more generic shapes. I put the extra clings in ziplock bags, separated by type of shape (butterfly, flower, star, etc). This did two things: it helped clean up the cluttered look of our booth, since now there were only 2 frames instead of 5 and it helped give people more of an idea of what the shapes were for. I only sold 10 of them, but that's better than 0. By this time, I had also strung ribbon from the top of the tent down the tent pole on both front poles so that I could hang up a few more cards. Just another attempt to clear a few baskets off the table so they didn't look so cluttered. You can see a few of those cards on the left side of the picture.

One last photo from Saturday. This one shows the cards hanging on this part of the tent, part of the tables, and my neighbor's booth. I think another problem was that people would see the beer bottle wind chimes our neighbor had (they were labeled "Red neck wind chimes") and skip over our booth to see what they had. I wish I would have remembered that I checked out a book on saling at craft fairs from the library before I left. I skimmed over it this past week and it mentioned that you should have some sort of wall separating your booth from the next one to prevent this exact thing. After reading that book, I have a few more ideas on how to have better success at a craft fair that I wish I had known before this one.

Am I sad I went to this craft fair? Not really. It was a good exercise to get me thinking more about what I should do if I want to actually make money at these things. It helped me get more experience with the whole craft fair idea without me spending a lot of money (my mom paid for the booth. She had some blankets she was going to bring that she took to work with her to finish and had people at work buy them, so she did make enough money to cover the whole thing, just not completely from the sales at the craft fair itself). It was a good learning experience for if I do it again. I just hope that next time I sale more and make more money : ).