Well I survived the craft fair. Two days! The first day (Friday) was miserable. It was freezing and raining all day and we sold almost nothing.
Miserable, miserable, miserable.
Saturday was a gorgeous day and I personally don’t know how well my cohort fared, but I made more than triple the entire booth fee. I call that a successful day!
Here is an unflattering picture of me nearing the end of the day on Saturday. My table is there on the left. Our items had been pretty thoroughly picked through at this point.
The worst part of craft fairs:
- Carrying your booth
- Setting up your booth
- Nit-picking customers
- Hagglers (This isn’t a garage sale people!)
- Price complainers
- Packing up
- Carrying your booth
The best part of craft fairs:
- Making money
- Meeting fellow crafters
- Trading with other vendors
- Compliments
- Gushers
You can see there are a few more downsides than upsides, but making money — if you make enough — is a big enough PLUS to get over all of the other stuff.
Friday, as I mentioned above, was an awful day. Full of nothing but downsides. I stayed with my in-laws that night and headed to their house feeling very dejected and discouraged (and cold.. very very cold). Had Saturday not been part of the deal, or had it not played out the way it did, I very well may have given up craft shows altogether.
Saturday was a wonderful day full of upsides. I made money! What a bonus! By 11:30 I had made back the booth fee. Once I made more than I paid for parking and food for the two days, I considered it a “profitable” day — we won’t get into materials costs.. I don’t want to dwindle my “profits” too terribly haha! There were a few downsides — some nit-pickers, those are the customers that stand at your table and try to figure out how to make your items, they’re usually fellow crafters and have no intention of actually buying anything. I try to strike up conversation with the nit-pickers. Let them know I’m not “the enemy” so to speak. I’ll just tell them where to buy the pattern for whatever it is they are nit-picking, but typically they are also too cheap to pay for patterns. I had one haggler, seriously.. you’re NOT at a garage sale! In the end, I let him haggle. I couldn’t believe it. I swore I wouldn’t do that, but it was 2 dollars, it was the end of the day, and I could tell he wasn’t going to pay full price. I decided my pride could take the hit in the name of moving merchandise. I also had a few price complainers. These are the people who will just about DIE before they’d make eye contact with you. It’s much easier to complain about your prices loud enough for you to HEAR, but not TO YOU.. They only complain to their shopping companions. Funny enough, my biggest price complainer’s companions both ended up buying from me. So there. Take THAT Complainer!
All in all it was a good experience. I’m going to rebuild my stock (I sold more than half of my merchandise!) and try to get into a show in November. Preferably INDOORS so I don’t have to set up that God-forsaken tent and sit outside in the cold all day. Seriously. Carrying your junk to and from your booth space? Hands down the worst part of doing a craft show. My entire body was sore for 3 days.
I am still not back on track with my running goals. And on that note, I am also going to be changing the format of the Motivation posts. I’ll keep you updated on progress still, but no more pictures. It makes my hubs uncomfortable (I think, he didn’t say that), and I was a little creeped out recently to get a notification that someone had taken one of my pics for some reason (blech!). So, there you have it — from now on, I’ll be focusing on the craft portion of my blog with updates on running/exercise progress, diet (I think we’re going gluten free! Yikes!), but that’ll be about it. I was tired of looking at those stupid pictures anyway.
Happy Monday!
lpcrochet 