**Today I am so excited to be featuring guest poster, Carmen Whitehead, who is here sharing some of her best tips for a successful first craft show!**
Congratulations! You’ve decided to do your first craft show! After making wonderful creations and sharing them with friends and family, it can be a scary decision to sell them in a craft fair. But, I’ve got some tips for you to help make that experience stress-free and fun.
I’ve been doing craft/art shows for the last 2 years and with each one I’ve learned something new. Ways to streamline my set up, what I should take to every show, and what my customer wants to see.
- Research – Make sure you sign up for the right show for you. Shows can be expensive with jury and booth fees, so you want to find ones that are reasonably priced as you’re starting. I began during the holiday season and craft shows at churches or recreation centers were abundant. I found a great support system with these shows because many of the other merchants were new to shows also. As you gain more experience and confidence, you can then apply to bigger shows that require larger fees and bigger displays.
- Display – Go online and look at popular display set ups for your type of items. I learned to use “double-duty” displays, such as a crate or vintage suitcase to carry items in, but then use that same crate or suitcase on my table to create height and display items. I would definitely invest in a sturdy, foldable 6’ or 8’ table, and a nice black table cloth to give a clean and upgraded look to your display. Creating a vintage display is very popular right now and can be a very economical display. Look around your house for items to use, visit thrift stores or garage sales. Finally, do a mock set up of your display in your home before the show. This will give you practice and time to make any changes if needed.
- Bring Essentials – I have a perfect size picnic basket (about the size of a small suitcase) that I use to carry some essentials; small stapler, invoice book, pens, extra price tags, business cards, calculator, tape, screw driver, small hammer, hand sanitizer, wipes. I also bring bottled water and some snacks to keep me going throughout the day. If you can, bring a helper. Having someone there to help with customers, check outs and bathroom breaks is a huge help. Don’t forget your business cards too! They may not buy from you now, but if they have a card they can contact you when they are ready.
- Dolly or hand truck – For my very first show I did not have a dolly and my daughter and I had to carry all of our displays and boxes to our space. I didn’t let that happen again! I purchased a small hand truck that could easily hold my fold up table and boxes. The handle on it also folds down so it makes for easy storage in the car. This will really save your back!
- Payment Options – Make sure you have plenty of change available. You really don’t want to be asking your neighbor vendors for change continuously. Accepting credit cards is so easy now if you have a smart phone (Square, PayPal, Intuit, even Etsy). I can’t tell you how many sales I’ve saved because the customer didn’t have any cash, but was so happy to learn that I accepted credit cards. The nominal fee charged by the credit card processing company is well worth the number of sales you will get.
Bonus tip: Mailing List – Start collecting email addresses for your newsletter as soon as possible. There are email providers now that make it so easy to put a newsletter together (mailchimp, constant contact, Aweber) and start connecting with your prospective customers. Always leave room at the corner of your table for a mailing list signup page and a little bowl of candy. Who can resist candy? This is a great way to draw people to your mailing list, without having to continuously ask people to sign up.
I hope these few tips are a help to you and make your first craft show a successful and stress-free one. Do you have some ways that save you time and effort during a show day? Share them with us in the comments section.
You can find Carmen’s work her website- Carmen Whitehead Designs.
Learning the hard way
1. Make sure the venue has WiFi if you intend to use a credit card option – couldn’t use my square as no WiFi couldn’t even log into Square to save the data and charge later.
2. Ask how many vendors in each type/ your type ie 20 jewelry vendors out of 40 total vendors = jewelry saturation.
3. Is there food? Do they have to leave the venue for food? If they have to leave chances are they aren’t hanging out as long or coming back once they have eaten – esp if the crowd goers have children – it does affect sales.
4. Introduce yourself to your neighbors – especially if you are alone – it’s good to make friends and sometimes they have great tips / have done the show or another before / at some point everyone has to pee!
5. You can Google many existing shows and get crowd numbers and sometimes ratings. Look under “Craft Fairs and Festivals”.