What We Learned About Craft Fairs

This past Sunday was the culmination of weeks of crafting at my house… my daughter and I each had our respective projects and we’d been creating, labeling, pricing and packing things at every spare moment.  It was a big success for her, not so much for me – so here’s a picture of her display:

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in one of these, but I’m not surprised that I didn’t have lots of sales – I have a pretty eclectic mix of items and you never know what’s going to catch a customer’s eye.  I was really happy my daughter’s work paid off – new fabric yo-yo necklaces of hers will now be appearing in a local boutique and she should be updating the bracelets in her etsy shop, Bubblywater, soon.

I learned a couple of things -- one was to pick up display ideas all year round.  If I had to think of this last minute (like I did at my table), it would have been a disaster (yeah, it kind of was – that’s why there’s no picture.)  The antique crate was something we picked up last summer – inserting lights through cracks in the back showcased each bracelet individually.  The necklace display was something my husband and other daughter constructed after I had been scouring the internet for ideas and came up with this one.  I read over and over again that black wasn’t a good choice for displays since they collect dust – but this one turned out well.  We wanted a neutral background for the bright colors to stand up against. 

During the event, and after staring at the necklaces for a while, I realized that the tags I gave her were too big.  So, we’ve updated those to be smaller so they don’t detract from the ornament and chains.

And most importantly, we learned to “not judge a book by it’s cover”.  I thought her items would appeal to mostly teens (it did), but there were a number of non-teen customers (with such good taste and an eye for trends!), as well as one gentleman.  This one threw us as he scrutinized her necklaces, asked all sorts of questions about how they were constructed and how they were worn, holding them up to his neck to see.  Not just a bored husband wasting time while his wife was at the event, he bought one, too!

Nobody used the mirror we brought and had standing to the side.  We’ll still bring one for future events – you never know.  Customers liked a little gift wrapping – we had  cellophane bags and ribbons for that.  Being friendly and smiling was key – always nice to see customers face-to-face and get some feedback.

Do you like shopping at craft fairs?  Had success as a seller at any this year?

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