This was a show I was hoping for some good things to come out of. Many things were done well and some good ideas were in place, but it stumbled in one major area.
First the good things :-) To start off with, it was indoors at a State Fairgrounds building and out of inclement weather. Friday was early set up, and most of the artists did that. You could drive inside the building up to your spot and unload. A few of us, myself included, waited until Saturday morning to arrive. Since the floor was polished and cleaned, we could only back up to the entrance and unload. Ed Martin, the organizer and an exhibiting artist himself, was there before 7:00AM to let us in and find a large rolling skid to unload the van onto.
Saturday was damp, rainy, and windy as we could see through the many windows of the hall, and it was nice to be relatively comfortable inside while the rains blew.
The facilities were nice and clean, restrooms available, snacks, coffee, and lunch was provided. There was adequate room to set up and most of us had ample room behind the booth spaces to sit and store boxes.
Loadout was very easy, and we set a personal record of teardown and pullout in 75 minutes. It's usually about 2 1/2 hours to tear down and load up for me. Not having the tent and sides/top to fold up helped some. Every one was able to pull their trucks or vans up to either the front or back of their space. There were about 50 artists at the show and every one was spaced out fairly well, which made load in/out pretty easy. Ed did very well with his logistics planning.
The down side was the attendance. You only need a few good customers to make or break a show, but the higher numbers go a long ways to help deliver those few. I doubt if more than 500 people attended the show. At any given time you could look cross the hall and not see more than 6-12 attendees. By noon time on Saturday, it was settling in on the artists around me that this was not going to be a well attended show. Everyone was upbeat and projected positivity, but the writing was on the wall for the day. I sold a single $35 print on Saturday, and that was it.
Sunday was likewise off to a very slow start, and with the ventilation fans off that morning, all that was heard was the splashing of the fountain and some quiet conversations. It picked up later in the early afternoon and you could see maybe 20 customers at a time in the hall. By Three O'clock it was dead. I had one decent sale with 3 items that required a 20% discount to get it, and a single piece that was $20. I made booth fee back, and lost about $250 doing the show from other expenses.
The artists to either side were in a slightly better position where one broke even, and the other lost a small amount. Another artist further down lost money, and another made a very small profit. Most won't return. Earlier in the show, just checking to see who was there the previous year, only one out of eight was there before.
One photographer was there in name only, Galbo, who sent a pair of reps to handle the booth sales. That was a bit disappointing to see.
The promoter was thorough in getting the logistics set up, and there was no fault there. He sent his adult son around to check on the artists several times each day to see if anyone needed anything or any help. The facility was excellent except for spotty bad lighting from the overheads. Electricity was available and it was my own fault for not bring lights as many did. The one burned out light in the overheads had to be next to my space, go figure ;-)
The only other thing that might have helped was better signage on the fair grounds pointing the way to the Orr Building where the show was held. There were some signs, but they were hard to spot. The issue with the attendance was the killer there, and I have no suggestion for that. I did hear a few people say they did "okay", but that's very nebulous and is frequently a code word for "sucked".
The promoter was nice, the facility was nice, the artists were good, it just wasn't a nice sized crowd. The problem was that there never was a crowd. Change that and it will be nice show.
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Something to consider , which I didn't think about until later, is the ratio of attendees to buyers. There weren't many people there, but considering the number of buyers, it wasn't too bad. The ratio was much better than some of the shows where there are 10,000-20,000. Maybe 8-10% of those who stopped in and looked around bought something, so that was promising. The right people were being reached, but the show just needed more of them.