I am interested in hearing from anyone who has done the Park City Fair at Redstone with Howard Allen Events. 2012 will be its 3rd year. How where years 1 and 2? Is this like the Park City Kimball Art Center fair but not on a slope?? What was the quality level of the show?
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We have done the Kimball show for several years... and we did the Howard Allen Aspen show last year. The Aspen show was a topic of discussion among a number of Artists at Kimball and I also had discussions about the Redstone show with Park City residents while doing Kimball. IMHO there is a huge difference between a show that has the local support of a community organization like an Art Center or other local sponsoring group when it comes to attendance in a Resort Community like Aspen or Park City.
Aspen should have been a no-brainier... affluent community, tourists, sunny weekend what more could you want? But the attendance was really poor. Howard Allen did almost no advertising what so ever. We had a woman in our booth on Sunday who's office overlooks the park where the show was and she described; "Friday afternoon we were looking out the windows wondering what was going on in the park this weekend?"
Again, in my opinion, in a resort area like these people are out doing what they came there to do; Golfing, Trout Fishing, Hiking, Mt. Biking, etc.. they are not walking around downtown UNLESS they know that the show is taking place. It is not like Florida where there's not as many recreational activities going on and you don't have an athletic recreational tourist. The people who came to the show "stumbled upon it!" The Aspen way of life for tourists (and Park City) is to go out play during the day and then go downtown and check things out in the evening, but the show closes at 5 PM so it doesn't compete with the local businesses. And if the locals don't know it is coming they don't bother going down town during the day unless they have to... "oh, we found the show while we were down for Farmers Market. I don't have time to really look at stuff now!"
We heard the same types of comments about the Redstone show. Where as the Kimball show is put on by the community Art Center for the community and the locals look forward to it! At the Kimball show 90% of the people attending are locals and the street is full of folks who have had it as part of their weekend plans for weeks. The experience is 180 degrees from an "outsiders" event... Just because it is an affluent resort community doesn't mean they will attend or insure success.
We will not go back to the Aspen show again and even with a good clientele and mailing list for Park City we would only go there to do the Kimball show. I would be of the same opinion even if we didn't have to travel to do the show. It is a numbers game and if the show doesn't bring in a sufficient number of attendees you're finished before you start especially in this New Economy!