So, of all the shows we do, this one has to be in one of the most beautiful settings, City Beach Park in Sandpoint ID, on the shore of Lake Pend Orielle. If you get bored during the slow afternoon, you can watch the many sailboats on the lake.
The show is hosted by the local arts council, the Board of Directors was very visible during the show, we had visits from several of them as well as offers for booth sitting, morning coffee and muffins and water was available for the artists.
Load in / load out can be brutal depending on your location. Booth assignments aren't posted ahead of time, parking is hard to come by, so unless you luck out and find a parking spot that just happens to be close to your booth, you can end up hauling your stuff over uneven park ground for quite a ways. We lucked out on load out, someone was pulling out of a spot within 100 feet of our booth right when we were ready to start loading. So I stood in the empty spot while my husband brought the truck around. It made up for the really long load in we had. After both load in and load out we took advantage of the beach and walked straight into the lake to cool off, very refreshing!! We had forgotten our swimsuits for load in, we got some strange looks walking into the lake with our clothes on, but I was so hot and tired and really didn't care what others thought, even had to chuckle when I heard one of the locals comment on the crazy artist crowd! We had started the load in process when it was 88 degrees and discovered we had a spot with no shade, no lake breeze and the sun was shining bright.
This was our second year here and right now we're trying to figure out if last year or this year was the anomoly. Last year sales were great, especially considering the low booth fee of $195. This year we would have been pulling our hair out if the booth fee had been any higher because it would have meant 0 profit.
Jewelry definitely wasn't selling well, or at least it wasn't for us and the 3 other jewelers I spoke to on Sunday. Some wall art / home decor items that fit the local theme mountain / lake theme were selling very well, so mixed sales. We were very glad this show was only an hour away from the previous weekend's show and we had relatively low expenses.
Like last year, the weather was toasty (high 80's), most of our customers were either tourists or people who owned second homes in the area, we just had a lot fewer sales this year. Everyone seemed really worried about the roller coaster Wall Street went on last week so I'm assuming that had something to do with the fact that sales were so mixed.
The crowds were great on Saturday morning, died down as the afternoon heat rose. My relatives who live here came to see us about 4 PM on Saturday and didn't have any issues finding a parking spot so that definitely indicates the crowd was dwindling. Sunday the crowds were smaller but more steady. We also had a lot of comments on Saturday afternoon regarding how hot our location was, the booth alignment resulted in the outer 2 rows of booths blocking the breeze off the lake so it was in the high 90's in the booth. Sunday afternoon the lake breeze really kicked up for the last hour of the show and for tear down. I did see one booth become a kite for a short period of time as someone hadn't thought about the impact of removing weights while the roof was still attached.
One of the highlights of this show for us was watching a young photographer (18 years old, his 3rd show) selling like crazy behind us. Most of his images were local and he had a great show. It was fun to see a new artist receiving such a wonderful response, especially one who is so young. Wish we could have all done so well!
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Ah, the heat and the economy. Not a good combo. Sorry it was slow this year. I've heard pretty good things about that show from a couple people, so sounds like it can be good.
I just did Coupeville, another Northwest show, and it was perfect weather, but still about half the sales I'd have expected last year. Well, we're flexible folks anyway, so we'll ride this downturn out and forge on, right?
That's it Steph. We did Coupeville last year when the temps unexpectedly hit the mid 90's, on pavement and no one was there and sales were horrible. People won't show up for a show in Western WA if the temps are much above 80, so we rolled the dice and still had fun even though the sales weren't what we hoped for this year.
BTW, we did Sandpoint last year, sales there were higher than we had ever experienced in Coupeville after doing that show for 4 years so it made sense to try it again since we were already in North ID. Our sales in Sandpoint this year came in within $100 of our 4 year average in Coupeville and since we didn't have the $100 ferry fee and the 15% commission we would have for Coupeville, we probably still came out ahead.