Athens Christmas Art and Craft Show

This was a 3 day event held indoors at the Classic Center in Athens, GA. It was a first year show.

The good: Easy load in and out, with large carts and helpers on hand to unload your vehicles.
There was a good bit of advertising for the show with signs and adds in the newspaper, local magazines, etc.
It was beautifully curated, a lot of really great artists!

The bad: Only a handful of customers showed up.... It seemed you were lucky if you made your expenses.

After talking to some of the artists, I was told that there were 3 or 4 other events going on during this same weekend, so maybe that was the cause for poor attendance. This was a paid admission event and the promoters gave all the artists free tickets to hand out to anyone and everyone on Saturday evening, in an attempt to get people into the show on Sunday. I'm not sure that worked. We had a little surge in attendance, but that was mostly neighboring church members.
It was sad, as I felt everything was in place except for the buying crowd. I was one of the lucky few who doubled my expenses. If this group puts on another show, I would probably consider it in hopes that this time there won't be any competing events and the crowds will come.
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  • We visited the show, arriving around 3pm Saturday. I've gotta say... we were very pleased to hear noise in the exhibit hall, and to see people in the aisles. We've been to this same venue for other shows.THIS show had the biggest attendance we've seen there.

    I followed Lynn Wettach's progress putting the Athens Art & Craft Show together. She did more than any show director I've seen in 30 years to create a strong foundation for a first time event. Her marketing was excellent. Her artist quality, excellent.

    I think April Chapman's assessment is spot on... in the right market, an artist would be wise to consider a show produced by Lynn again...
  • My husband did this show. The promoter: AWESOME!!! Love her like a sister. Load in was great as well as load out. There were tons of volunteers to help and the quality of the artist at this show was great. No buy sell anywhere in sight. It was an artists' dream except for the fact the attendance was poor. Perhaps it was the market, not sure. Athens is a big college town and perhaps many people were upset about the charity show, not sure. All I know is that we took a huge hit. We didn't even make expenses, but it had nothing to do with the promoter. In the right market, I will definately do a show produced by Lynn again.
  • This show pushed a local charity craft show put on by the Jr. League out of the location. Locals were not happy about this and boycotted the show. Mondays press was particularly harsh. Although the quality of the show was high, attendance was low. Its a shame because Lynn is a nice lady and worked hard. Local politics did her in.
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