While I wish I could be in Florida and places further south selling at art fairs, but alas I am one of those people waiting for the Spring fair season to kick off here in the Mid-Atlantic. I can't wait for Spring temperatures, Spring flowers, and yes, Spring art fairs.
Each year I convince myself to not sign up for Spring shows as quite often they don't pan out profit wise. And this year, I am not listening to myself. My gut is saying "you choose to not do shows - granted I didn't have a whole lot of money for booth rent last year as I do this year - and what happened??? Missed opportunities is what!" This year I have signed up for a few local Spring fairs from April - June and now just biding my time. I chose local because I want to simply keep my costs low - little to no travel expenses (except gas) to try and maximize profits. The other reason is I push the buy local initiative for craft business to try and get more repeat customers. I am concerned that if some people learn I am local they may use it as a cop out and say they could just buy it any time - there's no rush to buy now, but always have a counter comment at the ready in case that happens to calm those concerns. Another thing I intend to do with Spring shows is push newer work and use better signage - granted all the signs in the world still won't make customers read (who choose to ignore them) I am finding a quick sentence description or phrase (Ex: "New this year") gets people to open up and explore more nooks and crannies in my booth.
So, my question to all is what are you all doing to welcome Spring and most importantly earn BIG SALES at Spring shows?
Comments
I'm doing a March show this year, so I'm starting a couple months earlier than I did last year. I'm updating my booth with pro panels & have added a higher-priced tier of work and dropped off the lowest priced pieces in the booth, which were not selling great anyway. I've added a couple new types of work in the (for me) mid-price range that sold the best last year. I'm hoping that will help shift the average sale up a bit this year. And I vow to build a good mailing list this year, I was hopelessly delinquent last year. Just trying to make better work, give it more thought, go ahead and make the scary, risky things that are easy to put off.