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GREAT LAKES ART FAIR

Posted by sherry curtis on October 20, 2010 at 11:12am
Rock Financial is the cleanest facility I have ever seen at a show. All day long there is cleaning staff roaming the aisles with brooms and dustpans sweeping up any little piece of litter, one of them even swept some popcorn off the carpet in my booth. How great is that? The restrooms are immaculate and just as clean at 5:00 as they are first thing in the morning.

Sales were pretty good. Friday, ladies day, was as good as the other days for me. As a jewelry metalsmith, I know that there is always going to be a lot of competition so I was pleased. My neighbor, a potter who does work that is more like porcelain, mentioned that she is always surprised at this show. She usually sells a lot of small items like mugs and small vases but here she sells a lot of her higher end work. She was delighted.

Load in is very easy as we are able to drive right to our spot if we come at our assigned time and the complimentary electrical hookup is there waiting for you. Load out was also a snap, however, since they asked us to wait 45 minutes after the show closed to drive in, some artists chose to dolly out. We found that by the time we had everything torn down it was time to drive in.

Connie's complimentary jury images critique on Sunday morning is anticipated and appreciated by me. It is so helpful to see everyone's slides and listen to the comments about what is good and what is not so great. I paid another promoter $50/60(?) to critique my images in March or April and she isn't going to give her response until Feb. How helpful is that since I will have already had to apply to most of my 2011 shows by then.

The staff at Rock Financial and Connie Mettler are all very helpful. Artist amenities are great and while you have to purchase all food and drink there the prices are not outrageous and they have a wonder soup and salad bar in addition to the usual junk food.

All in all it's a wonderful show to do and hopefully it will just keep getting better.

sherry
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Comments

  • skeeter aschinger October 27, 2010 at 5:42pm
    We found the show somewhat disappointing in sales and attendance. Great hospitality and facility. Enjoyed the fellow artists. Much too far to travel to just do a little above breal even. Sounded as if the spring show was the one to have applied to.
  • Diane Wright October 21, 2010 at 8:16pm
    I was also at the show and agree with the other responders. Load in and out were easy and everybody connected with the show were great. Connie's talk was very helpful to me. In terms of attendance - Saturday was definitely customer challenged. Friday was the best day for me and Sunday was not bad but not great. Overall, my sales were not as high as I expected - didn't lose money but much of my profit went into hotel, meals, gas, mileage, etc. (5 hour drive for me) There were a some "newbie" type booths there - mine being one of them. I learned a lot and will have a much upgraded booth next show but as this was my first indoor show, I didn't know what to expect. I would like to do the spring show and so I will apply again. I think the show is trying to grow and I would like to support it if I can.
  • Ruth Jellema October 21, 2010 at 12:53pm
    I was also at Great Lakes - signed on at the last minute. It was a real treat to do an indoor show. I had heard that the promoters of this show were really trying hard, but I hadn't heard good sales reports, so my expectations were quite low. My sales were actually better than I had expected but not good by normal standards. I felt lucky to have a couple of good customers. The traffic on Friday was decent for a Friday. On Saturday and Sunday I would have to rate the attendance as extremely poor. I spoke to a few other exhibitors who had done the show before. They all said that they had had a good show in the spring and had high hopes for fall, but the fall show took a nosedive and they would probably not return. They also commented that previously there had been a very nice cafe-type food area in the middle of the show. Now there was only a concession stand although the cafe had been promoted on the website. There were quite a few "newbie" type exhibitors with kind of sub-standard booths. I would try this show again if I felt it was on the way up - unfortunately, I got the opposite impression.
  • sherry curtis October 20, 2010 at 11:23pm
    It was pretty busy during ladies day, 1/2 price free drink, however the rest of the weekend was slow but steady.
  • sherry curtis October 20, 2010 at 11:40am
    Probably not if you are a jewelry artist. I did 4x booth fee. I think potter did 6x.
  • Nels Johnson October 20, 2010 at 11:36am
    Just curious, how many times your booth fee did you do? Nice comments about the staff and setup--but your sales results are pretty nebulous. Is this show worth coming to if you live a day away?
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