I preface this review by saying that I absolutely love doing Paragon shows... I have a lot of respect for Bill as a director and appreciate what he was trying to do for New Jersey by offering a free booth space to all the artists who got juried in this year. I've done 4 other Paragon shows since last year and my average sales is over $3000 at each show, so needless to say I went into this weekend with high expectations. Sadly they were not to come to fruition. I wasnt even going to do the show being a 10.5 hour drive for me and I've never done a festival in Jersey before, but I was lured in with the free booth space and thought I would give it a shot. Sales-wise, this was my worst show yet. In fact, I came very close to zeroing out for the weekend!
Friday started off badly with Tropical Storm Andrea hitting the east coast hard. Flooding and horrible traffic caused my GPS to divert us off the highway in eastern PA and we ended up in downtown Philly, in torrential rain, on a Friday night, towing a trailer through the roundabouts. A road closure even took us further off the beaten path and into some sort of concert venue where we had to talk our way out of having to pay for parking to get through and back to the main road. I think the trailer should have made it obvious enough that we were not there for a concert... anyway, after an additional 1.5 hours we made it back to the highway and yet another toll road (over $95 just on toll roads this weekend!).
Bill had sent out an email earlier in the day that there might be a break in the rain from 4-8p and setup would be available at that time but warning it would still be very windy. After all our diversions, we arrived much too late to even attempt to set up, which I was just fine with as the weather had taken another toll for the worse and was causing mass flooding again. We opted to wake up at 3:30am and set up super early.
We arrived at the festival location at 5am. Unlike most Paragon shows, this one is in a big field, which unfortunately was still incredibly flooded from the night before. Literally giant pools of water were all over, making it impossible to drive up (like we were supposed to) or to even dolly in so we had to carry everything. The booths seemed rather oddly spaced out and didnt follow a great order (although almost everyone got a corner). One tent had blown over during the night and was completely upside down. There were quite a few empty spaces where artists apparantly decided not to come due to the weather. We laid out as many tarps as possible, set up all our tables, and sacrificed a couple extra propanels in water to have places to lay out the paintings. Surprisingly we were still able to set up everything in about 4 hours and were ready to sell! Our booth had a large puddle at the front but we were one of the luckier ones. One artist had so much water in front of her booth that it was impossible for people to get into it. She did an amazing job though with finding wood planks down by the beach and created her own boardwalk in front of her tent. I should have taken a picture. It was absolutely ingenious and looked beautiful!
And then we waited. And we waited. And we waited.... all day. Where were the people? We waited in rain, we waited in wind, we waited in a tiny sun. People just didnt come. There were some, and some were carrying good sized packages, but there sure werent many. I could wait 5-10 minutes sometimes before even one person would walk by my booth. The people who did come sure werent interested in my more modern paintings. The only work I really saw selling were landscape photographs of LBI beach, other traditional beach/ocean related art, and silk scarves patrons made themselves (thats another story... I'm not sure if scarves patrons themselves make should be allowed in a fine art festival). The silk scarf guy had patrons surrounding his booth all day watching others make scarves and waiting in line to make their own. The majority of us just sat there. It was my first day to ever zero out. The fiber artist behind me zeroed out. The people on both sides of them also zeroed out. The photographer next to me made one sale. The wooden instrument artist across from me also zeroed out. After all day in bleak weather, 13 hours in soaked and ruined shoes, and no sales I was thoroughly disappointed and regretting my decision to try out the show. However after a good meal at Red Lobster and a tall beer, I was able to put on a more positive attitude and forced myself to believe good things were in store for Sunday.
Sunday the weather was much better. Beautiful sun and low 80s. If for nothing else, it would be good for tanning. I made one $300 sale early and so did my neighbors behind me and across from me, so we were all thinking today would be a vindicating day! A furniture maker who made beautiful chairs sold a $2000 piece. The crowds were good in the morning and there was decent buying energy, but very soon the crowds died down and energy went back to a zero. Again, the only work I saw being bought was very traditional beach related art. Even the "beach art" that was more modern wasnt selling. There was one booth that I thought was really great with found objects they used to create ocean animals, like helmets for sea turtles shells, and driftwood for bird nests. It was really unique and ingenous, but I didnt see much leave their booth. I guess if you have traditional beach art then it might be a good venue to try, but otherwise it seemed like a bust for most people. In the last hour, I managed to pull out one good $600 sale, which after expenses brought my profit to just over $200. So I didnt loose money on the show, but I sure did come scary close. If I'd had to pay for the booth fee I certainly would have. I think the people on all sides of me ended up loosing money. Really disappointing as I said, I love Paragon shows and I've never done a bad show with them before. First for everything I guess. I'm just glad it wasnt my first loss! It sure did come close!
Comments
I too was at the Jersey Shore Show this past weekend and yea, it was not good. My lowest show if a few years but not for lack of Bill trying. It seems like it was about two weeks too early to do this show- the crowds were really not at the beach yet and the public was not very art savvy...it was fish pics and stained glass that sold well and congrats to those that had the right items in demand, they did well, For the rest of us- I made my gas money but that was about it. I was one of the lucky ones...never been to a show where so many did the big "0". Bill is a great promoter but this was just not the audience for anyone with contemporary art. Such is life.....on to the next show......
Congrats on a good show Evan! Im glad someone did well. Although, it must be said that though you didnt just sell beach-related images, you do have traditional work (though created in a very unique way) versus modern or industrial. It was definitely traditional crowd. And an older crowd (whom rarely ever buy my work).
I don't need to repeat the conditions of the show, they were accurately described above. I was lucky in that my space was not in one of the flooded areas.
I had the opportunity to meet a woman from the local chamber of commerce that helped promote the show along with Paragon. She was very happy and enthusiastic about having the show there.
My experience as far as sales go was much different than the above posts. Although the crowd was a little light on sat, I made some decent sales. Only 9 for the day, but all a good size. My first sale came before the show even opened on sat, I was walking to my truck to get something and a woman stopped me with a "hey Evan! I recognize you from your Facebook photography page!" She ended up making a purchase that put me into the black before the show was officially open. Not a bad way to start and a good reminder that a social media presence is important. I had a few more sales for large high end pieces throughout the day, even a big one during the period of rain that cleared most of the show for an hour (you know when someone is there in the rain, they are serious about being there and not just browsing). After all was said and done, sat ended up being my biggest single day of sales ever. Sunday was a nicer day, and I feel the crowd was a little bigger in the morning than Sat. I would have been ecstatic to have a repeat day of sat sales but ended up making some smaller mid sized sales instead, nothing major.
Over all I had a great show and will definitely apply to the show again. People there do have money to spend on art. Most people that I made large sales to have their permanent residences elsewhere (one large piece is being shipped to their home in Bermeuda).
I also want to add that most of my work is not beachy, while I do have a couple beach/tropical images, most of my work is not beach related. I sold 3 beachy photographs, the rest were a mix.
It was also good to meet some other artists from AFI (including Bill McLauchlan and Alison Thomas) and see some artists friends there from other shows. A few customers mentioned they were impressed with the overall quality of work at the show. The weather was unfortunate, but this show has the ability to be great!
I also have to add that I do not have beach pictures.
Yep, that's about how it looked. I arrived Friday morning about 11AM after a 7 hour drive through pouring rain. Living south of DC I have to leave early to avoid getting caught in rush hour. The hotel was very nice about checking me into my room even through I was hours before checkin time. I hung out for a little while, watched a little TV, and went back and forth about whether to set up Friday afternoon or Sat. morning. One weather outlet said the rain was going to stop at 7AM, the other said 3AM. If I was going to set up in the rain I preferred to do it Friday. At 2PM I decided to go get something to eat and head down to the show location to see what was going on. I parked on the street. I left the restaurant at 2:45 and had to wade in knee deep water to get to my van. The rain did stop on Friday (after I drove through flooded streets to get to the show). Late Sat. a man and his daughter came in and they apparently had money to burn. She couldn't decide between two pictures so he told her to get both. Then he picked out 2 for himself. That was my only sale Saturday and I made a one piece sale on Sunday that gave me a profit but not enough to go through that again. I drove home this morning,through pouring rain, and sat down on the couch just as the weather radio announced a tornado warning. What a weekend! I'm just glad to have made a small profit and be home and dry. It is sad because the hotel was really nice and reasonably inexpensive. It was just across the street to the beach and I went out Sunday morning and took photos. A nice clean beach and some nice restaurants. Too bad I just can't afford to go back.
Great review Britt. You captured the scene perfectly.
We were behind Britt but were able to set up Friday (tent and panels only) during a short break in the rain and loaded in the art on Saturday morning.
Saturday was a zero day for us but Sunday morning before the show officially opened we had a customer who took two $150 pieces with no price negotiation and no balking at taxes. It was going to be a great day.
Sadly, that was it for us. There were several picture takers who need to run the colors past the daughter or husband and a few "your work is glorious" but apparently not so glorious that they could find a way to buy it.
Thanks to Bill for the effort. The rain/tropical storm did in Saturday and Sunday just didn't pan out for us. Congrats on that last minute sale Britt.
Here is Saturday...