Bottom line is: you need first to work on how to become irresistible to the art fair audience, how to get their undivided attention, how to become relevant.
Can they get something similar at TJ Maxx or Pottery Barn? Whoops ... something missing here!
People need to understand what you are about, why does it matter to them and what is in it for them. Have any time for social media? Show off your new work on FB -- and how is that website?
If there are people at the art fair it isn't because they didn't have anything else to do (think Saturday afternoons in the fall in America ... college football comes to mind for me) and they are walking down Walnut Street or Westheimer or Meramec or State and glancing around ...
P.S. unless you missed John Baun and John Houle's discussion about this marketing last week, here it is again: http://www.artfairinsiders.com/profiles/blogs/apples-to-apples
Comments
Many things attract me to a booth -- sometimes it is the background color, sometimes there is a display that is unusual. For sure there needs to be work that is hanging way above eye level, in case there is a crowd and eye level, or table level work, can't be seen. I want to see something that I haven't seen before. It CAN be a crowded booth with lots of work -- but that work shouldn't be stacks of the same thing. Because reading is an important part of my own life I love to see interesting signage, I love to learn more. Cool calligraphy, a la the signage in Whole Foods Markets, intriguing ideas. I don't want to see excess inventory stacked around the edges.
I was in Grand Rapids this past weekend to attend ArtPrize. This is not individual booths, but more gallery. I was attracted, of course, to the media I know the most about. I'm very picky about photography. I am well informed about fiber media. Those attract me. We all have our own interests. The point is to have your work be unique, displayed attractively, maybe in a surprising way.
Here are some photos I liked, a lot, just one image although this one is part of a series:
Doesn't it make you want to know more?
See the rest of this series:
http://www.artprize.org/64023
Connie you have so much more experience than me and many of us... I would love to know what you have seen in the past that is "irresistible" to patrons?
I mean, the low hanging fruit is "new and different" but that doesn't exactly get the juices flowing! :D
I go to a fair number of shows and I'm always looking, checking things out -- but, perhaps as my children say, "Mom, you're not the demographic."
Oh, Sandra, don't get me started! ;-)
--Chris
Echo that. And so many of the "patrons" that now walk the fairs do so with their noses stuck in an electronic device of some sort. I can't count the number of times I've been in the middle of a conversation with a customer and she gets a phone call and walks off, never to return. What is so darned important that suddenly rudeness is acceptable?
Hello Connie,
Very good point about needing to make one's self irresistible. But I disagree with your point that "...because they didn't have anything else to do..." ... I think that in recent years Art fairs have very much become "the entertainment", they are now peoples' 'ball game' or 'picnic' or 'Sunday drive'. With the economy getting hammered in the early 2000's and still not having fully recovered, those people who have all along gone to art fairs still do, but they have stopped the impulse buying they traditionally did.
... just my two cents ...
--Chris