Thursday afternoon found us headed south on I-5, relieved and excited to be on our way, even though we were feeling a bit behind on the things we had planned to get done before we left town. We were relieved that we hadn’t had to cancel the show and that my Dad was headed home from the hospital . Earlier in the week it had crossed our minds that we might be cancelling out of this show as we sat in the hospital waiting to see if my Dad was going to make it through his heart surgery. So, after all the medical drama, we were relieved to be on our way to our first show in 2 months after taking time off to recharge, regroup and restock. Of course, I was also wondering if there was anything we might have forgotten to repack since it was our first show in 2 months. Despite having a list, despite doing 20 shows a year, the first one after a bit of a break always makes me wonder what I might be missing.
We were headed to Hood River, OR, a small town in Oregon, right on the Columbia River, about an hour east of Portland. The annual Harvest Fest draws a fairly large crowd for a town of this size, with a lot of visitors from Portland coming in on the weekend. It’s also famous amongst the wind surfing / kite boarding crowd, so when the wind is blowing (which is almost always), there are lots of fun entertainment opportunities just standing on the banks of the river. We had participated in this show 3 years ago and in 2008 it was our 3rd best show of the year so we were excited about getting accepted at this show again. Unfortunately it did not prove to be among our best shows in 2011. Evidently they had about 10 cancellations due to family emergencies or illnesses the week of the show so they brought in some folks off the waitlist, sold double booths to some of the other artists and somehow ended up with 25% jewelry. Of all the jewelers I talked to at the show only 1 really had a good show, the rest of us suffered from an overload of jewelry resulting in mediocre sales.
However, the gourmet food vendors, wineries and a few other folks were having great shows. One of the photographers we know had a really good show, however, the show only had 2 photographers, vs. over 20 booths with jewelry which was way too much for a show of this size. So once, again another show that had very mixed results. There were also quite a few new artists this year who were participating for the first time ever. Some of that seemed to be caused by the fact that this was the first year they put their application on line instead of mailing it to the artists and they moved their application date up by a month. Evidently enough people missed the original deadline because a couple of months later they went through a second round of jurying. Not sure if that contributed to the higher percentage of jewelry booths as well.
Overall it’s a very pleasant show to do, it’s held in a large parking lot, right on the banks of the Columbia River in 2 large, interconnected tents for the art booths, so it’s not really an indoor show, but you don’t have quite all the hassles of an outdoor show. It was raining on the day we set up, but after that the rain only seemed to show up in the evening so the crowds were great. Both Friday and Saturday there were lines waiting to get in 30 minutes before the start of the show. Crowds were good all weekend, the organizers provided free RV parking within a one block walk from the show, plenty of booth sitting, an artist reception Friday night, coffee and donuts in the mornings and were available for any issues or questions. Load in and Load out were fairly easy for us, we lucked out on both occasions with someone pulling out right by the doors right as we were bringing our truck in to find a parking spot.
End results – a mediocre show for sales, a pleasant, easy show to do and after all the medical drama we faced early in the week with my Dad’s heart surgery, we were able to take a step back and realize somethings in life were just more important than a good show.
Comments
Annette - good luck on your decision. We've taken 4 shows off our list for next year for this very reason, decided we would just rather not have a show and spend the weekend at home or having fun than to spend a weekend where sales are mediocre or worse and end up grumpy at the end of the weekend.
Firstly, so glad to hear your Dad is on the road to recovery!
I too face these dilemmas, time after time - far too much jewellery. Shows down here in Australia aren't even picky and buy/sell is let into most shows without any consideration, let alone the weight of jewellery vs. other booths.
I've a show in a fortnight that is a long drive for a scant few hours of potential selling and I've already been told there will be other people with jewellery there (buy/sell, of course) so it will be around the 30% jewellery. (Last year it was 60% so I guess its improving!) Do I go and give the other jewellery sellers some competition with handmade and reduce ALL our takings further, or should I be the one to bow out gracefully and let them have more of the sales pie?
Every time I try and explain to a show organiser that there is just so much $ going around to be spent on jewellery, they either glaze over and don't listen or get offended that I'm attacking their decisions on who they let in.
At least you had mediocre sales and not awful ones! (Got to be a silver lining there somewhere, eh!?)