2013 Craft Show Lessons Learned, Part Two

It's a craft fair tradition to get a pic of Ellie reading at our tables! :)

We did our second craft fair of the season Sunday, and like all our craft fairs, there were some lessons to learn from it!

It Ain't Over Until It's Over: A lackluster show can turn in an instant because all it takes is one perfect customer. Okay, so we didn't get a perfect  customer, who would have bought one of Scott's segmented wood vessel, we did get a customer who bought a marblewood bowl just 20 minutes before the show ended. It was just enough to put us in the black, if you don't count the holiday gift shopping we did. Meanwhile, Ellie continues to win the top award for sales volume.

Good Neighbors: We were sandwiched between two jewelry makers who were awesome. It does help make the long day a little more enjoyable if you have someone else to chat with between browsers. And to top it off, one of our neighbors was super kind and introduced me to something called "cubicle clips" and loaned me a few to attach our sign to the table. Definitely going to be picking some up before our next show! Way better than using my usual packing tape! :)

The Grass Always Looks Greener: I volunteered on the committee for this craft show, so I had some pull on where we got placed. I was worried about the vendors at the opposite end of the room because at a show I'd attended in that room previously, it looked like most shoppers were bypassing that part of the room. So I suggested that the room be set up so there wasn't a real convenient path to the door without walking into that area's vendor tables, and it appeared to be successful! It seemed like that end of the room always had more customers milling about than my end. But when I chatted with a vendor from that end of the room, he said he kept looking toward my end and thinking that was where the people all were.

Do It Right, Not Just Fast: When we did our first show last December, we packed up afterward pretty willy-nilly. It was fast, but then of course I couldn't find anything when we got home. We've gotten far more organized in how we pack our stuff, which means that while we're not one of the first vendors out the door at the end of the day, we have very little re-packing that needs to be done between shows. It's so much better to take the time to do it properly, even if it takes 45-60 minutes at the end of the long day, rather than having several hours of work later.

How Do They Do It?: Many artisans are doing holiday shows multiple days per week during this time of year. Not sure I can imagine us doing that. We got home about 6pm, and I went to bed shortly after my 8-year-old daughter did at 8pm. Exhausting! I think I'm actually grateful that we weren't accepted into a juried show I applied for that would be next week.

People Say The Darnedest Things: We are not high-pressure salespeople, so why do people think they need to make excuses when they don't buy something? They're often kind of funny or make us roll our eyes. So when a woman admired Scott's work and then asked if he were Jewish before explaining that she couldn't use his bowl since he's not, we assumed it was just another excuse. I'm Jewish, but since I've never lived in a kosher home, I had no idea that very religious Jews apparently dunk their brand new utensils (including bowls) in a religious bath called a mikvah keilim. I've done a ton of googling about the custom, and although everything I've found says that wood items, even those made by non-Jews, don't have to go through the mikvah keilim to be used in a kosher home, I assume that woman follows a stricter set of rules than the ones I'm reading.

Next up on our fair schedule is the Artists Creating A Better World Holiday Craft Show, 10a-6p on Sunday, Dec. 8, at the Lakewood Center For the Arts, 368 S. State St., Lake Oswego, OR. If you're in the neighborhood, I hope you'll come say hello!

2013 Craft Show Lessons Learned, Part One

We found some awesome cardboard risers that knock down flat and, when covered with fabric, look pretty darn nice for showing off Scott's work. :-)

We had our first craft show of the season last weekend, and while it wasn't a financial success, it was a good educational experience.

The booth sizes were a little odd, 6 feet by 11 feet, with 8-foot tables. So while I knew we needed more space than a single booth, I wasn't sure how we'd fill two. Turned out, we did pretty well, I thought. Although if we'd been mobbed by buyers, we didn't have a lot more to put out to fill in the empty spaces ... but that wasn't a problem.

Turned out I probably should have done some market research into the demographics of the middle school where the show was held and its surrounding neighborhood. It wasn't a "bad" neighborhood, but is wasn't an upscale neighborhood either.

As always, Ellie was an excellent saleswoman.

Our goods are kind of high end, especially Scott's woodworking pieces, which range in price from $25 to $750. So we really need to stick to shows that draw customers who can afford our products.

I chatted with other vendors, some of whom I knew from Facebook or our previous shows, and it seemed almost universal that sales were minimal despite the fairly good traffic at the show. Our sales totaled nine notecards and two dragonfly magnets. I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence that all the goods that sold were at the table manned by Ellie. It is really tough to say no to a cute, engaging 8-year-old. :)

(It may be that the engaging part is more important than the cute part or the age; one of our booth neighbors was a mom-daughter team and while the girl looked to be a couple years older than Ellie, what really stood out for me was that the girl never seemed to smile or say a word to anyone other than her mom. I also didn't seem them make any sales, although they had browsers and very affordable items.)

The apparent low sales pretty much across the board at the show made me wonder if the Nov. 2 show was just too early in the holiday season for people to really be thinking about buying gifts. I had printed up some postcards with photos of our work as well as our holiday show schedule and we passed them out as much as possible. I have hopes that maybe some of the people who admired but didn't buy our wares will either shop our Etsy store or come find us at one of the other shows we'll be doing.

This show also debuted our floor easels. I really liked being able to get the bow boards off the table and put them at eye level. But I think I need to fix the ribbons before our next show and put out more brooches at a time.

The show was also not exclusively handmade, which meant that my brooches -- with each petal individually cut and curled, assembled and handsewn -- were competing with a seller who bought ready-made imported flowers and simply glued them onto findings. She could sell them for $3 because they're cheap to buy and quick to assemble. Mine had a lot more time invested and were, I like to think, higher quality.

Handmade-only shows not only level the playing field on costs, but they attract the people who are willing to pay extra for an item that they know was made by the person selling it.

We also had a lot of people tell us that Scott's woodworking belongs in art galleries, and I think I now have him persuaded that we should explore that route. :)

Our next show is the MJCC/Hadassah Chanukah Gift Fair on Nov. 17, and I'm sure that will also be a learning experience (but we're also hoping for a more financially rewarding day!).

Meanwhile, if you are starting to think about your holiday shopping, please consider browsing Foster's Beauties to find something perfect for your friends and family!

Deadline Pressure: Come See Us At Holiday Fairs!

Time Bomb by dkshots via Flickr

And the countdown to the holiday fair season begins! With it, of course, comes some pretty major deadline pressure.

I was mildly panicked when I realized last night that it was exactly three weeks until our first holiday fair. So much to do, so much to plan for!

One of the reasons I went into journalism was because I like working on deadline. So I shouldn't be all worried about whether we actually have enough product to sell for the three fairs I signed us up for, right?

Well, I am.

Luckily, we're not going crazy and doing weekly shows. So there will be (some) time to recover and crank out more product as necessary between our events. And my fingers are crossed that we're enough of a success that I need to do just that! :)

If you're going to be in Portland over the next couple months, please come visit our booths and say hello!

Here's our lineup so you can mark your calendars:

• Mountain View Middle School Holiday Bazaar, 10a-5p on Saturday, Nov. 2. 17500 SW Farmington Rd., Aloha, OR.
• MJCC/Hadassah Chanukah Fair, 10a-5p on Sunday, Nov. 17, at the Mittelman Jewish Community Center, 6651 SW Capital Hwy, Portland, OR.
• Artists Creating A Better World Holiday Craft Show, 10a-6p on Sunday, Dec. 8, at the Lakewood Center For the Arts, 368 S. State St., Lake Oswego, OR.

Meanwhile, I need to get busy on the making! And organizing! :)

Star Saleswoman



Ellianna is a finger-knitting whiz! She wants to sell these as bookmarks. Would you buy one? And she's not just a maker and a salesperson, she's also modeling one of my favorite kanzashi flowers!

The star of our craft fair was our 8-year-old sales charmer.

Ellianna is the daughter of two geeky introverts and she swings between being shy around unfamiliar people and circumstances and being effervescent with friends and family. But put her in a sales position, and she really shines!

At last December's craft show, Ellie worked our table for a couple hours after setup and then her favorite babysitter came and took her off for the afternoon to have fun. This time around, I decided to keep Ellie at the show for the whole day, partly as a way to teach her that it takes time and effort to earn money. (An ongoing lesson for an 8-year-old to learn.)

I was a little worried that it would be a long day and hard for her to get through, but she was quite the trooper! She didn't complain about being bored or annoy our neighboring vendors. Whenever someone came to browse our offerings, she was right there to tell them about her notecards or my flowers.

Sunset Over the Ocean, a watercolor, made its notecard debut at the craft fair. It will soon be available for sale in our Etsy store.

And my child, who hides when someone wants to shake her hand, actually shook hands with two customers who bought her notecards! Without being pressured to take their outstretched hands, which is just huge! (Actually, the pressure never works anyway. So I'm glad I didn't even try when she hesitated before shaking the first customer's hand.)

It was heartwarming to see Ellie come out of her shell and bubble with enthusiasm as she interacted with potential customers. And it was a rare one who could resist her pitch! Ellie's notecards don't get a lot of interest (yet) in our online shop, but they are the most popular item we've had at our two craft fairs so far.

We may not have broken even at this most recent craft fair, but it was definitely a positive experience for all of us.

Post-Show Analysis

We did our second craft fair last weekend, and it wasn't what anyone would call a financial success.

The sole success was simply the experience of having a mediocre show. And now that we have that out of the way, we don't ever have to have another one, right? :)

But the highlight of the show was meeting some truly fabulous artists and actually having time to get to know them a bit!

Apologies for the mediocre photography; despite plenty of opportunities, we somehow neglected to get any table photos without someone in the frame! And the photos of other booths were taken on an iPod and therefore didn't have the best photo quality.

We had two 6-foot-long tables placed in an L shape, with Scott's woodworking in the more visible section.

Ooh, and you can see part of our banner, a new addition!

Ellie's art cards were located in the junction between my work and Scott's work:

Ellie also fingerknitted some long chains that she hoped to sell as bookmarks. I think they need some additional finishing to make them saleable, but we'll see.

What I didn't think out well was that putting my work on the last part is that people who stood looking at Scott's work would only see the backs of my framed brooch displays. And not everyone made it around the corner to see what else we had on that part of the table.

Like my little signs? I was kind of proud of them, if only because it took three or four tries (including running upstairs to the printer, bringing them downstairs where I was using a papercutter and then deciding the font size or spacing wasn't good enough and doing it all over again!). :)

So why wasn't the show a big success? Primarily because traffic was very, very low.

Weather was certainly a factor since most Portlanders were eager to take advantage of the 90-degree sunshine, which is a rare event so early in May. Research I've done suggests that spring shows are an iffy proposition and more prone to looky-loos than the potentially highly profitable holiday shows, and that seemed accurate based on what we saw on Sunday. Those people who did buy items from us made small purchases. The largest sale was $15.

On the upside, since there were so few customers, there were plenty of opportunities to chat with other vendors.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Shawn's display was fabulous, including black riser boxes that her woodworking husband made and antique scales she had collected. Lovely! You can find her work in her Etsy shop.

 

Debbie of Melting Pot Studios does the most amazing beadwork, much of it incorporating work from other artists.



Debbie showcasing a gorgeous piece she made on a spalted maple bowl by a local woodworker. (I need to get her working with Scott!) The bottom of the bowl is signed by both the woodworker and Debbie!

Somehow, I missed getting a photo of Cheshire Whimsey's glassware booth as a whole, but owner artist Karen shared her source for some inexpensive cardboard risers that flatten for storage but are very sturdy and strong. I plan to order some for Scott's woodworking. Draped in fabric, you'd never know the risers were made of cardboard!

(I ordered a trio of martini glasses similar to the ones on the bottom right, but in blue and with different stems. :)

The other main benefit to come from the craft show was that we successfully used a Square to swipe two credit cards for sales! I had one available for our show last December, but nobody asked to use a credit card then. It's nice to have used it and have a little more confidence in our ability to take credit cards.

My conclusion? I think we'll stick to our original plan of aiming for four to six shows between September and Christmas when everyone is in more of a buying frame of mind.

Meanwhile, the holiday season will be here before we know it, so it's time to make product!

Working Wednesday: Counting Down To Craft Show

There's just so much to do as we get ready for the craft show coming up on May 5!

Scott is putting finishing touches (literally, since it's the final coats of finish!) on more than a dozen wood bowls.

And I've been organizing Ellie's and my inventory, making sure quantities match what my spreadsheets say they should be and getting everything tagged with inventory numbers and prices.

So much to do!

Meanwhile, I decided it wasn't fair that only people who come to the show can get the social networking discount, so I decided to give those who aren't local the opportunity to save money in our Etsy store!

Through midnight Saturday, May 4, you can use the coupon code SHOW10 to save 10 percent on everything in the store.

Happy shopping!

Come Visit Our Craft Fair!

Come check out our tables at this lovely craft show! We'll have twice the space we had last December so many more of Scott's woodturned pieces will be on display.

Hope to see you there!

Working Wednesday: Post-Holiday Planning

It may be almost a week until Christmas, but I'm already thinking about next year.

Scott and I are cautiously optimistic that 2013 will see our business become self sufficient and ideally even profitable. :-) Of course, I expect that most of our Foster's Beauties income will get reinvested in supplies and materials for awhile more, but things are definitely looking potentially rosy.

Meanwhile, I have been slowly listing more of Scott's Chai Variations in our Etsy store -- take a look! Those are truly works of art that he created. I keep getting comments from folks who think they look like intricate pottery and are simply floored when they realize they are wood.

Here are a few of the newest listings:

This is the second (but still unique!) Blonde Chai Variations (SF111).

Chai Variations II, featuring the beautiful red-brown colors in bubinga as its main wood, complemented with maple, Oregon black walnut and wenge.

And of course you've seen Rhythms of the Heart in previous postings, but it's officially listed now! :)

(I love the little diamond created in the feature ring where the woods meet up to point down. There's got to be a name for that, but I have no idea what it is.)

What are your creative or business plans for 2013? I'm currently trying to figure out how much inventory we need to have completed by September if we want to do craft fairs once or twice a month for the last quarter of the year. I'm terrified of registering (and paying!) for, say, six shows over a 12 week period, and doing tremendously well in the first or second and running out of inventory. (I should get so lucky, right?) But how do you figure out how much inventory you need to have on hand to commit to multiple shows?

Meanwhile, although our online sales have been slow throughout December, I'm delighted that we've finally achieved one of my goals, which has been to break 1,000 pageviews in our shop during a calendar month. As I write this, we've had 1,193 so far in December, the first time we've broken past 850/month since we opened our Etsy shop. Woohoo! While views aren't nearly as good as sales, you can't sell anything if people aren't seeing your work!

Craft Fair Critique

Whew! We actually survived our first craft fair. Even better, we discovered we enjoyed it!

And we definitely learned a lot along the way.

We had a 6x4 "booth", which was essentially a six-foot table and a little space to sit behind it. At one point, I worried that it would be too much room, but it turned out to be pretty tight.

 

See? Scott's wood pieces went on the right, and my bow board on the left. In between, we squeezed Ellie's art cards, the magnet spinner and a spinner with ponytail holders on it. Oh, don't forget the fuse-bead bowls holding chocolate and business cards! The clipboard to capture email addresses got taken off the table to try because it was just too full. 

Other things I learned and mistakes I made:

***I should have organized (and labeled) the bow board so the brooches were together and the hair clips were together. People looked at the board but were reluctant to try to take anything off it. If I'd had more table space, I would have put more of them flat on the table in front of the bow board, where they would have been more easily accessible to shoppers. 

***Ellie's art cards were the biggest hit of our table. It would have been nice to have enough space to put one of each design out for people to look at. Next time! 

***Of course, it would have been nice to have been able to put out more than seven of Scott's pieces! 

***I need to figure out a system for keeping the cash accessible. I brought $200 to the show (20 $5 bills, 60 $1 bills and four $10 bills) in an envelope from the bank. I stashed it in one of the boxes that I had bags, handmade boxes and tissue paper in, but it was so awkward to pull change out. 

***I somehow waited until the night before the show to figure out if I had a working system to accept credit cards. And I really didn't. But it turned out to be a moot point because no one even asked if we accepted credit cards (despite my sign on the table) -- we received two checks from people we knew, and the rest was cash. 

***I made up these great inventory sheets of virtually everything we brought. Except the magnets. I didn't even remember to count them before the craft fair. Oops! :)

***Probably the most valuable part of the craft show was meeting the other vendors, who were generally very friendly and kind to us. They gave us advice on the various shows they've done this year and previous years, and whether they were worth applying to next year and which ones to avoid. 

***I'm pleased with how the table covering worked out. I took someone's advice and bought some crushed velvet panne, and it was perfect. I noticed several other tables with wrinkly tablecloths, so I appreciated that ours doesn't show wrinkles. And I didn't even have to hem it! :) 

I did like the way my makeshift risers for the wood vessels worked out. I took advantage of the holiday season and used fancy foil wrapping paper to decorate empty boxes. It looked festive, didn't it? 

Scott got lots of well deserved compliments on his work!

The magnet spinner was set too far back, which made it harder for shoppers to reach and check out.

Vertical or Horizontal?

I made a bow board for our craft fair display to try to get some of our work higher off the table.

To do so, I bought a 22x34 inch frame at Michael's, covered the plexiglass with a dark purple crushed velvet and used black grosgrain ribbon to have something to attach my brooches and clips to. (I firmly believe that purple is as much a neutral as beige, black and white. :)

But I can't decide if I prefer the look of the bow board vertical or horizontal. What do you think?

 

I had intended to use it vertically, both for the additional height and to use the minimal amount of table space for it. But I think I prefer the horizontal look of the bottom photo.

Meanwhile, Scott is working on a spinning display tower for my dragonfly magnets!

Working Wednesday: Working For The Weekend!

Things are really coming together for our craft show this Sunday!

Scott has finished the batch of Chai Variations that he's been working on for months. Here are the batch:

Yes, there's a black walnut/purpleheart swirl hiding among the Chai Variations!

Each one is unique, either with the combination of woods in the places Scott used them, or by the width of the stripes and/or triangles.

My favorite is one I'm calling Rhythms of the Heart, and Scott calls it a "second generation" Chai Variation:

Isn't it gorgeous?

Of course, it's hard to pick a favorite because I also love the blonde Chai Variations that Scott made:

Check out the original Charismatic Chai listing on Etsy for comparison. They're all pretty amazing, if you ask me!

Meanwhile, if you come to our craft show on Sunday in Lake Oswego, let me know you saw my blog posts and I'll give you a $1 or 10 percent discount, whichever is larger, on any purchase over $5!

Flyer For Our Craft Fair: Come See Us in Person!

 

And yes, that's Scott's Charismatic Chai on the flyer! I was delighted that we were featured on it!

If you're local, we'd love it if you came by and said hello! If you're not local, check out our Etsy shop!

Working Wednesday: Just In Time for the Holidays!

Our first holiday fair is right around the corner, and I have to admit I’m getting a little nervous. We visited another holiday fair last weekend (and I did my best to spend money supporting local artists and craftpeople!), and now I’m a bit intimidated by how professional most of the booths looked.

I did have to laugh at myself a little for noticing all kinds of things, good and bad but mostly good, that I never would have paid attention to before launching Foster’s Beauties: 

• Table skirts that didn’t come to the ground and let the vendor’s bins and supplies show underneath; 
• How most vendors managed to get their merchandise vertical;
• Some really inventive displays, including using cookie sheets standing on end to show off magnets.

But mostly I panicked because how are we going to show off all our beautiful items on a single 6-foot table?!

In preparation for the craft fair and the holidays in general, it recently occurred to me that I could make kanzashi dragonfly magnets in Christmas colors. And Chanukah colors too! It’s the first time I ever tried to make the dragonflies mostly identical, with just a few variations on the glitterboard and wire colors.

One of Ellie's favorite holiday books was Chanukah Bugs, so in honor of that beloved book, I'm calling these guys Holiday Bugs.

And then I made some in gold and silver, figuring they would be good for both holidays as well as elegant party favors for weddings or events. (New Year’s Eve party, anyone? Or Oscar party?)

What do you think?

And going with the same naming idea, these are Glam Bugs. Aren't they elegant looking?

Meanwhile, I’m going to drive Scott crazy by taping out the space on our dining room table (which, unlike most people I know, we actually use to eat because there’s no room for a table in our kitchen) and start playing with displays to figure out what looks good and what else we need prop-wise.

Hope your holiday preparations are going well. Leave me comments and let me know what you’re working on this month!

Gearing Up For Our First Craft Show

Sorry about missing last week’s Working Wednesday post! Life has been a bit hectic and stressful, for reasons I can’t go into here, but I promise to try to be more reliable in the future!

Our first craft show is coming up in just about a month, and we’re realizing there’s a lot more to having a successful show than having lots of great products to sell.

I’ve been soaking up the wisdom of the Craft Fairs...It’s A Living team on Etsy, and making my list of things to remember to bring along.

Although many folks say they rarely are asked for bags, they recommended we have them anyway for those who want them. I had already bought a custom-made stamp for our logo, so Ellie and I got busy stamping onto the small bags that will fit our work. (We’ll be getting some larger bags for Scott’s woodworking pieces!)

 Don’t they look great?

We also need to figure out our display. It’s an indoor show (which is good, considering it’s generally cold and wet in Portland in December!),  and we only have a 6-foot table. Although we have some items to use for display, including a cake stand with three different-level surfaces that I intend to use for Scott’s bowls, we haven’t entirely figured out the best ways to display other items. We will definitely be practicing our display setup at home to try to get the best looking table we can manage.

In the meantime, Ellie and I are busy making gift boxes out of scrapbook paper for my dragonfly magnets and maybe even some of the fabric flowers. And I have a new batch of dragonflies in holiday colors that are in process. Can’t have too many of those, right? 

If you've sold at craft fairs, we'd love any advice you might care to share. Just leave us a comment! Thanks!