I was looking for a craft fair, hopefully a local church fair to set up at. The nearby Catholic church was having theirs, which is what I wanted, until I learned the fee was $50.00 and it would be outside. Last year I was lucky that I found an Angelican Catholic church whose fee was only $10.00 and it was inside. This year I participated in my second craft fair. A local antique mall was holding a Christmas Makers fair from 10 -3. It would be on a Saturday, outside and the fee was $30.00. This was the lowest fee I could find.
We got there to set up a little after 8 am. There was ony one other vendor setting up at this time. I dressed appropriately and it wasn’t bad weather wise, around 38 going up to 48 degrees. There ended up being a total of about 10 vendors, all selling different items. The store itself was doing a very brisk business. There was traffic, but not a lot.
All stockings and ornaments, gnomes were made with recycled materials and used wine corks. The stockings were priced from $20 to $25. The cork ornaments, which were a huge amount of work, priced at $7, and the gnome wine bottle toppers for $5. I also had bandanas for cats/dogs, that the collar slides through for $3.
End all, I didn’t sell anything! The vendor next to me sold 1 item and quite a few others also sold nothing at all, one man sold an item for $30, and at least made his money back. We all started to pack up early. I got a lot of compliments on my Christmas stockings and one woman actually took pictures and looked over the stocking thoroughly as to how it was made. I’m assuming to make it herself. I should have said something like, “I guess you like it,” or something but i was so down at that point, I didn’t even care.
This was so disappointing, two craft shows I participated in and only one sale at last years show. That sale was only because the vendor next to me was a great salesman and convinced a woman to buy a stocking she was admiring. I heard of another craft fair in a few weeks, but I couldn’t look into it because we were going to be in NY. I’ll try again next year and hopefully get into a better craft fair, (inside, for a reasonable cost).