Craft vs Vendor Shows
Craft fairs are more for meeting your customer. To see what their likes are. It is an eye opening experience in direct retail. Your work can be varied and art focused. Always have smaller items on hand that will sell to pay for your fees and expenses. You’ll be fortunate to sell an item at a higher price. With more experience the booth display will be better setup and organized. Needing to meet the customers and encourage traffic into your booth. If you really want to pull in traffic to your booth, put up a wall not facing the outside traffic flow with an outside sign that says “ADULTS ONLY”.
Vendor shows are my preference. Do you want to do production level work? Are you setup to do production? It is possible to get contracts for hundreds of pieces at a time. The audience is business oriented and more inclined to order production level quantities. The artwork must be more mature and production oriented at vendor fairs. Opportunities to work with business, hotel, coffee shop and restaurant chains are out there. Bring smaller work for examples, lots of flyers that are post card sizes. The objective is to meet people and develop relationships. Be on top of your social media and working email campaign. Don’t expect to get the fees covered.
Secret to success
Productivity / Time = Success. Expectations need to be set accordingly. Is this a hobby or business. To be a financial success there are a lot of personal disciplines: Organization, Early to bed – Early to rise, Early bird gets the worm, Live generously, Help others be a success.
Read the biography of Auguste Rodin. Recognize the struggle with the perceptions of the world. Identify your pride. Get out of your own way. This will be a grind. Be productive.
Your destiny is to know God and make him known.
LeRoy Grubbs
