The lady who organised the fair I did said your free to bring decorations to make your stall look christmasy. I took a nutcracker ornament and two smallish glittery trees. A lady who was selling the cakes come round and asked me how much my nutcracker ornament was. I said it was just decoration as she walked off she started moaning about how I’d got items on my table that wasn’t for sale to another stall holder. Sorry love I’m not deaf I can still hear you.
Safe to say all my decorations went straight in the box under the table after that.
I did one about 4 years ago and it was really successful. It was at a hotel that was once a mansion house so it has a long driveway that leads onto country lanes. I made £600 + and it was so busy people had parked in the country lanes which finally resulted in the locals calling the police because they said it was dangerous. The following year I went back to the same fair. It was had rained for about 3 days non stop and was raining on the Saturday when we arrived. The stallholders were asked to park in a water logged field… not feeling great at this point as I only have a Fiesta and hadn’t bought wellies. We were promised there was a tractor on standby in case we couldn’t get out at the end of the day. Finally managed to get set up after several trips to the permanent gazebo/t tent conservatory as couldn’t use the trolley. There was 12 stalls selling jewellery, 3 or 4 selling tat, 3 or 4 selling handbags (the same ones) 3 or 4 selling toiletries and a few other individual ones. As you can imagine sales were dire. Half way through the day the permanent gazebo/tent conservatory started leaking in quite a few places and it wasn’t the occasional drip. We had a power cut so it was cold and dark. At the end of the day I was one of the lucky ones who didn’t have to get towed out of the field but the car park was flooded so me and my friend had to tie black bags round our legs as we only had shoes on, so we could get to the car !!! It was an awful day, we were cold and tired and seeing cars being towed out of the mud and people wearing bags or having piggy backs to the car was just too much. We were both had a fit of hysterics, my friend nearly wet herself and I managed to trip and landed on my hands and knees in the middle of a flooded car park !!! Needless to say I have never been back
I used to sell pot covers and people wanted to buy the silk flowers I put in for demonstration purposes- and someone wanted to buy some of my shelving display units.
I did a disaster fair last week at a local school. I was placed next to a lady selling mainly bric a brac (which she seemed to be selling a lot of) and a few sewn items. She kept bringing people to my stall, picking up my things and whispering very loudly that she could make these items, I Was getting quite annoyed.
Then 2 more ladies came up to my stall, one of them picked up a bag i’d made and just as I thought I was going to cover my table cost the other lady said “I thought you wasn’t going to buy anything else” and she put it back and walked away. I sold 5 small items that night. I won’t be going next year.
I done a Halloween one last year and took 6 rusty old hanging lanterns as decoration, still with cobwebs on , they used to be in my garden hanging on poles. I was going to throw them out after the event but ended up selling all of them.
I was at a so-called craft fair a couple of weeks ago where I noticed the woman at the stall next to me was unpacking Christmas baubles from cardboard boxes, carefully removing barcodes from them and replacing them with handwritten price tags before putting them on display. The craft fair was not well attended and most people did quite badly - except for the bauble lady!! No justice!
I generally don’t do school events, they aren’t really appropriate for my products. But the organiser talked me into it a few weeks ago, and as I expected I sold two items. That was probably the same as everyone else there.
The weather didn’t help much, and I think most people came in, headed for the mince pies, then went home again. But the slightly bizarre displays might have had something to do with it. The organiser said we didn’t need to bring our own tables, everything would be set up for us. None of us realised until we got there - it was a junior school and all the tables were about 40cm high!
I have a plastic painted cup in which I keep a stock of tiny suction hooks for mini suncatchers (hooks which I ‘donate’ if asked).
At one really bad fair (not done that location since) (where I was stuck in a room at the end of the building next to the overfull restaurant so people were bringing chairs into my room to eat their lunch… you get the general picture and I should have asked for a table fee refund…)
someone wanted to buy my cheap plastic mug !
Would probably have doubled my takings if I’d sold it to her
Our weirdest moment wasn’t a disaster. Just WEIRD…to me anyway lol. We did a big three day christmas event this year, huge footfall, very well established. International choirs,entertainers in town, shuttle service from city centre. All sounds really professional yes? Part way through one day over the intercom system the priest yes was in a church announced that a wedding was starting in the other end of the church and that everyone who attending the craft was to be quiet! All the stallholders looked as baffled as me, then down the isle comes a wedding party and we are all privy to their ceremony which they put over tannoy to try block out fayre noise, they chose to have wedding at peak selling part of the day with approx 200 people looking round the stalls. No real way for us to be quiet for their wedding and a bit cheeky to be told to be quiet as we had payed PREMIUM for that event.
Nothing too weird or disastrous here although some of these do ring a bell! Tiny tables at a school fete - been there done that! I also had a lovely lady customer who was buying a scarf but couldn’t quite decide which one when someone (unrelated) popped her head over her shoulder and shouted “how much? you can get 2 for a pound down the road!” Thankfully my customer realised the 50p scarves wouldn’t be quite the same as Christmas gifts and continued her purchase.
Last year I did an event in an outdoor marquee - it had been freezing the night before and about an hour into the event the industrial lights they were using started to melt the ice and the roof started dripping. While frantically reorganising my stall to avoid drips I asked the organiser to turn the lights off as it was quite a bright day anyway. The lady next to me (who wasn’t affected by the dripping) got the hump and said I was ruining her display as the lights were showing it off nicely. Thing is she had bought her own lights along anyway which she could still use! My stall didn’t look great with things pushed to the edges and a big puddle in the middle but everything survived.
This year I was at a NT property for one of my fairs and the fire alarm went off - not once but twice. The first time it took the fire brigade about an hour or more to arrive (they are all volunteers on a Sunday apparently so don’t burn down on a sunday!). The second time they refused to come out as the first time had been traced to a fault in the alarm system. The property had to be shut for the rest of the day so out of a 6hr trading day we only managed about 3hrs - the rest was spent in the car park (at least it was a lovely sunny day!)
Really cheered to know that I’m not alone in having had Christmas Fair disasters : two on the same day this year! One in a local school (supposedly well attended by the type of parents who would like my work) where hardly anybody actually came into the hall where the stalls were set up, and the other outdoors in a howling gale where I had to keep stopping my jewellery from flying away, and hardly anybody stopped even to look. Thank heavens I had some dear friends to help and drive me about and talk to. What a way to make a living. (or not…!)
School ones are dire! I did a few when my kids were at Primary mainly to be sociable but I still get asked now. I always say no EXCEPT for a special needs school where I know a few families. Again I don’t expect profit from that either!
We recently went to a Christmas fair , it was the worse one I had been to.
Picture this: a packed car park, hundreds of people in the area, we are all in a nice community hall but very few people going in. It wasn’t advertised at all. Turns out the organiser who makes and sells her own fudge did not even show up but opted to sell her stuff elsewhere. The individual on the door of the hall collecting 50p was pleased to announce all money collected would go straight into his bank account. Never again with this organiser.
@WittyDawn The first craft fair I made a loss at was a school- table cost 25, just managed to make 18, and that was in the first 10 minutes, after that zilch. It was a very well to do private school and the children had their stalls in one half of the hall and the crafts people in the other. All the parents went to the children, which is obviously understandable.
@ABENI what a cheek the door man chap had with the 50p’s you have to laugh otherwise you’d weep.
On the other hand I did one of my few regular ones a month ago - a SUPERB organiser- very committed , views and vets every stallholder she invites beforehand. The host of the event is also very committed to maintaining a vintage and recycled ethos and will ensure new items are removed from any stall. The result is a truly beautiful set of stalls, everyone I had time to talk to made 3 figure profits. In spite of no fees being charged to vistors the event made about 4K for charity on raffles/stallholder fees ( not excessive) and teas/coffees/cakes. You NEED a great and commited organiser!
I’ve just counted up, I did 19 fairs in 2015 - starting off big with a magazine spring fair in London - a lot of expenses, van hire, parking, congestion charge, petrol from Cornwall not to mention the stand costs, and ending the year with some small Christmas fairs in Cornwall. I have to say, I took more money at the smaller local weekend fairs than during the whole of the five day Spring fair. I agree with the previous comments about having fellow stall holders selling the same products, it really does make a difference, and I do make more money when I have no competition… The event organisers have to be on the ball to make sure that they have a good cross section of stall holders, provide good marketing, especially online via FB and Twitter. Networking with other stall holders, we swap stories and events to do and ones to avoid.
I found also that signing up for events that might seem a bit quirky and not particularly crafty, but in the subject of your products really helped me. For example, I did a vintage wooden board surfing event, selling prints, mugs and badges with my vintage surf range, and people were queuing on my stand because there wasn’t anyone else competing with me, and people wanted to take home a souvenir of the day. Similarly I did a classy plant fair being run by a swanky mid-century style hotel and only took along my coastal garden flower and hedgerow flower ranges.
For me 2016 is going to be about streamlining those events, I definitely won’t be doing as many this year, and will be trying to keep local as much as possible. I met so many lovely people, especially the fellow stall holders - what a lovely bunch of people in this crafty arty network we are in!
