I enjoy craft fairs as I often see people I know and haven’t seen for a while so they can be a social occasion and nice to catch up. The two I’ve done this year have been moderately successful. that’s to say I haven’t lost money, but if I was to factor an hourly rate of pay in I would be making a loss .
I seem to sell different things ‘in the flesh’ - often darker coloured jewellery items that get no attention online but lots in real life.
I genuinely think all craft fairs are hit and miss unless you live in area where there isn’t a huge choice of shops within a reasonable driving distance. I did 3 in 2012 which were brilliant so did them again last year and they were rubbish. I’ve done wealthy areas where I couldn’t afford to a buy a shed , much less a house and the Ugg boots and Radley bags were real and never sold a thing. I did a few last year that had been recommended in 2012 by other crafts people and last they were awful for everyone, including the people that recommended them. The best one in 2012 had a brilliant Xmas atmosphere and the variety and quality of stalls was fantastic. Last year there were at least 5 of the previous years stall holders missing and one of the stalls sold the sort of kids items you are likely to find in Poundland or a 99p store !!!
It is such a shame that craft fairs in this country are not given the respect they should be. Buyersr definitely expect to pay cheap prices for quality individually handmade crafts but then are happy to pay top prices in shops for mass produced tat… I don’t get it ?
I had someone point and raise their eyebrows at the prices of my doorstops at one fair I did. I was so tempted to nip around to the front, scrub the price out and put them up by a fiver 
Ha ha that’s hilarious… It’s such a shame really because the whole thing of talking to people and discussing how things are made etc is so much more interesting than just posting on the Internet. You cannot beat touching and seeing handmade products in real life … But at the end of the day whats the point if you spend all at a fair and make £10
I think it depends on the type of event to be honest. At the weekend we went (not trading, just visiting) to the Living Crafts fair at Blenheim Palace and it was amazing. Really busy, good atmosphere. We had to pay to get in, but then we went round the palace too so felt it was worth it. Got chatting to one of the stallholders who told me they paid £600 for their four day pitch, which was one of the most expensive (there were smaller ones there too) and this was the fifth year they’ve been. So obviously they must be making plenty from it! And the quality of work there was very high end - not all of it was handmade, most probably was, but what wasn’t handmade was really high quality. Something to aim for maybe, although had better get saving!
£600 is way out of my league!
I’m willing to pay £30-£40 at a fair with a good crowd. I don’t expect to sell hundreds of items on the day - I think it’s rare to genuinely make a profit as compared to Folksy commission costs. But I do expect to hand out hundreds of cards, and see my online hits jump for a week or so afterwards.
This coming weekend will be my last fair before Christmas, which should be as many immediate sales as possible plus a lot of promotion. Then I’ll just sit indoors with my computer and some mince pies . . .
If it wasn’t for Christmas craft fairs this past month I wouldn’t have made anything much since September!
Everyone is right, craft fairs are definitely hit and miss and over the past three years I have been selling, I have definitely worked out where my own audience is though trial and error.
However, even if I only just make my stall back at a fair, I always make sure I hand out lots of business cards and look at it this way - you can’t get a lot of advertising slots for the price of £20 (what my maximum amount is I pay for a stall). So for the cost of the stall I have also promoted my items a lot even if no actual sales on the day, and most of the time I do get a few sales after each fair though online means
We’ve tried all manner of craft and home goods stalls, from colleges and uni’s to street and city fairs, all with differing results! We often get a lot of ‘oooh if such and such was here, they would love that’ then walk off, which kind of annoys me because it makes me realise ‘such and such’ doesn’t go to those kinds of events.
However, the last few stalls we have done, we have had some stock stolen, even though there are two of us and we keep a good eye on the stock, so we have stopped doing them for now. It’s a shame really because Folksy is doing so badly that when my pro listing comes to an end tomorrow, I won’t be carrying on, have moved over to the dark side again!
Glitter Kitty…when doing craft fairs we used to have a name for some of those people. We called them the THREE P’s…pick it up…put it down…and P*** off…
What is it with people pinching stuff? I hate it.
Hehehehe!! Good name! A lot of our stuff is so shiny and glittery people poke it a lot to see if it’s solid, I’m not sure what they expect, but always seem to make an ‘oh’ sound when they find out it is, they’ll comment how pretty and sparkly etc everything is, spend ages looking at everything (as we put all our stock out at once), then P off, as you say! Ahhh, customers… Joe xx
sorry to ask im new t this … what is the dark side?
the dark side is the US version of Folksy…not allowed to mention it on here…which is fair enough…but a lot of people have shops there as well as here.