@LizziCamilla your work is beautiful and very fairly priced so don’t feel disheartened.
Sometimes craft fairs are brilliant and sometimes not so great but you can’t loose faith in yourself or your work. The number one rule is to always love and believe in yourself and what you do, especially when you’ve had a bad day or two.
Be confident and keep positive - customers at fairs feed off your atmosphere and buzz.
I often find having framed pictures of how my pieces are made create a talking point for customers. People are so interested in the actual processes and once they know it’s handmade and understand it a little more about how I make it, the price doesn’t scare them as much!
I also have a prize draw (usually for a voucher towards a piece of jewellery) which people can enter which entices people to the stand and gets a few contact details which I can use for promotions.
For me, I see craft fairs as a promotional exercise, a way of getting my work shown and my business cards and postcards out there. Any sales are a bonus and, as they aren’t expected, even one makes me feel happy.
I agree with what other’s have said about the research into the place and the demographics however sometimes I think just give it a go and see what happens. 
No-one said having a business selling handmade crafts was easy, but that’s what makes it fun xx
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Your work is so beautiful, don’t let one experience put you off. In my other life I used to do a lot of craft fairs. The first one I did I sold a few things to some friends who had braved the wind and rain - I looked at that as a trial run. The second one I sold nothing and felt like giving up. But then I realised it was just the wrong place for my work (it was a pre-school fair and they just wanted scones and second-hand clothes). So I started to learn how to pick the fairs that were right for my work, and instead of doing small local ones I travelled a bit further to find the ones where I thought my ideal customers would be. Some of these fairs were really amazing and I got a real buzz from being there, but there were others that weren’t so good for me too - even if other people sold well. I remember one fair which I travelled over 170 miles and braved many a broken Tube escalator to get to and only sold one thing. However I later found out that that one thing I sold was to a magazine editor and she later ran a 6-page feature on me and my work. So you never know who you might meet.
The reason I would always recommend doing craft fairs is because it’s a chance to meet other makers and build real friendships and they’re also a chance to meet customers face to face. I would also recommend having a range of work at different prices, so that even if visitors can’t afford the more expensive thing, they can take a little bit of your work away with them.
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Thank you Camilla for your words of encouragement. I really appreciate it, Ive moved on now from the dissapointment of the craft fair, like you say it needs to be aimed at the right market to find the right one for your products.
Xxx
I did a fair at the Reebok Stadium and literally only covered my table. There had been all this write-up about high footfall and so on, then it was the coldest Saturday of the year, or something crazy like that, and even though it was indoors, gates were terrible. Put me off trying it again for quite a while! It claimed to be ‘craft’ but there were loads of ‘purchased off auction site’ products, a colleague had a stall selling table bag hooks, which she had bought in bulk from the Far East, nothing handmade about them. Plan to research more carefully for next year the right venues.
hope it goes well sasha! Two mince pies might do it.
trudi
x
Has your outdoor sale gone ahead Sasha? I had an outdoor one planned for this afternoon/evening but it’s just been cancelled as they can’t put the gazebos up in these gales.
Just got back from it - didn’t do quite as well in on the day sales as in previous years (but haven’t totted up yet) but have a couple of possible commissions to follow up on and lots of men taking cards so that their lady friends wouldn’t see them buying. Very, very glad we had a lot of sand bags and guy ropes with us.
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Glad you did ok.
Mine is still on for tomorrow and should be ok later on but setting up at 8.30 am before the winds are forecast to have gone will be fun, not ! I see Bob has left some bricks by the garage door - think they are to be attached to the guy ropes !
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I had another fair the other day and it was a total disaster yet again. Only just made my table money. I was supposed to be at another one today but unfortunately it got cancelled because of bad weather. I was actually relying on that one to cheer me up as it’s been a terrible year for craft fairs. I feel so deflated now.
Good luck with you fair. I hope you have better luck with the weather than I did.
Thanks Pauline. The forecast for later in the morning onwards is really quite good. I did the same one in April and it was brilliant and have not managed to get to the 2 markets there since so really really hoping this will be ok… then I have to start thinking about next Saturday Lichfield Cathedral but outside in the Close not inside out of the weather.
Sand bags are your friends. We mastered nonchalantly standing and chatting to people whilst holding on to the gazebo for dear life but everyone who turned up realised that it can’t be ideal for us.
Good luck tomorrow, fingers are crossed for you.
We don’t live anywhere near any floodable water either but over the summer we had a mini monsoon which caused a friend’s garage to flood when the drains couldn’t cope with the sheer volume of rain water. We borrowed their sandbags (bags of builders sand from Ridgeons) and then wrapped bunting round them (and the guy ropes) to make them pretty and obvious.
thinking… there are some bags of sand at the back of our garage…
thinking … they have holes in them and have asked Bob to sling them…
don’t think they will do unfortunately.
… hmm what about that as yet unopened bag of salt and grit…
Its heart breaking when nothing/1 thing sells.
I have to admit I tend to go to each fair ( I have 4 this year) just thinking its a nice day out, selling something is a bonus. I guess I could work on my sales patter but I feel awkward almost badgering someone into buying things.
Something I have noticed is that if you compliment someone they are more likely to buy from you. ( I give genuine compliments btw) I sold at a pop up market a few years back, when the events had finished I looked back and realised 90% of people I complimented bought from me. At the last fair I did I said to a lady I liked her coat and she bought 2 boxes.
Im thinking of abandoning all my old crafts and starting fresh next year, going further afield and seeing what that brings.
Good luck to everybody with future fairs.
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If you have old 4 pint milk bottles you could decant the sand into those and they then have a convenient carry handle/ thing to tie stuff to, you might need a fair few of them though…
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The annoying thing is the forecast is for great weather later but the market is 10- to 4. Setup 8.30 ->
Forecast says it will still be quite windy then,
Or just add water to them, works a treat!
I only sold one thing today!! glad to say its my last one now for the year!!
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