Question of the Month: art shows?
November 1, 2009 by Cyndi Lavin
Filed under Events & Shows, Jewelry Business Tips, Question of the Month
Question of the Month: Would you ever do an art show where you knew you wouldn’t sell anything?
Recently, I did exactly that!
Our town has been holding an arts fest for a couple of years now, called Art Smart. Local artists, musicians, teachers, and organizations are invited to participate. It’s the only “show” that I do anymore, and even though I sell very little (sometimes nothing) at it, I still like to get out there once a year and hear what people are thinking.
Why do a show that you know doesn’t cater to your target audience? I love my town and I love the people. Sometimes that’s good enough.
How about you? If doing shows is important to your income, can you imagine doing one that you knew would be a selling bust? You can leave your comments here, or if you’d like to share a picture of your show booth and a link to your site, email me with the details at cyndi @ b5Media.com (remove the spaces).
I did a show this weekend that was nowhere near my target market in terms of the purpose of the show. It was called SpiritFest and the festival was a celebration of creativity and connectedness in all forms. There was storytelling, music, dance, good food and great people. There were several vendors, and while some are feeling the economic crunch, most are starting to learn that their usual and perfectly appropriate high prices for their work won’t work for this show. Instead, items that serve as tokens of their creativeness work better.
I fared better than most at the sales end, since my jewelry covers a large range of price points. However, I didn’t go for sales. I went just because it’s always been a very enjoyable time, talking about the creative processes others use and seeing what new ideas and concepts have come into their work since the last time I saw them. That’s what the event is all about.
This contrasts well with an event early in the week which was advertised as a craft vendor market and sales were definitely expected due to the host’s business and known affluence. The event was a fundraiser with vendor table fees going toward the charity. Initially, only outside vendors were attending. Then the company decided to allow employees to bring their handiworks as well. We had no issues with this in theory.
The group of outside vendors then realized that most of the employee vendors were actually selling orders for items that are not handicraft, instead acting as distributor agents, making the event different from advertised. Outside vendors had been picked so our offerings did not duplicate each other. Employees did duplicate our work. Due to a lot of last minute changes by the host, including moving outside vendors to a different floor and not bothering to update signs, limiting their table spaces and expecting us to double up after confirming we would all have 6 foot tables and other space limitations, the only sales most outside vendors generated were from trading goods amongst ourselves. I made only 3 sales, and not enough to cover my inventory change, booth, parking and taxes.
I experienced the two extremes in one week – getting lovely sales at an amazing and personally significant event where I didn’t expect any, and taking a loss at a show where great sales were greatly advertised and expected.
The buy-sell crap that started showing up at many regional fairs was one of the main reasons I stopped doing them, Paul. There is no way, even with my lowest priced items, that I could possibly compete with someone who was reselling beaded jewelry from India (for example). Yes, it’s handmade. No it’s not handmade by the vendor, which is what all of these were supposed to be. I decided that complaints were going to fall on deaf ears, since the organizers usually just wanted to get the booth fees, so I changed direction.
I hate to say it, but some of the worst offenders were fairs held in churches.