My First Craft Show - The Results
My first craft show is done. If you haven’t followed along, here is my original post, I Signed Up For A Craft Show, and my second right before the show called Craft Fair Preparation.
In my last post, I talked about setting a goal and how that goal will help you figure out what you need to bring to the show so you have enough product. The good news is my advice worked and I had plenty of product for people to look at. I actually generated some good traffic into my booth and made a few sales, but I did not hit my goal. But that is okay.
I signed up for the show for two reasons. One, I wanted to get my name out there. My business is still new and I don’t have many clients. The only way to get more clients is to spread the word and help people discover my business. Second, I wanted to try out going to a craft fair. I wanted to see gain experience and see if this was something I wanted to continue to do. I guess my third goal was of course to hit my $1,000 target, but in reality I was going in with low expectations and really I wanted to cover my fixed costs such as booth fee, poster, table cloth, and other items I needed to run my booth.
Before I jump into the results, I’ll preface it with saying this was the first year for this show. It did not have the presence and marketing other shows have had the luxury of building over the years. Secondly, we had one of if not the nicest weather day of the year so far on the day of the craft show. In the Portland, Oregon area it was sunny and in the 70s. When this happens everyone tends to spend time outside, not inside at a craft fair. Because of those two reasons, we had a low turnout. It was a slow day with probably 10% of the customers there should have been for the number of booths.
The Results
Goal one: meet new people and hand out business cards. I certainly did that. Again, attendance was low, but I did meet fellow crafters, I picked up a few business cards, and I handed out lots of cards. I talked to fellow woodworkers who were interested in seeing my work. Some of these folks were very experienced and some were just starting out and looking for advice. I hope to hear from these folks as I offered up my blog as a resource as well as my shop and time. I also met a real estate agent who has been ordering cutting boards off Etsy as gifts for clients and said she would love to switch to supporting a local business instead. I’m very excited about this opportunity!
Goal two: experience a craft fair. I had fun. The fair was a great experience. I was nervous at first but I gained confidence throughout the day. I was able to engage people, talk about my products, and answer questions. I learned what the typical questions were and was able to explain about cutting board care and how to use my wood conditioner before people asked which I believe helped with some of my sales. I had really good conversations with folks and hope that I hear back from them!
Goal three: revenue target of $1,000. As I discussed in my previous blog, my goal of $1,000 of revenue was set to help me determine how much inventory I needed to build. I knew I needed to overbuild as well as I did not know what would sell. I learned what drew people in, where their eyes were drawn, what generated questions and interest, and almost more importantly, what people didn’t even look at. I brought planter boxes thinking springtime would be a good time to sell them. In hindsight I should have known no one wants to walk around carrying a planter. It was also great to see which styles of my cutting boards people liked versus not. To answer the question, did I hit my goal? No. I did make some sales and reached nearly 1/3 of my goal at $329 in revenue. The good news is that covered my fixed costs with a little left over.
Now for the big question. Was it worth my time? I’ve read about craft shows before. I have heard that people go, they spend money, they spend time, and they even make a few sales, but in the end they do the math and find out they made less than a dollar an hour. So I’ll do the math. My profit after all of my business expenses and cost of materials for the items I sold amounted to $91.46. The cost of the products I sold does not count the cost of any labor, yet. So adding in labor, I spent 8 hours at the show. My wife spent a little over an hour helping me setup. My grandpa came and sat with me in the afternoon, but I’m not going to count his 4 hours. Then there’s the time spent making the items I sold. Given the items I’ll estimate roughly 3 hours total for all of my sales. That comes to a grand total of 12 hours invested to make $91.46 which equals $7.62 per hour and that is knowing that the estimated hours is probably low. The actual time I spent is closer to 100 hours, you can do the math on that.
So, was it worth it? Wholeheartedly yes. This wasn’t about the money. Would it have been nice to make $1,000? Of course. But this was about meeting people and gaining experience. Plus there were other intangibles like the time I spent with my grandpa. That was the best part of the entire show, hands down. I don’t get to see him often so it was a real joy to have him sit with me and chat in the slow times. That alone made the entire show worth it to me regardless if I didn’t sell a single item.
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