Welcome to my creative online journal

Monday 8 October 2012

Post Craft Fair Analysis

So, how did it go?

 Some of the items I made


These snowmen, containing a Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate bar sold like hot cakes.   The snowmen's hats, you may remember, are made from cutting the tips off a pair of cheap children's gloves.  The glossy effect on the eyes, nose, cheeks and buttons was created using glossy accents. 

None of these calendars sold.  Is it too early to think about next year?...
(I did wonder if the proportions were wrong with these.  I put the scrapbooking paper on to the cardboard  before I bought the calendars.  All the calendars I found in the shops were bigger than they were last year!)

There was a lot of interest in the 'Pint of Socks' (see top picture).  All 5 sold, and if I had had more then they would almost certainly have sold too.  They are made with a pair of black socks and a white flannel, wrapped up in cellophane and tied with a ribbon.


Most of these items sold:

Reindeers with Penguin bars inside
.
..and a few of these sold too.  I also had some orders for different words and different combinations of coloured blocks to be made.  

Here is me at my stall. See if you can spot the 'deliberate' mistake:
Doh!  When I made the banner very late the night before, I missed out the 'U' in 'Flourishes', oops!

Things I did which worked well:
I invited friends along using Facebook.
I brought along some battery operated christmas lights which added sparkle to my items.
My two boys came along and ran the 'Children's Lucky Dip' which brought children to the stall.


Things I learned from the experience:
Give myself more time to make things - not just 9 days!
Carry more stock.
Bring along a flask of tea and snacks, so you don't have to buy it at their cafe which will eat into your profit. 
Consider the type of people that will attend.  In this case it was a church and attracted more elderly people than youngsters.  Make items accordingly, where possible. 

I was hopeful at the start when our town Mayor turned up to officially open the event, but I don't think it was advertised very widely.  Quite a few of the customers that bought my items were other stallholders...


Thanks for popping by today and for any comments,
Nicky


Apologies but I have had to add word verification to my comments, I have been getting 20 spam comments a day recently!

4 comments:

Carmen said...

Well I think you did amazingly well considering how much notice you had! Love those printed blocks. I love your list at the end of things you learnt and would do the same/differently. Will have to try and find you on FB - don't think I have friended you yet but what a great idea to do that!

I enlarged your piccie to spot your mistake and was most pleased with myself at eventually spotting it only to close the picture down and spot that you said what it was! DOH!

Great post - can't believe how much spam you are getting! Am getting about 1 a week which I thought was a big increase! Blimey - wonder what's attracting them to your page?

Kandi said...

Oh your stall looked great I would have been drawn to it straight away. Glad you made some sales I guess you would have to do a few to get a good feel for what sells well. Love the wooden blocks you do, you should get yourself a shop! xx

Nicky Stevenson said...

Thanks for the comments ladies. The spam comments seem to be on some automated setup. Google do remove them before they get on my blog fortunately but each and every one appeared in my Google reader annoyingly.

They have now gone - dare I take off the word verification?..

I was quite pleased with my takings from the craft fair and as you said Kandi, I have got a feel for what people like.


theboelemas@aol.com said...

Fab makes and thanks for sharing the list of what sold well (I can confirm that the pints of Guinness always sell well). Will also be hunting you down on FB.

I've had an increase in spam recently too but have to say the filter has caught all but one of them. I wondered about putting owner verification on as the word one is a pain in the butt (infact I rarely leave comments on blogs that have it on). x

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