Why I'm not doing any more fairs

This might sound like a melodramatic announcement, but part of why I'm making a concious decision on this, and writing about it on my blog, is because I might forget that I made this decision, and book another fair, and then get annoyed.

I started doing craft fairs about 2 and a half years ago. I did a small craft fair at a church selling paintings. I did this fair to get me out of the house and see what people not in my group of friends and family thought to my paintings. I sold 3, got my photo in the paper, and got myself a stockist. The more I did, the more I realised this was not a normal occurrence, and I also needed smaller stuff to sell on stalls.

Getting more stockists, I realised % of sales given to different stockists differs wildly, from 10% to 70% just in the Yorkshire area. This means if you start stocking in other people's shops, you have to have a wholesale price which allows you to still  make a profit at whichever % the shop charges.

As I got less and less naive about business, it seemed the difference between  hobbyists selling their stuff at craft fairs, and wanting to sell your crafts as a business, is also a massively wide gap. I've done too many fairs which turn out to be glorified car boot sales, and people don't want to spend more than a quid on something.

What I'm trying to say is that most people selling at craft fairs who don't do it as a business sell their items basically at wholesale price to customers. I know I was before I started being stocked elsewhere. Something I could sell at a craft fair for £5 and make a profit needed to be sold at £10 in a shop.

So then you open your own shop, and you stock your own stuff as well as other people's. It took me a couple of months to realise that you have to sell your item not at the wholesale price, but as if you were being stocked elsewhere. Having a shop has overheads you wouldn't believe (unless you've opened one yourself of course).

I haven't done a fair for a while, because of time constraints, in some cases because I'm a dope and have forgotten it's on or forgotten to buy petrol, or in a couple of cases had a migraine. The last event I did I shared a table at a Vintage Fair with two other people; the table cost £45 for the day, and people were being charged £3 to get in. Consequently it was ill attended, I lost money (and I got a speeding ticket on the way home). Despite this, I knew I had to get back into events for Christmas because it's good promotion for the shop.

Yesterday I went to Glasshoughton to do the 'Xmas Craft Fair'. It was superbly organised to the last detail, and I have no complaints about the organisation (particularly as it was the lady's first fair), or about the centre, which was clean, friendly and had ample parking. It was well publicised, free for the public, and busy constantly.

So, why am I grumbling?

Recently, due to the economy no doubt, people have been setting up their own businesses from home left, right and centre. This is awesome, and I applaud them for it. Top culprits are Avon, Usbourne Books, Phoenix Cards, Partylite Candles and women who somehow manage to get themselves a Country Baskets card. I have nothing against any of these obviously - my issue is that they are NOT crafts.

I've been to a few fairs where one or two of these have shown up. Sometimes it's been billed as a craft fair, and I'm annoyed with the organiser, but it seems more normal now to advertise things as 'markets' or just 'fairs' without any prefix. For example, last summer I did 4 out of 5 of the Pannier Markets at which an occasional Phoenix or CB woman turned up, but due to the large area of space, and the naming of the event as a 'market', it wasn't a big deal.


Yesterday's event was a bit of a last straw moment. There were three rooms of stalls. One room was small, dark, and had 4 or 5 stalls, all of which were handmade crafts - I know because I talked to them. The cafe also had some stalls in it - I didn't get to see all of them, but they looked pretty much crafty. My room, which had about 15 stalls, had the following in it
- Avon
- Partylite
- someone selling some sort of slimming meal (I don't know what it involved, because she offended me by suggesting when I walked past holding a mince pie that I could be eating something more healthy, no doubt meaning her sawdust gloop)
- someone selling children's books and toys they'd bought in
- someone selling sweets they'd bought in
- someone selling aftershave they'd bought in

I'd been very careful to select items which I'd made by hand due to the name of the fair. I also wanted to sell everything at the same price as I sell in the shop, because I've learnt about pricing my items properly, perceived value, and the fact that customers aren't stupid.

After a few minutes, it was easy to see I wasn't going to sell anything. The centre is a kind of local community meeting place, and everyone was looking for small, cheap items they could allow their children to buy after they'd been to the Santa's Grotto. I shuffled things around, and found a few things I could afford to make £1 (baskets full of stuff for £1 seem to work well when children are involved).

There were a couple of good things about the fair. As I said, the organisation was good, there was a very sweet bunch of old ladies who meet at the centre for a knitting group who were selling their hand knitted toys and stuff, and two amazing chefs with a big load of pickles.

But all in all, it was a bad event for me. Everyone wanted to buy sweets, and as the children were the main customer the lady next door with books and toys did a roaring trade. Good for her, and for the pickle chefs who ran out of their jars of lovely jams. At the end of the day, it wasn't a craft fair. No one else seemed to have made their own stuff, and anyone that had was selling them at a very low price (as I was 2 and a half years ago) because it was their hobby.

This makes me sound really arrogant - but I'm really not trying to be. It was disheartening not being able to sell a necklace for £3 to someone who was trying to barter me down to a quid, when I've had no problem selling the same necklace for £5 in the shop. If it wasn't for the stand of earrings at £1 a pair (only priced as such because I've had them for a while) I wouldn't have sold anything.

So I have an evening event in December at a burlesque night, which I'm going to attend because it's going to be a good show, and then a three day fair at an art gallery in Leeds - after that, I'm not doing any more. I'll keep my shop as my base, continue to meet the public in there, whilst using it as a kind of studio base as well. Fingers crossed I won't regret this.