The Craft Fair Gone Wrong

At the very last minute I decided to enter my knits in a local craft fair last weekend. Now, from the title of this blog post I'm sure you can gather that things didn't go so well but I do want to say that it was a great learning experience and all in all, I did have fun.
I enjoyed getting to know my craft neighbors and seeing what sort of things people were doing. It was interesting to me to see what sold...my knits not being one of them.
Initially I was told that there was only going to be one other crafter there who did crochet/knit. But when I got there I saw there were 4 other crafters doing what I do and wouldn't you know it....my booth was all the way at the back, the very last stop that people would come to to see my knitting. I firmly believe that my location greatly hampered sales as I was not only in the very back (of the last room) but I was also in a room where the lighting was terrible and you could not see the true colors of my yarn (as I'm sure you can tell from the picture).
I have to believe that location was my downfall because I was getting wonderful comments on my items such as, "These are beautiful...so soft...wonderful workmanship...decent pricing...very cute."
I engaged my potential customers, they asked me how I did certain stitches and I even had a hat going on my circular needles because believe it or not some people didn't believe I made everything that was on my tables.

I didn't sell my first item (a hat) until about 3 hours into the fair, then maybe an hour later a little boy bought a change purse from me for his mom. About 30 minutes later he came back and bought two more...he was my best customer of the day. I didn't sell anything else the rest of the day and I was $30 away from breaking even.

A couple of people took my business card stating they were interested in custom orders (mainly for their little children). As it turns out my email and website that are on the business cards are not working. I knew this going into it but I thought they would be up by now, so I don't know if those people have tried to contact me (at least I did have my phone number on my card!) or not.

I am working on creating some new items and I'm thinking about doing the fair again next year but I'm going to have to insist on being in the first better lit room, if I can't get a spot there then I don't think it will be worth my time and effort to go back.

I learned a lot, I did most things right and a couple of things wrong. It was a financial disaster but it was an accomplishment in that I did it, I went out by myself, set up "shop" and was proactive in trying to sell my wares so I think I did indeed come out ahead!