What makes your craft and market shows a success?

[ArtistryBLH]

My business partner and I have a small home-based business. We have been steadily growing over the last three years. We now have 5-6 employees at our shows and our husband’s work hard as our roadies for free.

I think we have had a pretty good year. Square sales of 63K net cash profit 62%.

97% of my sales come from Craft markets and shows in my area. 

We are both 63 and would like to scale down and yet still grow our business, especially on line! @ArtistryBLH

[HC_Charlie · Accepted solution]

Hello @ArtistryBLH thanks for your post. WOW! It sounds like your business has been growing and giving you much success. Congratulations! Depending on your product, there may be other avenues you could explore to sell your items. I could recommend more specifically if you give me a bit more info about your products/business...but at first thought wholesale to boutiques and brick and mortar stores may be an option for you, and allow you to get out of the grind and work of traveling and setting up in remote shows.

[ArtistryBLH]

Hi Charlie,

Thank you for your response.  I think your ideas are great.  I would love to be in more boutiques. Presently I am in 1 boutique store.  The owner came to me which was wonderful.  I need to try boutique owners again, but with a different approach. If you have any ideas let me know.

My website traffic seems to only come from being at shows.  I just added a QR code for my Amazon Homemade store and my website on the front of my business card. It has made a significant difference this holiday season. On Amazon, I typically sell between 2 and 10 items a month, this month 20 items.

You can see some of the items we sell on my website artistrybylorihaley.com  and my Amazon Store.

I sell more than 50 designs of dog bandanas and weighted pillows at shows, I have to limit the items on Amazon and my website to the best sellers, and the fabrics I know I can purchase consistently. 

Here is a picture of one of my booth spaces.  It cost me a bundle. My expenses were very high that weekend. I rented a house, paid for all of the meals, gas, and trailer rental, and my girls made $600 each. The four of us killed ourselves for 4 days, however, we had amazing sales of $12.5K and a profit of 68%, was it worth it??????

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Lori

[HC_Charlie]

Hello @ArtistryBLH your booth looks amazing! I LOVE your banners that show all of the dogs, and the use of the stuffed dog too as a model LOL! I know how much work that is to do; I used to do many art and craft shows, and the setup and tear down was always the worst part of a show! It's sounds like it was a huge success so worth it! I've been trying to expand into selling wholesale this past year, and it's started slow, but i had some great sales this past Fall going into the holiday. Have you heard of Faire? It's a website where sellers can sell wholesale to boutiques and stores...and stores can buy items for their stores. There are quite a few of these online wholesale sites, but I've found Faire to be the best. If you can "mass produce" your items in quantities/consistency, you may find some success there. I know you mention about getting enough fabric in the same pattern to do multiples, or you could offer mixed lots of different fabrics too.

I'll send your contact/email through to them if you like, and they may send you some more info about them. You'd probably need to submit some info to them, but I'm not sure exactly what they'd ask for, but your website shows your items well.