These are the top 5 mistakes handmade vendors commonly make at craft shows. If you're wondering why sales aren't higher, take a look through the list.
Whether you live on the west coast, in the Rocky Mountains, or east of the Mississippi, add one of these upcoming maker's markets to your spring and summer plans.
One of my most popular articles details the types of products that sell best at craft shows; you can read that here: What Sells Best at a Craft Show? This article explores the other side: Types of products that don’t tend to sell well, or that can actually harm the sales of best-selling products. I’ve created...
After 10 years, I've learned a few things doing craft and art markets. Here are my 10 mistakes to avoid at craft markets for small business owners. Plus links to my favorite supplies!
When you hand your business card out at a craft fair, 80% of them end up in the trash. Here's how to make your business cards more effective.
Tips, tricks, essentials and ideas for pop up shops and craft markets for small business owners.
Fall of 2012 marked our first experience as an art vendor, at Cooper Young Festival in Memphis, TN. Over the years, we’ve padded our resume with quite a few more shows and experimented with a LOT of trial and error on our vendor booth layout and setup. We’ve learned a lot, both from our own experiences and from looking to other vendors for inspiration. Today, we’re going to share with you our top 16 ideas for selling at art festivals, craft fairs and indie markets. These tips can be summed up into three key categories: Booth Display, Signage/Décor and—the most important—Branding. FIRST, LET'S DIVE INTO VENDOR BOOTH DISPLAY. 1. Plan out your booth space BEFORE the day of your festival. Before we set foot at an art festival, our vendor booth is completely laid out. We measure all our display pieces (shelves, tables, etc.) and configure the space to help speed up the set up time. Plus, not all shows have the same options for booth sizes (because that would just be too easy). This year, our Cooper Young booth featured a 10’ x 15’ space, while some of our holiday shows ranged from a 6’ x 8’ space to a 10’ x 20’ double booth. It helps to lay everything out beforehand to know what will or will not fit in the allotted space. Once everything is measured, we use Adobe Illustrator to plan out the booth space, with everything to scale. We print out copies to take with us during set up, as well as email a copy to ourselves in case we lose the paper copies (it happens). Here's a look at my Adobe Illustrator artboard for our most recent Cooper Young Festival vendor booth: And here is our finished vendor booth, based on that original mock up: 2. Display vertically. When potential buyers pass your vendor booth, they’re not seeing product that is flat on tables. At least some of your work needs to be in their line of sight. One way we add height to our booth display is with these adjustable white metal shelf units we found at IKEA (shop them here). The shelves are completely adjustable and IKEA sells individual shelves, so you can add to the original four included. We switch it up depending on what art we need to display at each festival or market. In the past, we've used these custom built white-washed wood displays on rollers, which our brother built for us. We love how they look in our booth, as they mimic a more retail-style setting. However, these are rather heavy and bulky to transport. Looking for something a little more transport friendly, this year we commissioned a custom white wood peg wall. The unit breaks down into four separate pieces, so it's easy and convenient for traveling. Everything hooks together via large bolts and wing nuts, with the shelves and pegs packed separately. It's also completely adjustable, as the pegs can be configured in various ways. This wall unit is great for displaying our larger 5 panel wood pieces, which serve as great eye catchers for potential buyers walking by our vendor booth. For smaller shows, we take just two of the four wall panels, usually paired with one of the white IKEA shelf units. Bonus: extra pegs are great for hanging ornaments! Clear acrylic risers are also a great way to subtly add height and levels when displaying artwork on a table. Because they're clear, they don't take away from your displayed art. We use combinations of this 5 piece set from Displays2Go. 3. Choose display colors that will make your work pop. As you can see, for our larger display pieces (shelves, walls), we incorporate as much white as possible. Because all sides of our wood art is stained in a dark finish, the white background helps it pop. We also prefer how clean the white and neutral hues look. 4. Store and display multiple art prints. We have ALL-CAPS-STRUGGLED with how to display and store our art prints, other than stuffing them in baskets for browsing. We recently discovered these gold wire baskets from IKEA that slide on perfectly to our white IKEA shelves. They are great at storing stacks of prints! To actually display the prints, we chopped up a 4” x 4” piece of lumber and sawed angled grooves down the top. We stained them to match the color of our wood art. The art prints stand up perfectly in the grooves of the wood, which we then prop up above the wire baskets. It’s easy for buyers to see the print displayed and simply pick it up from the basket underneath for purchase. 5. Use slim Christmas trees to display holiday ornaments. During our holiday shows, our Christmas ornaments are HUGE sellers. While we use our peg wall for some ornament overflow, ornaments look best hanging on an actual Christmas tree. This also better demonstrates to potential buyers how it will look on their own tree. However, for those smaller booth spaces, a full Christmas tree takes up too much valuable real estate and just isn't practical. And some of the smaller, table-top trees aren’t known for being sturdy. Because our ornaments are on the heavier side, we've had issues with the smaller trees tipping over ... especially when buyers are trying to take the ornaments off the trees to purchase. We found a great slim Christmas tree from our local At Home. It measures only 18” in diameter but can still can hold quite a few ornaments. We re-stock throughout the show to keep the tree looking full. NEXT UP, WE HAVE BOOTH SIGNAGE/DÉCOR. 6. Emphasize your business name for potential buyers with branded signage. We have our friends over at Ella Jude to thank for this easy DIY pop-out booth sign idea. For this sign, we painted a thin piece of wood white, then transferred our logo (with our image transfer process) to both sides, though we've seen others hand paint their logo. We bought two pieces of copper pipe and an elbow joint and glued them all together to form an L-shaped corner. To hang the wood sign from the copper pipe, we spray-painted loose-leaf rings to match the copper pipe. We then use clear zip ties to attach the sign to our booth or tent. We're hoping to make an even larger version this year. For additional branded signage, we bought a large white vinyl banner with grommets and designed it to include our logo, website and social media handles. We use this when we have space available. For our outdoor art shows, such as Cooper Young, we hang the banner on the back of our tent so buyers walking down the sidewalks behind the booths can see our name. 7. Tell your story with signage. We sell handmade image transfers on wood and marble tile. The most common question we receive from customers during festivals and shows is,
Does the idea of School Market Day for your child make you feel anxious about what you need to make? I’ve been there -- as recently as last year! To help stem the panic this year, I came up with ten clever, easy, and practical items to ensure that your child’s next Business or Market Day is a big success. Fun & Easy Market Day Ideas for Kids I tried to find things to make for many different ages, so whether your kid is in elementary school or middle school, they'll find a good, simple business idea in
Discover 44 hot craft ideas to sell in 2023 that'll have your creativity soaring! Unleash your inner artist with these trendy and profitable crafts to make and sell, perfect for adults looking to cash in on their talents.
Farmers markets and artisan fairs are great place to get your product in front of people. Here are 10 ideas for setting up your vendor booth.
Best dollar tree crafts to sell in 2024 for extra money. Try these dollar tree crafts to make and sell for extra cash.
The importance of maintaining stall aesthetics at market - our top tips for creating a fabulous looking market stall that draws customers in.
Do you want to make money selling handmade items? Check out this list of the best sellers at craft fairs so you don't waste time or effort!
If you sell at enough craft shows, markets, and events, you’ll eventually run into shoppers who think your prices are too high. They’ll tell you they could make it themselves, get someone to make it cheaper, or find the item at the mall for less. Yet they still want the item and are asking for...
Explore renegadecraft's 44508 photos on Flickr!
Do you want some easy crafts to make and sell? This blog post is the perfect resource. You'll find 72 different crafting ideas for all ages. Perhaps one of the most appealing side hustle ideas for creative people is selling crafts online. I've met many women making hundreds to thousands in extra income per month by selling crafts
When I was making Christmas dinner for the first time, I had a lot of questions for my mom. I asked how much poultry seasoning she puts in the dressing and she said: “I don’t know…until it smells like dressing”. It’s an odd way to determine how much seasoning to use, but it works. If...
Craft shows are a unique way to shop and vendors can get creative with their setup. But there are certain things craft show shoppers shouldn't see.
If you're selling at a farmers' market or outdoor event, you'll love these unconventional ideas to draw shoppers over to your market stall.
I've done dozens of markets; all in different locations and now across two different states. Markets can be very intimidating so I put together a quick list of my favorite hacks & tips!
Looking for things for kids to make and sell at school (maybe for market day?). Here’s 19 unique things to sell at school.
Our Christmas market this year took place over the weekend of November 23 + 24. With a host of talented designer makers and workshops to take part in, this was our biggest event to date and it didn’t disappoint. We had an absolutely brilliant couple of days with 4000 shoppers turning up to support t
Article explaining a quick and easy method of setting up an arts market stall.
When I was making Christmas dinner for the first time, I had a lot of questions for my mom. I asked how much poultry seasoning she puts in the dressing and she said: “I don’t know…until it smells like dressing”. It’s an odd way to determine how much seasoning to use, but it works. If...
Here is a mega list of craft ideas to make money from home. Some great ideas and information to help you get started quickly.
Saturday was the perfect day for a festival! It was sunny and warm, but not hot, and there was a light breeze blowing every now and then. My booth layout was a little different than I had planned. I didn't get to use my full 10 x 10 space so I didn't use all the props I normally use and I had to leave out 1 of my tables. I also had to make other adjustments and put my shutter easels closer together to make room for customers to cut across a corner of my space to go into the shop door beside my booth. Hopefully next year it'll be different because I sure could have used that 3rd table that I usually have set up. I covered my two tables with cheap canvas drop cloths from Big Lots. They were perfect for an art booth! Since I wasn't using Honeysuckle Lane as my business name, I didn't have a banner so I improvised and used clothes pins to clip my used, disposable art palettes to the front of the table. What do you think? People walking by commented on it and said it was a fun way to decorate an art booth. And if you remember, I had to change what I was making for the festival. Because of arthritis pain in my fingers, I couldn't embroider so I painted instead. I didn't have any prop displays for art and I put the word out that I was looking for old used shutters. I had plantation shutters in mind, but these board and batten shutters were offered to me and I used them to make my easels. We didn't see customers walking by with bags and bags of purchases... maybe they were enjoying the nice weather, food, music, and walking their dogs? However I did have sales and customers bought original art, prints, pillows (some I had made in the past and that had been in the shop behind my booth), and flower pins! Now that the Lavender Festival is over and I am going to take the summer off, I am listing remaining items in my Etsy shop. For now, I have listed silk ribbon pillows and a few original paintings, but check back through the month of June for the rest of the original artworks and prints to be listed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let's back-track a little now and I'll show you how I made the shutter easels. They cost me just over $2 each... can you believe that??? My sister's former boss had the shutters and I was going to buy them from him, but he surprised us and brought them to her and said to give them to me... free of charge! I thought that was really sweet of him. :) So, shutters: FREE. I needed paint... and I already had some on hand from a previous project so I considered that FREE as well. I needed slats to nail on the shutters to stand the artwork on and I found them in my husband's scrap pile... FREE. The only cost I had was hinge sets and I got them at Walmart for $1.97 plus tax per set. I made 5 shutter easels so I guess you could say it cost me $10 plus tax which I thought was pretty good! Here are the (somewhat) step by step pics: 1: shutters in original state 2: cutting slats with the bandsaw (one of the few power saws I'm not chicken to use) 3: nail slats on shutters (forgot to take a photo) 4: paint shutters while being thankful that I can use my husband's workshop for this :) 5: screw hinges on shutters --- why measure when you can eyeball it? ;) 6: finished shutters I made these on Thursday and had to go set up on Friday. I only did one coat of paint because it was so humid and I was afraid a second coat wouldn't dry in time. I am quite pleased with how they turned out. They weren't perfect, but they had a cottage look to them that I liked! Thanks for stopping by... I'll share some paintings later this week. Take care & God bless, Lana
After 3 years of vending at a variety of craft shows, I can confidently say that the way I set up and run my booth is vastly different than how it started out. To save you some of the trouble of figuring it out over time like I did, I wanted to share my favorite hacks and things I've learned over the years that have made my life easier!In this blog you'll find: • Links to my favorite products that have made my life easier during craft shows • Some hacks and DIY's for setup and displays and strat
I've done dozens of markets; all in different locations and now across two different states. Markets can be very intimidating so I put together a quick list of my favorite hacks & tips!
Twelve Handmade Things to Buy at the Finders Keepers Markets
Valiant Event Hire is one of Australia's most trusted leaders in furniture hire and styling. They provide one of the widest ranges of stylish and customised furniture rental solutions delivered with unparalleled customer service. With offices in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, they are our go-to event hire partner. We spoke to Tegan from Valiant Event
Want to make extra money selling crafts? Check out these 80 unique DIY craft ideas to make and sell to find easy and popular things you can make from home!
Take a look at these IKEA hacks for your craft show setup to sell art prints, jewelry, pottery, clothing, home décor, and more!
We are so excited to finally share photos of our Christmas market that took place on November 17 at The Custard Factory in Digbeth. What a fantastic day we had, with both sellers and shoppers travelling from afar to join us for a brilliant day supporting these creative designer makers. Shoppers were
These are 18 incredibly easy things to make and sell for extra money online. Featuring Etsy, Google & Pinterest best-selling DIY & craft trends.
Richmond Craft Fair: Spring Bada Bing | Young House Love
If you've wondered why people say "I love your work" but never buy, this article uncovers the answers and solutions to help you sell more handmade products.
If you're selling handmade products at a craft show, you're probably wondering; what sells best? Because, who doesn't want to make more money at an event?
There's a lot for craft show shoppers to take in and they likely won't stop at every booth. Here's how to ensure your space catches their eye.
