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,
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.
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!
The original article on Craft Show etiquette continues to be a popular article so I thought I’d expand on it and break it down a bit more to give you a really good look at what each category of craft show participant might look for from you. Here are the other etiquette articles:...
Get the inside scoop on all the little known tricks of the trade for increasing sales and building repeat business. How to design and work a booth that rocks!
Here was my most recent booth set up and I am obsessed with it! It’s my favorite one I have ever done!! What do you think?🤩🌈🤗
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.
It’s MARKET SEASONNN✨ I love doing pop up markets! These are just some tips + supplies that I like and have really helped me out i
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...
If you're planning to host a craft show, read over these tips and comments, straight from vendors, sharing what they appreciate most from a craft show host.
Welcome to the fourth installment of our blog series — Starting Small: Adventures of Starting a Small Business. Here, we’ll be sharing stories and lessons we learn on our journey as full-time small business owners. This week’s topic is “prep is key.” Festival season is here! For some people, festival season means lots of events at which to drink lots of beer. For artists and makers, festival season is our BUSIEST time of the year. It feels like there is some type of festival, market, art show, pop-up shop, etc., EVERY weekend. And I don't know about other makers ... but we find it hard to keep track of all the details for all our upcoming shows. So, we've come up with three key steps that help us in preparing for festival season. These steps may seem a little overwhelming, but each one is key in helping us stay organized. Plus, they help speed along both our overall production process AND setup at the actual shows and markets. 1. MANAGING SHOW DETAILS From September thru November, we currently have 9 markets/shows on our calendar (and we haven't even finalized December, yet). Last year, I believe we only did 4 shows — total — from September to December. But this year, we are full-time entrepreneurs. Which means we're going FULL STEAM AHEAD. While applying for all the markets this year, we started confusing the details for each show. What booth size is this one? Have we paid the vendor fee, yet? How much did we pay? Is that application live, yet? What date is that show? Are you sure we didn't apply for another show on that date??? And so on and so forth. In order to keep track of all the details for every show we applied for, we decided to create a master spreadsheet. On this spreadsheet, we included EVERY possible detail we might need for every show we applied for or were thinking about applying for. From the name and location to the date the application goes live. From the app due date to the date we expect to hear back about acceptance. From the booth size to whether electricity was an option ... ALL the details are now kept in ONE place. Want your own spreadsheet? You can download the blank version of our template below by clicking here (we left Cooper Young Festival in there for reference). 2. BOOTH LAYOUT I don't remember when we first implemented this step — I just know we've been doing it for a few years now and it's become a huge time saver. The problem with planning out the perfect booth display is NO EVENT has the same sized booth because THAT would just be too easy. For example, our upcoming Cooper Young Festival booth is 10' wide by 15' deep and also happens to be on a corner. Our market the following weekend is 10' x 10', with a 6' x 8' booth and a 12' x 12' booth the weeks after that. Consensus? It's impossible to keep the exact same booth layout for every market/show when the booth sizes aren't offered in ONE SIZE FITS ALL. Plus, depending on the time of year, we focus on different types of products, which affects the type of displays we use. During the holiday season, we go heavy on ornaments and incorporate a Christmas tree, but buyers aren't really that interested in ornaments at March shows. To create booth layouts for some of our earliest shows, we used to pop our tent up in our backyard for a
Tips, tricks, essentials and ideas for pop up shops and craft markets for small business owners.
Why you should consider selling at craft shows, and what items sell the best, including my personal favorite, Lilla Rose, and why I think it is the best thing to sell at farmer's markets, craft fairs, and vendor events!
Getting ready for your first vintage market or craft fair? Learn vendor tips and resources to make your event a success. Curated by Girl in the Garage
Festivals are great places to sell products or services and make some extra money. But not all products are appropriate. Here are 5 things to keep in mind.
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...
It happens. There are certain situations out of our control that get in the way of us sticking to our commitments (those situations should not be boredom or being hungover! Read our article on what will get you excluded from future craft fairs). Although leaving a craft show early or cancelling last minute is frowned upon, if you...
Get the inside scoop on all the little known tricks of the trade for increasing sales and building repeat business. How to design and work a booth that rocks!
I finally got the chance to run my first ever market stall at Peckham Festival… and this is what I learnt
2019 Top 11 Craft Fair tips and booth layout tricks to help your vendor experience, Advice from a seasoned craft fair stager | Stampin Fool
Most popular easy portable display ideas for markets and craft fairs - save time and energy with these clever, eye-catching display ideas for vendors.
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...
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!
Tips for Improving your Market Stall Display It’s The Little Things – Here are some ways to Improve Your Market Stall Display.For any small business owner
Being a craft fair vendor is a great opportunity for artists and small business owners. Here are 5 tips and tricks you need to know when starting your craft market journey. Learn how to successfully pick out what events are right for you and how you can prepare yourself for the unexpected.
So, you have an outstanding product and you’ve found the best venue. But, how do you get customers into your booth? This article will answer that question.
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.
Vintage markets are so fun to wander around and discover not only antiques but also handmade goods with a rustic feel, upcycled and re-purposed goods. Great finds for your home and great for the environment! There are some seriously amazing vintage markets out there and we got to chat with 4 in B.C and Alberta...
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.
Asking what to wear to a craft fair is like asking "what do I wear to work?" The answer depends on many variables. Find out how to choose the right outfit.
** This item is a SELF-EDITED DIGITAL TEMPLATE which is INSTANTLY customizable via CANVA (FREE). Nothing physical is shipped to you. ** Purchase, print, frame, and display the sign for customers to scan and pay or connect with you on social media. Easily add your own Venmo or payment QR code (drag and drop your code PNG onto the template), or you can generate a QR code using Canva tools. NOTE - The "Scan to Pay" text and font is NOT editable, but can be replaced with a new text box. This sign template is perfect for Hair Salons, Hairdressers, Beauty Salons, Spas, Bakeries, and more! Provides an easy way for your customers to pay with Venmo, Cashapp, credit cards, etc. Encourage your customers to follow you on Social Media like IG or Facebook with a convenient QR code. This DIY (do-it-yourself) template is fully customizable and very simple to use. There is no software or fonts to download - Simply edit it in Canva (for free) using your PC, tablet, or mobile device. Once edited and downloaded, you can print immediately at home, or through any local or online printing company. This is a CANVA TEMPLATE. You CANNOT edit using: Microsoft Word, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop, Google Docs, or any other software. PLEASE NOTE: You will need a FREE Canva account to open and edit the templates on your computer or in the Canva App on your phone. Computer is recommended! ☆ Shop the DANI Collection Here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TrendyFoxStudio?search_query=dani __________________________________ WHAT'S INCLUDED: 1 PDF instructions with link to Canva templates, also includes Canva tutorial videos ⟶ Pre-made Canva Sign Template: 5"W x 7"H; Venmo and Cashapp versions included ⟶ Pre-made Canva Sign Template: 8"W x 10"H; Venmo and Cashapp versions included __________________________________ HOW IT WORKS 1. As soon as your payment is processed, you will receive an email from Etsy regarding your confirmation of purchase. You will then have access to download a PDF file that contains the template link(s). Please check out this help article on accessing your digital files for download: https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013328108-Downloading-a-Digital-Item?segment=shopping 2. Click the provided template link. A webpage opens where you select "Use Template" and then Canva will launch. Create your FREE Canva account. 3. Make all your changes to the template, save, and download. 4. Print at home, local or online printing service. __________________________________ WHAT CAN I EDIT WITH CANVA? All fonts are completely editable (you can change the font style, size, or color) *unless noted above* Add new text boxes or reposition/resize the text box to make it your own Add your own logo, photos or images - just drag and drop Make UNLIMITED edits with no expiration! CANVA is mobile-friendly as well! Edit your amazing designs right from your phone! (For intricate edits, a computer is recommended). :: Please NOTE - the size of the template can only be adjusted with a Canva Pro account. :: __________________________________ *TERMS OF PURCHASE* - This is a DIY (DO-IT-YOURSELF) Canva template. Order is for digital file only - No physical item will be sent. It does not include editing services, printing, framing or accessories. - Due to the nature of digital items, this item is non-refundable. Please read the product description and store policies carefully before making a purchase. - We do not accept returns, exchanges, or cancellations. If you are having any issues with our product, please notify us right away so that we can we help make any appropriate corrections. - Files are not emailed to you. For your convenience, they are available for download directly on Etsy. On the menu, go to You > Purchases > Click the button "Download Files". NOTE: Etsy doesn't allow downloads from the Etsy App. Please use a web browser (Safari or Chrome) and login to Etsy.com to view purchases. https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013328108-Downloading-a-Digital-Item?segment=shopping - Please keep in mind that every printer prints differently. Exact colors may vary slightly! - This item may not be redistributed or resold. You cannot share or sell templates, designs, or elements included in any shape or form. You may not resell, reproduce, distribute, or profit in any way from the design. You may not resell the template or design in digital or physical format. - All mockup images and additional props such as frames, items on display and non-incorporated writing are just for illustrative purposes and are not included within the sale. Please note that fonts used in the designs may or may not be native to Canva. -------------------------------------------------------- PRINTING TIPS Print at home or have professionally printed! PRINT AT HOME: - Download the completed design from Canva as PDF Print (for highest resolution) - I recommend using cardstock paper which you can purchase from a variety of sources (Amazon, Staples, OfficeMax/OfficeDepot, or other craft store) - Anything between 70 - 110 lbs cardstock paper can be used (depending on your printer). For reference, business cards are 110 lbs. ONLINE PRINTING SERVICES: - Download the completed design from Canva as PDF Print (for highest resolution) If you’re considering a professional printer, I recommend Prints of Love. My shop has partnered with them to offer fast, high quality yet affordable printing. -->> Check them out at: https://printsoflove.com/ref/trendyfoxstudio/ -------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2022 trendyfoxstudio/trendyfoxevents --------------------------------------------------------
Craft fair tips for your first craft show including craft fair display, what to products bring, how to price products and more!
You’ll never attract every shopper at a craft show. And attempting to can do more harm than good. As Marie Forleo says: If you’re talking to everybody, you’re talking to nobody. You need to define your target market and focus on building a business and products for them. However, a few mistakes can repel even your...
Many people think getting a stall ready for an art fair or an art pop-up booth is just about showing up with your products. But if you want to make sure your efforts are as efficient as possible to maximise returns, here are some things you should keep in mind before you even commit.
Having Anuket Luxury Apothecary has afforded me the opportunity to host at several markets and, totally tooting my own horn here, we always get the best compliments on our booth and branding. Putting together eye catching market booths that draw in business and make my time at a vendor event worthwhile is honestly kind of fun for me. So, I thought I’d love sharing my tips and tricks for a successful market booth here with you as well!
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole the other day, researching a local craft show. That led me to read its reviews on Yelp. Then I started reading reviews for other craft shows in my city. And then I moved on to big craft shows outside of my city. I ended up scanning...
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,
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.
To share the lessons in this article, I’ve replicated a craft show display I saw online that I thought could use some improvement, and have explained what I would change and how. Does the “before” display work? Yes. Could it use some improvement? Also, yes. I chose this display to replicate because it illustrates the...
If you're planning to host a craft show, read over these tips and comments, straight from vendors, sharing what they appreciate most from a craft show host.
