All last year I attended the First Thursday Fayetteville are walk in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is a three hour show filled with Arts and Music and Food. They tend to leave out the more country craft type people. It is a blast and the vending fee is only $20.
Tomorrow I will be attending again. I love doing smaller shows like this for many reasons. Mainly it is an inexpensive show with a decent amount of people. I would estimate that between 500 and 1500 people attend each month. Being able to put my products in front of that many people for $20 is some of the best advertising I will do all year long.
Do you have shows like this in your area? How do they work out for you? I will not be writing tomorrow but will be back on Friday. Until then, have a great day!
I do loads of thesse shows myself...some of them turn out to be a waste of time...some are fantastic. What kind of return have you had with some of these smaller shows?
ReplyDeletechristine,
ReplyDeleteI have been doing shows off and on for over 25 years. I have had some really bad ones and some that were really great. I was also a booth owner at several renaissance faires and the same applies, some were great and others were not.
I tend to look at the investment vs return. Booth fee for the show I just did was only $20, but we all know it cost more than that overall. It was about a 45 minute drive there and 45 minutes back. So there was gas, and food and other expenses.
I did very well for this show given that it was only a 3 hour show. I also gave out about 100 business cards. That translates to money down the road.
I have limited myself to very few shows and only ones that I know I can make a little money. Of course the type of show does matter. My metalwork and chainmail does not lend itself to arts and crafts shows but I do really well at art shows.
We have a lot of little evening markets here, sometimes they're held jointly with a farmer's market, and sometimes on their own. I've never done any of these markets, but I've attended a few. Seems like they're mostly social events for the not-really-shoppers ... especially if there's any alcohol available.
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