Does anyone sell at craft fairs?

[Baldieheid]

And if so, and you do well.....how?

I've just done one and it didn't go well.

If you do, what kind of items do you make?

Mine are handpainted cards at £4 each.

Choc maker three stalls down from me sold out in an hour, and her boxes of 12 were £20 a pop. Very pretty chocs, granted. So pretty I bought some and spent all my takings lol

Chocolate and food will always sell. Crafts are harder. Sometimes you will have an excellent days and others terrible. Also be honest with yourself. Do people really like what you have to sell or is it feedback from pond friends and family. Good luck with it.

It's very hit and miss. I take a budget range of my jewellery to markets generally in the £20 -£60 price range. It is a case of finding the right one sometimes. It's no good me attending the village hall type of craft market. I'm out of the spending range for that demographic and can't (won't) compete with the £2 crap earrings from charms and findings bought from Temu

I took over £1000 in one market in November. Same market yesterday was £150 (but it was lovely to see someone fall so in love with a piece of my jewellery. It's been waiting for a while to find its owner! That made it worth the time on its own). There were some card makers there, but they did even worse than me.

There are so many markets at this time of year that the footfall seems much lower and the appalling weather yesterday really didn't help. There were several other markets on at the same time in the general area and people will usually only bother to visit one. I also think there is less spare cash around.

I was at the Glastonbury frost fayre the other week ( visitor not stallholder) and it was the food stalls there that sold out too. Although it was packed I'm not sure people were actually buying much. Certainly the stallholders I spoke to who were in the same category as what I'd be selling, were not selling much. I asked as part of the reason was a bit of market research to see if it was worth applying for next year.

Food seems to be the big seller at markets, understandably I suppose.
I may need to rethink doing fairs as that's a whole lot of time to take £30 in sales. I'd rather be on the buying side of the table if that's all I get for 4 hours standing in the cold.

Maybe my cards are crap.....

Perhaps Etsy rather than the pleasure of standing on a cold street.

Reiterating the point re food sellers doing well - they always do, always have done.

I do a fair number of fairs - was at one yesterday. The card prices were between £2-4 and they were hand painted on paper or silk. So yours sound in the right price bracket.

If anyone knew the answer to the question how to guarantee to sell loads at a craft fair, we'd all be signing up to find out. The truth is - there is no 1 or 2 or 3 things that will guarantee good sales consistently - unless you make fudge or chocolates.
The economic situation at the moment isn't helping with areas of discretionary spend.

Cards can do well, but many artists offer cards almost as a side line, they will have other items alongside. There are things that help - having a variety of things on offer. If you're just offering cards and a person doesn't want a card they will walk on by. But if there's a framed picture, a mounted picture, bookmarks that can help attract people to your stand. Your display needs to be clear and attractive, and pricing needs to be clear too. Do you offer packs of cards for slightly under the individual price, eg 3 for £10. People love a bargain. Colour is important too. My main colour in spring & summer is a turquoise but it simply doesn't sell after September so I have a winter colour range - reds & darker greens.

It can be so demoralising having low sales (and I've had a few where I haven't sold a thing). Researching your fair is important - not all fairs are equal !

And then there's the whole how you present yourself - some people are natural born sales people; the rest of us have to learn how.

It always makes me smile when you see on here or other SM, people saying they are making stuff and hope to make plenty of cash selling at craft fairs. You have to run it like a business if you want to make money reasonably consistently.

Your first craft fair is a rite of passage - you survived and took £30 - that's good. Keep going, ask other crafts what works for them (and bear in mind, some are not there to many loads of money - it's a hobby, a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Good luck

Thank you.

Yes, my colours are all quite pastel, so you may well be spot on there. Theyre perhaps not appealing in this season. Probably completely wrong in fact. How daft that I didn't think of that.

And I'm not a natural sales person, I'm quiet and get overwhelmed in busy, noisy situations.

I shall look at etsy, thank you for the suggestion.

Just watch out with Etsy - their terms are not always in the sellers favour. I'm sure there are some thread on here about it.

I don't sell through them any more - I'm a potter and there seem to be 3 million potters so it's difficult to get seen

We sell plant growing kits. We're professional gardeners so do the Christmas markets to help our Winter earnings. We've learnt over the years which markets work for us and which we shouldn't bother with. It can be hit and miss. I'd say try them all once or twice and only go back to the ones that work for you.

I'll take a look at other sites too. Folksy has had good reviews, as has British craft house (I think that's the name).
Etsy made some bad headlines earlier this year didn't it?

I went to a local Christmas Market a few weeks ago as a buyer. One stall I bought from had cards as part of the stall & she said her best seller was a bundle pack of cards for school - 30 cards for the pupils & 1 card for the teacher - said loads of parents had bought these packs for their DC.
I know you say you do hand painted cards but maybe you need to do cheaper prints of your cards?
As another PP said look into diversifying - pictures/prints, book marks, mugs, bundles of cards etc?

Food stalls always do well especially sweet stuff.

I sell toiletries and this is the last year I'm doing fairs as their just not worth it at the moment.

Have a look at the craft and flea fairs. They are all over the country. We do the Newcastle one and it's well supported. Christmas fairs are always well attended. Our local agricultural shows are good too.

We have a product which we need to explain (plant growing kits) so that starts a conversation with potential customers. Could you perhaps have a line or two you say to people who approach the stall which starts a conversation? Maybe explain a bit about your background or the products? You know far more than they do about the product so don't be shy in talking about it!

I think there is also just a top price for some items… like as nice as I’m sure your cards are, I would simply never pay £4 for a card. They’re disposable items that aren’t worth that much to me. The same designs might do better as art prints instead as I don’t see the same price issue with art.

I don’t sell but I went to one at the weekend to buy something from a stall a friend was running.
Food stuff seemed to be flying off the shelves, also quite a few popular jewellery and candle stalls. wouldn’t pay £4 for a card though, no matter how nice. I’m not saying that they’re not worth £4 but they wouldn’t be for me. I’m sure yours are really lovely but cards are the kind of thing I don’t really appreciate and would just stick on the weekly shop if it was someone’s birthday coming up. I don’t send Christmas cards and don’t display them either. And Christmas cards in particular are dying out.
However I’m not a frequent visitor to craft markets and literally only went to support my friend. A lot of what I saw while rushing through was quite an assortment of varying quality.

Thanks for all the input, it's very helpful.

I make a ruddy good cinder toffee (puff candy) so perhaps I should do that instead!

I do. I make silver & gold jewellery. The food and candles always sell very out at the fairs I do. I'm very picky about where I choose to have a stall now as I was doing every market I could at the beginning. Which isn't going to always be profitable. I average about £200-300 profit at fairs normally, a bit more around this time of year, but it was much slower when I was trying to find my niche/product continuity. I try to do at least one market a month. You need a very very attractive display, be approachable or knowledgeable about your products/ethos/technique and a good variety of products and prices. Know your product and know why you're charging for it, demonstrate that with talking to customers about your inspiration/technique/process/materials etc. present yourself well. You have to sell yourself as well as your stock.

Where are you based? I mostly do Craft & Flea markets, based in the mids/north, as they are very well promoted and attended. Everyone that goes to them is interested in handmade things which helps. You have to find which markets work well for you and then be picky about the ones you attend.

I would avoid Etsy and Folksy unless you're going to work extremely hard to drive your own customers there via social media. The fees are just not worth it.

I no longer really send cards

Many people don't

Cards sales overall is a declining market I'm sure

I often go to fairs as get invited by friends who run stalls. I mostly buy food items such as cake

I don't know any crafter who makes good money of it. The sloe gin and vegan cakes always sell though

I found Folksy hopeless. The fees are close to Etsy levels but without the Etsy advertising spend. No one will find you there organically. You’ll need to promote yourself on social media and then send them to Folksy to complete the sale. I’d rather spend the time and effort to drive them to my own website.

I used to sell hand sewn stuff and found that I needed to do a bit of a brutal assessment on who the audience would be and which of my products would likely be most popular. I didn't always get it right but for example at this time of year I would have taken lots of iPad/tablet/phone sleeves, coin purses in fabrics and designs more suited to kids/teens and tote bags. Those were the things that appealed as accessories for main Xmas gifts and stocking fillers.

If you are hand painting cards could you diversify a bit and put your paintings into nice keychain fixings, magnets etc so that you widen your market a bit?

It makes a real difference if you can find the right fair for your particular craft items.

My god daughter does a few fairs in November aimed at the Xmas trade. Her best one takes about £1200 and the others around £400. She sells at prices between £5-£50. I think it is good to have a variety of items at a variety of price points. Another option is to maybe share a stall with someone.

PP is correct that some people are great at selling and others not so much so maybe get some tips from people on how to work on your sales skills?

Again, loads of brilliant and really appreciated advice. I think you're all correct re cards. That's probably a dead duck. Maybe wee framed paintings instead might work. It's not essential that I make loads of money but it would be nice to sell something. It may not be the niche for me. I'll have a think!

I am a buyer not a maker but I like folksy. The stuff I see on there is properly made craft stuff not eBay tat.

I think I first came across it based on a local seller but I have bought a few things from people the other end of the country that I would never have known about otherwise.

Could some of your designs translate into printed wrapping paper/gift tags/gift bags? (I've no idea if that's viable but if cards are a dying art....hopefully people still give gifts?)

That's good to hear. I have a friend who sells on it, and she likes it. It's small compared to etsy but because of that, she's a bigger fish, and gets featured in gift guides quite a lot. She likes that crap made in factories isn't allowed, which she says is, on etsy. I have seen dozens of different etsy sellers all with the exact same thing in their shop, which kind of implies it's not handmade....

Numonday has been mentioned to me too.