As some of you know, I am very busy with the local American Legion Post. We are having a craft show on Nov. 4th. We have sold all of the booths and have had no cancellations so far. Everything is going like clockwork so far. Even the weather looks like it may cooperate. They are saying sunny and a high of 44 deg.! Even Santa is going to be there, Last year he got sick at the last minute and couldn't be there. I am in charge of it this year, the first time I have been in charge. I have helped at the 3 previous ones. This is a big fund raiser for us as it brings in over $1500 in one day. We will have a Spring show on the first Sat. in March. But I won't be in charge of it.
Capt. hope you have a really good turnout. And hopefully the vendors have a wide variety of crafts for sale. The cutest thing I have seen at craft shows is the sign that says "Of course you can make it yourself, but will you?" Craft vendors down here don't seem to be able to come up with anything original, they all make and sell the previous years biggest seller.
I'm glad you got all your booths sold. That is the biggest job.Hope you do get new items .I quit going to them as toni said never anything new.
Hope your show goes well Capt. I just received an email from my sister who is involved in a similar project - hers includes a silent auction which my husband and I donated several crafts to. She said it was doing well so far - it started last night.
Great news CK. All the booths sold out should mean that there'll be plenty of different crafts to interest folks and encourage them to spend their money. I hope you get well in excess of the $1500 dollars on the day and that everything goes smoothly. :-D
By being in charge of it I can pick and choose the crafters. On the application they have to put down what they will be bringing. We reserve the right to remove things from sale if we feel that they are not up to standard. We have a great selection of different types of crafts. We have a fudge maker that will be there for the 4th year. Last year she sold almost $400 worth of fudge. Her secret is that she gives out free samples. Once you try one or two of them, you HAVE to buy! The Legion makes their money off of the rental of the tables. So no matter how sales are, we have already made ours. But of course we want good sales too, so the crafters will come back. We only have space for 50 tables, but I could have sold 100 if we had the room.
When I used to run craft fares etc in the village here we'd get the money for the booths + a percentage of whatever each crafter made on the day. If they made say £100 then they'd give us 5%, £200 - 10%, £300 and upwards 30%. It certainly made for a great total at the end of the day and everybody was happy as it was all for charity.
Please let us know how the show turns out. Do you think you can sneak pics of some of the more original crafts, especially those pertaining to the garden.
We're working on one for our church - it takes a lot of hours of organizing, and then the set-up and break-down too - best of luck! We lure them in with good food, as we have a chef in our congregation who serves giant cinnamon rolls and amazing soups every year so we get folks who come 'for lunch' on their annual rounds of craft shows. I think we need to get more picky about our vendors - too many of them are turning into the ones who do it for their living selling things that aren't even really handmade, and you see them at every single show with the same stuff. Go you on weeding the apps!
We have right on our application, "No flea market type items" We do allow home businesses in such as jewelry and gormet foods. Our Ladies Auxilliary sells food for lunch etc. So we allow no food vendors in. It works out to where we have 75% crafters and 25% home businesses. We only charge $30 per table and there is no commission. And we don't charge for shoppers at the door. I think that is why we sell out our tables every show and we get a good crowd of people to come to it. Last year we had about 800 people come through between 9 am and 3 pm.Also we will have applications on hand for our spring show and will sell about 10 tables for it from the vendors this year.And we try to have Santa there for the kids too!
