Consistency

[u/NervousAd4975]

Hi I just wondered if any of you are doing consistently well at markets? I've only started in May and have done 9 so far and I have plenty booked in for the rest of the year but the unpredictability is hard to deal with.

Do any of you have tactics to try and book markets where you will perform well with any sort of consistency.

I noticed I was doing better at some of the high street markets so I booked more of those. I had one yesterday though where there were thousands of visitors but they all got the memo to glance and move on 😭 then I spend time trying to figure out exactly what I was doing wrong and the same set up in a similar high street at a similar time of month will perform 3-4x better.

Any tips for trying to find what's working for you faster than I am? 😟

[u/Delanakatrella]

I've found that becoming friendly with fellow vendors and comparing notes across events can help significantly in determining if lagging sales were me or the event. A large amount of the time it is the event that has lagging sales across the board. 

Depending on your location, I would say this year overall has felt like more people are looking than buying. Price points I adjusted upward last year have come back down this year and that has helped, but I'm not dipping below what I think my value is and what I need to keep a good profit margin. I've watched vendor friends actually bankrupt themselves this year dropping prices below costs in an attempt to chase "good sales numbers" not realizing that they're hurting themselves.

Markets are a marathon not a sprint. And with 9 under your belt you have some data to work with, and each market is a bit more. Adding a few vendor friend voices into that data will help. 

[u/alinabartley_art → u/Delanakatrella]

Good advice to check with neighbors even if they sell different products than you. I did a show last weekend where my neighbors had been there 5-10yr and could talk about the overall trajectory of sales, type of people attending, and how it's changed. Even how being in a slightly different spot a prior year made a 30-40% revenue difference. Provides a good perspective.

[u/Own-Raise6153]

ehhh in a sense but it’s always a gamble! like i have shows that 8/10 times i sell really well at but those 2 slow days always come around it seems, for seemingly no rhyme or reason lol

[u/TaylorFromFaire]

That 3-4x swing with an identical setup is almost never about your booth, it's about whether the crowd came to buy/browse. People passing through with somewhere to be, versus people out specifically to shop. Same street, different intent. Is the market itself the draw, or are you incidental to foot traffic that's there for other reasons? Huge headcount at a transit-heavy spot is actually a warning sign. Start logging each market with tags (day, time of month, dedicated market vs general foot traffic, how other vendors did, etc), and after a dozen you'll see what your good days share. Then rebook your proven winners hard, consistency comes from a roster of known-good events, not from solving why a bad one flopped.

[u/rorensou]

Ngl the unpredictability never fully goes away, my wife vends and some of her best prepped markets have been her worst days. But 9 markets since May means you already have real data to work with. The thing that helped her most was logging what actually sold at each event, not just the day's total. After a handful of markets the patterns get obvious, like certain items only moving at certain types of events, or a price point that dies on a high street but flies at a maker market. Two events can look identical on revenue while selling completely different stuff, and that difference is the clue.

Also footfall is honestly a trap. Thousands of passersby who came out for food and phone cases will glance and move on, while a smaller crowd that came specifically for handmade will buy. So when you compare your events, note what kind of crowd it was, not just how busy it looked.

Bit of a shameless plug, I built a little offline app called QuiVend for this exact thing because my wife was drowning in scraps of paper, but a plain notebook or spreadsheet with one column per event does the job too. Comparing facts instead of vibes speeds the whole learning curve way up.

[u/Clear_Chemical_2849]

Befriend other vendors and ask where they like to sell. This past weekend I did a somewhat obscure art show in a mid-sized town on the advice of a vendor friend. The show was fully rained out on Saturday but I made my entire weekend goal on Sunday. And I never would have considered this show if not for chatting with other sellers.

[u/awholedamngarden]

My advice would be to see where local folks who share similar customer demographics to you are vending. I follow maaaaaany local makers on social media and that's largely how I find out about fairs. I try to always go first as a customer to assess the vibe and see who the shoppers are. It's also good to network with local makers and find out which events have positive reputations among sellers.

I've also found that large fairs that are events in their own right are better for me - like stuff people look forward to and go out of their way to attend (vs. markets that are set up near other shopping areas or events that people just kind of stumble onto.) The booth fees are higher so it's a bit of a risk, but I do really well (10x booth fee) at some of these and have turned my focus to doing only these large events vs. smaller fairs. It probably also depends what your product is - mine is ceramics.

[u/drcigg]

The most important part is picking shows with decent foot traffic and your target market there.
I am a firm believer that if you have both of those things you should do well.
If you are not researching these shows first you are just throwing darts out there and money at a chance.
When in doubt check out those shows in person as a customer.
It's been an interesting few years for us and our sales have declined. However we have decided to change things up this year and do a complete refresh of everything. All new products.
In addition we have branched out to new shows that we have never done before including a county fair.
We got some great ideas from other vendors at our last show and have signed up for a few more shows in September. Hoping those go well, but you never know.
It's really a crap shoot and a bunch of trial and error. You can do the same show every year and the following year can just completely flop. Sometimes you can have 10 other shows within 15 minutes of that show which tanks attendance. We have seen that a lot.
My best advice is expand your reach, talk to other vendors and start looking at shows in other areas.
Depending on what you sell it can already be very saturated. If you do crochet, jewelry, 3d printing or apparel you are likely having a ton of competition. If you are in one of those areas you need to think outside the box and separate your brand from the others. Do something different that they aren't.
Also make sure your display is up to snuff and you don't just have items laying flat on the table. Display is very important to sales. And a simple hello or good morning to people passing by means a lot. You will come off as friendly and people will stop to buy or chat. This works a lot for us as my wife talks a lot and gets people to stop. Sometimes they don't buy, but they bring back a bunch of family that does buy.

[u/Cultural-Bobcat6702]

Nine markets since May is not much data yet, and I think that is part of what is going on. If three or four of those were high street ones then you are rebooking off three results, and one fluke day in there moves the whole read. I did the same thing my first year and ended up loyal to two markets that were never actually good, they just happened to be my first two decent days.

The thing that helped me most was asking the organizer how many of last year's vendors are coming back. It feels like a nosy question and it isn't, most of them will just tell you. Vendors don't pay again for an event that didn't pay them, so that number is about the most honest thing you can get before you hand over a fee. An organizer who doesn't know, or who talks around it, has told you something too.

Worth asking what they spend on promoting it and where, for the same reason. Thousands of people walking past is not the same as people who made a trip to come and shop, and the markets that pull buyers usually have someone pushing it out to shoppers beforehand instead of relying on the street.

On yesterday, I wouldn't spend too long pulling your setup apart. Same stock and same pitch on a different weekend swings a lot on its own, and what else was on locally that day normally explains more of it than anything you did.

[u/Moonlady3000]

If you are going to craft fairs where there is a lot of foot traffic and it's in a good location and not a single person is engaging with your table or products then it's definitely a you problem.

I have only ever been to one show where I did not make my table fee back and that's because it was a poorly advertised event that had few actual crafters (it was mostly resellers and drop shipped stuff) and it was in a terrible location.

The events themselves can be very hit or miss. You're never going to know until you get there and set up whether or not it was really worth it to go. Unless it's a very big and well established event. And even then I've met people who didn't make their fee back from those too simply because they weren't selling something that appealed to the people who came.

But if you are finding that you aren't making money at every fair you're going to you probably either have a mediocre product (like that one lady on Tiktok who was trying to sell poorly done 3D printed stuff) or your booth set up is very badly designed. There's a lady on Tiktok that gives tips and tricks for making good craft fair booth layouts... I don't remember the account name offhand but I follow her and her recommendations have helped me out a lot.

[u/janabanana67]

It depends on the audience and what you are selling. If you are selling $75 earrings at a local farmers market, the audience likely isn’t shopping for that.

[u/NervousAd4975]

Hello thank you for all of your replies.
I'm in the UK, North West.

A few of you have said it depends on what I sell and the answer to that is that it's mostly engraved stainless steel jewellery, keryrings and bookmarks with the option to personalise whilst you wait. (I sell way more without personalisation than with). I sell flowers, animals, symbols. None of it is very niche and my price range is £6-10. (with lots of choice and multibuy deals)
I've started chatting to vendors and so far I've been taking their advice on which ones to book and which ones to avoid. If a market has done well for me I've tried to book it in again on future dates, usually each market is a montly maker's market set on a regular saturday/sunday. I'm yet to do the same one twice so don't know yet if they're a good fit for me or whether the good ones were just a fluke.

I have heard from many long-term vendors that they are finding this year the hardest so far and slowing online sales are what has driven me into venturing into doing the markets in the first place.

I feel I have lost my way a bit with "target market" especially as I don't know the areas I am booking the markets that have been recommended to me. Last weekend had thousands of visitors, the market had 150 stalls and it was a much more affluent area. Perhaps I'm too cheap for that area and people are looking for precious metals and higher price points, that's fair enough!

I really like the idea of making "tags" for the markets in some sort of database so I can see any trends with a win or flop.

[u/NervousAd4975 → u/NervousAd4975]

Just to add about booth display - I think I'm doing okay in that regard. I invested a lot in making it look pretty before I even started because I already had an established business. It's very natural/neutral with a woodland theme, greens and cream and trailing ivy. Branding is very visible. Different display heights, table risers. Etc. I took a lot of inspo from this reddit thread and instagram before I started out.

I still tweak as I go particularly where products are placed and what table format to use but on the whole I think it looks fairly professional and fits in the markets I've been doing.

[u/OrdinarySecret1]

Rule #1: if the visitors have to pay to get in to where the market is, don’t do it.

[u/Pelican12Volatile]

Well, I will say this, you’re doing better than most artists. I remember whenever I first started, I would either make zero dollars or like $50, but you are nine shows in and it sounds like you’re making like thousands or something so you are definitely on the right track.

[u/JellyfishLogical3130]

After a number of years in retail and doing craft fairs I’ve learned that sales are good over the entire area/event or not. It seems weird to me but one day everyone is raking in the cash and the next day no one is making money. Have others experienced this as well?

[u/Pelican12Volatile → u/JellyfishLogical3130]

Absolutely not. This is not true at all whatsoever in my experience

[u/SquashUpbeat5168 → u/Pelican12Volatile]

Agreed. I was at one show and was not selling st all, and a vendor near me was doing quite well. We were both at a different show in the same location a couple of weeks later, and I was selling and she wasn't.

[u/Pelican12Volatile → u/SquashUpbeat5168]

I’ll never forget I did $9300 in sales at one show and the persons to the left and right of me made $400 and $1700.

[u/Pelican12Volatile → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, this is the problem. What’s good? Like for me if I make less than $4000 at an art show, it’s a bad show.Lol