Craft fairs can get booked up fast, so you need to plan in advance which ones you plan on selling your crochet at. But how to choose a craft fair that gives you the best chance of having a profitable day and not end up dragging a ton of stock home with you?
Price Isn’t What Determines Success
When it comes to picking a craft fair to sell at, it can be easy to go for the lowest priced events. After all that will give you the biggest profit vs the amount of money spent. But that’s a false economy. That idea assumes that you will sell the same amount of your crochet at every craft fair regardless of the table fee, and that’s just not true.
The fact is that the price of the event has nothing to do with how much you will sell. You could spend thousands for a table at a massive convention and still not sell a thing.
What determines what a good craft fair for you and your crochet is comes down to the people who turn up and the amount of money they have to spend.
Work Out The True Cost Of The Day
Another thing to consider when choosing the right craft fair is how much of a profit you need to earn to make the day worth it.
This ties into the cost of those big events at conventions or country estates. Yes you can pay thousands for a table and thousands of potential customers will turn up. But how many sales do you need to make to cover your costs before you see a penny of profit?
And it’s not just the table fee that you need to account for. It’s the cost of all the yarn to make your stock, the cost of transportation or fuel to get there. Do you need to buy tables, tablecloths, packaging, business cards or things to display your crochet?
All of these costs need to be accounted for when deciding whether the price of attending a craft fair is going to be worth it for you.
Often the lure of the big footfall events are not worth the amount of crochet you’d have to sell to just break even.
Why Research Matters
This is where the importance of research comes in. After all how else are you going to know what kind of people go to each craft fair and how much they spend?
The only way to find this out and then be able to make the decision on if this craft fair is right for you is to start digging.
Most craft fairs are repeated either monthly or yearly. If it’s a market then it might be held every week.
But who goes there? Dig into social media, local news sites, the website of the organiser if they have one. Find out who has traded there before and then take a look at their social media.
You’re looking to find out how well advertised the event is, how many people turned up, what past traders said about it and if they bragged about how much they sold and more importantly what they sold.
Sometimes you’re looking for what they didn’t say as much as what they did mention.
Traders who sold out at the event will say so. It makes for a great news story to show their audience how popular they are. Traders who didn’t do so well will probably try to put a positive spin on it and say what a great day they had and how nice it was to meet other small business owners – they won’t mention sales at all.
Look at pictures of the event – are there lots of potential customers walking around and are they carrying lots of shopping?
What kind of traders were at the event – were they predominantly food sellers, other hand crafters or is it more mass produced items?
All of these things will give you the information you need to decide if the event is right for you and your crochet.
What A Mismatch Looks Like
But is all of this effort really worth it?
Well let’s look at what happens if you skip the research.
If you decide to pick your craft fair based solely on price, you could end up at the local church bric a brac where everyone is looking for a bargain. Yes that table might have only cost you $15, but if you don’t make any sales because you’re just too expensive for everyone then that’s $15 and a whole day wasted.
If you pick the huge national convention because of how many tens of thousands of people turn up, but you’re selling baby and nursery items when it’s a sci-fi convention then you’ll never make back the thousands you had to pay for that spot. You can have all those people flowing through and still not make sales because they were never the people who were going to buy from you.
These are extreme examples, but if you turn up to a market where the people who turn up are conservative and rather straight laced and you’re selling funky 70’s themed stuff, that probably isn’t the best match and you will see it in the day’s takings.
Research is what stops these mismatches from happening and makes sure that you only sign up to events that line up with the right customer and the right bank account.
Can They Actually Afford Your Crochet?
Even if the right people for your crochet are going to this event, it doesn’t mean that they will buy. They still need to have the available cash to buy from you. This is why the craft fair that you pick must tick both boxes.
The right audience, the right available cash.
If an event doesn’t go well, it’s easy to blame the cost of living crisis. But that’s a lazy excuse as the cost of living problem is not affecting everyone, there are still plenty of people with cash to spend. If there weren’t we’d be hearing of luxury brands like Tiffany and Chanel going bust – and actually, they’re thriving.
So the cash is there, you just have to find the people who have it to spend on your crochet.
Research Isn’t A Guarantee
Research is a hugely important part of choosing a profitable craft fair for your crochet, but it’s never a guarantee.
Craft fairs do rely on a bit of luck too. If the date of the event coincides with a nearby sporting event, or an outdoor event has bad weather, then there will be fewer customers showing up. Factors like this can’t always be predicted so craft fairs will always have an element of luck involved in determining how profitable your day is.
As hard to predict your success at the fair can be, they can be very enjoyable days out with a great chance to meet customers face to face and to meet other small business owners and expand your business network and make new friends too.
When you’re running a business that can mean spending a lot of time by yourself, these real face to face connections can be invaluable.
Getting focused on the research before you sign up to an event plays a big part in making sure your craft fair will be a success, but there’s still plenty more you can do to increase your sales. Your prep before the big day and what you do on the day itself can also play a big factor in your success.
For more tips you can download my pdf on 39 Tips To Sell Out At The Craft Fair here.
I’m Kelly Thomas, crochet business owner, pattern writer, blogger and coach. I started my crochet business selling what I make and made all the mistakes along the way. Let me show you what I learned so you don’t make the same errors.
You can listen to the podcast episode that goes with this article here. It is a bit different to what you’ve just read, but the message is the same.
You can check out the rest of my podcast here to discover more about how to turn your crochet into a successful business.
I also have this free workbook that you can download to Map Your Path and work out what your next step in your crochet business is.
